“Have you ever been to the East Mountain Zoo?” Jason asked.

It wasn’t exactly what Leora was expecting him to say, and perhaps that should have been an early hint that nothing would be what was expected. But Leora didn’t take the hint. The East Mountain Zoo was a popular spot for children in their area. Leora wondered whether he had somehow recognized her from there, even though she hadn’t been there for at least ten years. “Sure, when I was little. Why?”

Jason smiled. “My dad runs it.”

“Really?”

Jason grinned even more proudly, but Leora wasn’t about to flatter him, even by accident. In total seriousness, she asked, “Does that mean he’s the one who walks through the cages with a giant broom?”

Jason struggled not to scowl at her. “No, it means he’s the one who acquires the animals for the zoo.”

“But where do the animals come from?” Leora asked. Somehow this question seemed to have more potential than the one about where Jason came from.

“From animal dealers,” Jason said. He shifted awkwardly again, but this time for a different reason. “Hey, next time you’re home,” he offered, as if afraid of the answer, “would you like to come to the East Mountain Zoo with me?”

To Leora’s own surprise she agreed.

LEORA LIKED JASON, but it wasn’t until a conversation they had much later that it occurred to her to love him. They were sitting at a cafeteria table on a day in early March, one of those horrible days when spring seems so close that you can almost taste it, but dirty snow and bitter winds drag the entire week back down into the winter it came from. As usual, Jason had equipped his lunch tray with five full glasses of preternaturally green Gatorade, which, he claimed, the soccer coach had prescribed for the whole team, even though the soccer season was long over. Leora sat across the table from him, the glowing translucent glasses forming a sort of barricade between them until he picked one up and drained its contents, putting the empty glass back in line like a breach in the green fortress wall. As he poured the fluorescent beverage down his throat, Leora asked him a question, an even more boring one this time than “Where are you from?”

“What are you doing this summer?”

Jason’s eyes, previously focused on the Gatorade, flicked up to hers as he plunked the empty glass back down on the tray. “Actually, I already have a summer job,” he said.

“Lucky you! What is it?”

Jason picked up the second glass of Gatorade, studying it as if it contained the answers to life’s greatest questions. “I have this thing I do every summer. You’re probably going to laugh at me, but I have to explain to you why I do it.”

“Okay,” she answered.

Jason sipped the Gatorade. “It’s a community service thing.”

“Well, that’s cool, isn’t it?” Leora asked, mainly just to keep him talking.