Nancy’s old man ran the bank or Heywood Electric or something. And AnnaMaria, who wore imitation pearls to school a lot, was one of Tony Slavitt’s Chevrolet kids. Girls like that always dressed in skirts and blouses and dresses, period. They were still girls, hardly women, but they wore their hair like Lady Bird Johnson, who wore hers like Jackie Kennedy, who Leo figured wore hers like Ann Margaret or Liz Taylor. And in a strictly untouchable sort of way, these were good girls to look at; but it was the kind of good you feel when you see something new, Leo thought, like a gleaming red Schwinn bike, or even better, one of Slavitt’s sparkling white-walled four-on-the-floor supremes: the exact moment you pause to appreciate its clean, beautiful newness is also the precise second you feel it pull away from you.

It was Thursday, late June, and Leo sat three desks back from Allie, watching her. The air was hot, and even with the windows open the room smelled like desk wood and B.O. sweat. The trees were leafed out green outside and Leo heard a squirrel scampering up a trunk, down a limb, and off it to another. Most of the kids were asleep with their foreheads resting on their folded arms, but Allie was drawing something with three colored pencils. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a single braid. Her neck was long and already tanned too. Whenever she dropped one color for the other, she’d turn her head sideways and look at her picture before she started up again. Leo lifted his chair when he scooted back so he wouldn’t make any noise, then he walked up the aisle, stood a desk’s length behind Allie, and looked over her shoulder.

With a blue pencil she was sketching in a smoke trail that curled up from the chimney of a three-story house. It had four white porch columns on the front like those mansions in the Civil War chapters of the U.S. history book, and to the right of the house was a huge tree with a noose hanging off one branch.

“Is Allison’s work more intriguing than yours, Mr. Suther?”

At first Leo didn’t match “Mr. Suther” up with himself, but when Allie looked at Mr. Jewett, then up and back into Leo’s face, Leo stared into her slightly startled green eyes and said, “Yes. It is,” and he walked back to his desk and sat down.

A few kids lifted their heads to see what was up. One of them was Leo’s flat-topped buddy, Gerry Poitras. He glanced at Leo and Mr. Jewett, before going back to his nap. Allie Donovan turned around quickly but quietly. She smiled at Leo a good four seconds.

That afternoon, while his father was still at the Elks, Leo sat at the kitchen table with his notebook and pen: