“Hey, little dude.” Jason holds up his hand for a high five and then, without looking at Shelley, grabs and collects all the papers and stuffs them into his dresser drawer, all the while promising Harvey that they will go get pizza and maybe even add some more stars to the ceiling. Peggy, with slow, consistent paws, has made a nest of the bedspread, and both boys sit there hugging her tired old body. Shelley wants to spell probity, veracity, fidelity; she wants to come out from under the bed and make everything okay. She wants to promise them good things, to say something important that they will always remember, but there is no word for all that she is feeling, so she just stands in the doorway and waits.

Frank

Frank braves the rickety ladder and then is standing below and looking up into the trees and sky. Perhaps this is the view he needed most, one that feels untouched by time. There are no initials written in charcoal on the wall—no more matches or pennies—just some broken pieces of that old mason jar and the familiar earthy smell, the clammy walls, the view up and out into daylight and air. Right before he ran off, that strange kid asked if Frank wanted to see inside their house, and he heard himself say, “Next time.” He said that he needed to go soon, because he had left a note he shouldn’t have left; the kid said his mom had left a bad note and almost got fired, and then he asked if Frank thought he’d live to be real old—“Way older than you even,” the kid had said, “since so much stuff got mashed out.”

“Yes,” Frank had told him, “I think you’ll be way older than me.”

“I want to be as old as that turtle in China,” he had said, and Frank was about to tell him he knew all about that turtle, as well as the turtle from sixty million years ago—one of the pelomedusoides—found by someone in this very state. But another time. Next time.

“You’re just getting started,” Frank said. “You have so much to remember.”

And off the kid went, through the hedges and back into daylight, past the dogwood tree Frank’s mother had planted so long ago, past the view Frank looked out at as he sat by his mother when she was dying, her body embryonic as she curled inward, not unlike the slides he had routinely shown his classes, those earliest-discovered bodies on their left sides, in the fetal position, with their hands covering their faces, as if not to see what comes next.