In daylight the landscape outside Sam’s window lay in orderly squares of crop fields, framing the cluster of buildings downtown and reaching away into the humid distance. The broad stretch of tall grass just beyond the back yard, sloping half a mile to the town’s edge, lay green and damp in the summer air. The slope was empty except for a picnic table someone had abandoned way out in the middle of it. Over the swaying tops of the weeds, the table looked like a boat that’d slipped its moorings and gone adrift.

Sam took a shower, had some peanut butter toast, then dragged his bike out of the garage and headed out to explore the subdivision.

The place wasn’t new; that was his first impression. Much of it lay in shade beneath the canopies of huge maples that lined the streets. The trees had to be forty or fifty years old, planted all at the same time by whoever had created the subdivision. Here and there, gnarled roots had pushed up the sidewalk slabs from below, setting them at odd angles.

The suburb’s streets were laid out in three big arches, each tucked inside the next. On a map it would’ve looked like a sideways rainbow, attached to the primary road that ran south to Ashland and north to Brenner. Within the subdivision, shorter streets here and there connected the three arches to one another.

At the north end of the sideways rainbow, butted up alongside the main road running north and south, was a park—Nash Park, according to the carved wooden sign at the entry drive. Sam rode in past the sign and coasted to a stop.

There was a merry-go-round. There was a teeter-totter with faded red paint. There was a swing set—four black-rubber swings hanging from chains, the ground furrowed into a long crater beneath each.

A girl about Sam’s age sat on the farthest of the four swings, her bike close by on the grass. Otherwise the park was empty.

Sam stood there, astride his bike. The girl hadn’t noticed him yet. She sat with her head down, not swinging, just kind of swaying there, tracing a little circle in the dirt with her shoe. She had long brown hair that blew around in the breeze. Her hands looked small and delicate, holding the steel chains. Her fingernails were pink, matching her shirt.