I watch her fill up an iced coffee. I’m trying to figure out how to excuse myself, how to say, Good-bye, have a very mediocre life, hope I never see you again as long as I live, when she suddenly blurts, “You know, Brent still asks about you sometimes.”

I freeze. “Brent O’Connell?”

“Who else? He’s a big shot at Optimal now. Regional sales manager. Followed in his father’s footsteps and worked his way up.”

Brent was from one of the richest families in town, which for Barrens means a basketball hoop, aboveground pool, and separate bedrooms for Brent, his older sister, and their parents. Brent’s father wore a tie to work, and his mother was like Carol Brady: big smile, blond hair, very clean-looking. Brent was hired at Optimal straight out of high school. Whereas the other guys had after-school jobs pumping gas or stocking shelves at the grocery store or even sweeping stables at one of the local farms, Brent had an internship at Optimal.

“He’s still single. A shame, isn’t it?” She stirs her coffee slowly, like it’s a chemistry experiment and the wrong blend of sugar and cream will make the whole place blow up. One sugar. Stir. Two sugars. Stir. Three. Then, suddenly: “He always had a crush on you, you know.”

“Brent’s with Kaycee,” I say quickly. I have no idea where the present tense came from: five minutes back in town and the past is invading me. “I mean, he was.”

“He was with Kaycee, but he liked you. Everybody knew that.”

Brent O’Connell was one of the most popular guys in Barrens. What she’s saying makes no sense.

Except…

Except for the kiss, the one kiss, the night of graduation. A first kiss almost exactly like I’d always dreamed it: an unseasonably warm June day, swimming weather, almost; the smell of smoke turning the air sharp; Brent coming through the trees, lifting a hand to his eyes against the dazzle of my flashlight. How many nights had I walked the woods behind my house to the edge of the reservoir, hoping to run into him just that way, hoping he would notice me?

It was so perfect I could never be sure I hadn’t made it up, like I did Sonya, a dark-skinned colt-legged girl who lived in the attic of our old house when I was a kid and used to play games with me in exchange for leaves, twigs, and branches I brought her from outside; she had once been a fairy, I explained, when my mother found the attic nesting with rotten leaves and beetles. Like the games I made up after my mom died, to bring her back. Skipping over the sidewalk cracks, of course, but other ones, too. If I could hold my breath until five cars had passed…if I could swim down to the bottom of the reservoir and plunge a finger in the silt…if there were an even number of crows on the telephone pole, any number but ten.