By the time history was over, he was thinking of high beach grass, purple and silver sand where minerals glinted in the sun, beach boulders with sheltered spots …

Macey fell into the category of kid who had to bring home high marks, and so she usually paid close attention in class. She kept a mental stack of her grades, and low ones killed her.

No, they don’t, she thought. She put her cap into her book bag, because hats weren’t allowed in class, and drew out Mrs. Loomis’s letter. Every time she read it, she fell deeper inside it. Her thoughts got sticky around the edges, like marshmallows at the bonfire.

By the end of school, Macey had the letter by heart.

Or it had her.

True colors. It was one of the phrases that held her so tightly. During lectures she hardly heard, working her way through the spectrum, Macey Clare figured out her true colors.

The color of her family was a not-thinking color. A go on vacation, buy souvenirs, read guidebooks color.

If she stood in the front hall (marble floors and two-story pillars, fresh flowers on a shelf between the trophy cases) and waited for Austin, he would be there. They had not agreed to do that, because they didn’t have to agree. They just knew. They would walk to Shell Beach together.

It came to her like a film: a video of a boy and a girl, a beach and a flower, wind and a kiss.

But whatever Dorothy Edna Loomis expected from Macey had to begin today. If Macey waited till it was convenient, time would pass. Good intentions would dwindle. Venita would evaporate like water in the sun. Only Macey’s short hair would be left to show they had been together, and then her hair would grow out, and of Venita in her life there would be no sign.

She showed the letter to Grace, who read it quickly and said, “Oh, how nice of her to answer you.” Grace was already out the classroom door, had already forgotten it, in two strides had moved on with her life.

To Macey it seemed not just a letter, but a charge; an order.

She had a sense of huge invisible choices, with huge unknown results.

When the final bell rang, Macey did not go to meet Aus after all. She went out a side exit, walked up the hill, down two blocks, and up another hill to the town library.

The librarian was helpful without being interested. It was a safe feeling, although Macey did not know why safety was required; she was just looking at a newspaper. She didn’t even know the name of the newspaper for Venita’s city. The librarian pointed her to a stack.