He kept looking at her eyes, too. They were big and brown and alive in some way he hadn’t seen in many other people. He tried not to look at them too much—tried not to look when she happened to be looking back. He hoped it wasn’t obvious. The whole eye-contact thing was tricky, although it helped that they were on swings. Most of the time they were both just looking forward, across the road at the open farmland, or else at their feet trailing aimlessly in the dirt beneath them.

Neither of them got the swings moving. They just sat there talking. There was something cool about that—just sitting there. It felt a little grown-up, Sam thought. Maybe that was it.

Dani was twelve, like him. She had lived in Ashland for only the past three months. She and her parents had lived in L.A. before that, a fact that triggered a whole rush of things to talk about. Dani had grown up in Long Beach, which really wasn’t anywhere near Sam’s old home in Century City, but they had a ton of common references anyway. They had both been to Griffith Park, and Disneyland, of course—Dani’s favorite thing at Disney was New Orleans Square. Sam had never given it a serious look, but he found himself rethinking it now, hearing the way she talked about it.

Each of them had also been to the Forum a handful of times with their parents. Both were duly pissed about the NBA finals the month before. The whole playoffs had been perfect before that: three shutout series, one after another. Then the finals—against Detroit, of all teams; it was going to be like a revenge movie. Everyone said so. When Magic pulled his hamstring I thought my dad was going to kick in the TV, Dani said. Out for the rest of the series, I couldn’t believe it.

Sam asked her what it had been like living here for the past three months, after being used to L.A.

She said it had been better than she expected, for one reason: she’d met a girl named Lauren who moved in around the same time as her. Lauren was from D.C., which was about as different from L.A. as a place could be, but the two of them had clicked instantly.

“It was great,” she said. The words came out soft. Sad.

“Was?”

She nodded. “Lauren and her dad moved back to D.C. last week. I’ve been bored out of my mind ever since.”

A silence settled in. It was the first time in ten minutes that Sam couldn’t think of what to say. Sorry to hear about that would sound fake, he thought. Or cliché, or whatever. He gave it ten seconds, but nothing good came to mind.

“That sucks,” he said.

“It really sucks,” Dani said. “Thanks.”

Sam nodded.