Sometimes Henry wished he could fly, because he couldn’t run fast enough. A couple of nights a week, Henry would get out of bed, quietly so he wouldn’t wake his grandfather, and he would simply run. On the night he turned twenty-one he ran all the way to the base of the Appalachians, heading into Asheville. Being that age suddenly gave him a burst of energy, and he knew he had to do something with it or else he would explode. It took him six hours to get back home. His grandfather had been waiting on the porch for him that morning, and Henry told him that he’d been sleepwalking. He doubted his grandfather would understand. There were times when Henry couldn’t wait to be old, like his grandfather, but there were times also that his body was alive and jumping with youth, and he didn’t know what to do with it.

He didn’t tell Claire that day they all went to the reservoir, but he’d never been there before either. He’d never done those things other kids his age had done. He was too busy with the dairy and dating older women who knew what they wanted. Being with Sydney made him feel young, but it also made him feel a little sick, like he’d eaten too much and he could never run enough to make the feeling go away.

Tonight he stopped by the edge of the field, his feet wet and his ankles scratched from the thorns of the wild roses that bloomed in the bramble next to the highway. The lights of a car came at him from the road and he ducked into the grass as it passed, not wanting anyone to see that he was out there at two in the morning in only his boxer shorts.

He didn’t get up, even after the sound of the car disappeared. He stared up at the moon, which looked like a giant hole in the sky, letting light through from the other side. He took deep breaths of the wet grass and warm roses and the black pavement from the highway that was still so hot from the summer sun that it melted at the edges and smelled like fire.

He imagined himself kissing Sydney, putting his hands in her hair. She always smelled mysteriously female, like the salon where she worked. He liked that smell. He always had. Women were amazing creatures. Amber, the receptionist where Sydney worked, was pretty and smelled the same way. She was interested in him too, but Sydney always stopped just short of encouraging him to go out with her when he sometimes met Sydney at the White Door. Sydney didn’t feel passion for him, but maybe she did feel a little possessive of him. He wondered if there was any shame to hoping she would grow to love him. He could feel this lust enough for them both.