It’s funny to think now about how everything might have turned out, or not turned out, if I hadn’t cut through Red’s Farm. It would have been a different June, that’s for sure. It would have been a different summer, and a different everything. But I did walk into Red’s Farm, and I did stop at the creek, and when I stopped, I saw her for the first time.

Jasper.

She was sprawled out on a big, flat rock in the middle of the creek. The same rock where we used to play pirates when we were little, in our red bandannas and eye patches. She was still and her eyes were closed and her hair was like a cloud of red fuzz all around her face—so frizzy and curly that when she was lying back like that, her profile kind of disappeared into her pouf of hair. That was the first thing I remember thinking, that her hair was totally huge. But in a wonderful way. Like she was some beautiful clown.

She looked like she was sleeping, but I couldn’t tell, so I stood there; and after a few minutes—probably too long for me to be watching a stranger sleeping on a rock—she swatted at something near her face, likely a mosquito, and sat up.

“Oh hey, stranger!” she said when she saw me.

Just that.

Hey, stranger.

Is it weird if I say that I knew then, at that very moment? I knew that something was happening, something important, and different . . . like in a fairy tale? That nothing would be the same ever again? It is weird. It seems impossible. But that was how it felt. Like something from one of my books. Or that’s how I remember it feeling, anyway. Like the temperature suddenly shifted, and I couldn’t say whether it was a few degrees cooler or warmer, only that my skin could sense the change.

I think I waved. I think I called back, “Hey!” I think I was probably a little too loud. It’s hard to remember exactly. But then I walked over. Right up to her rock. Which had always been our rock, for years and years, as long as I could remember.

“I thought I was all alone,” she said, laughing. “I must look crazy, lying here on a rock in the middle of the creek, like I’m a mermaid or something. It was just so nice out. And feel this . . .” She patted the stone beside her. “It’s warm from the sun.”

I smiled back and shook my head. “Not crazy at all! I know. Me and my . . . I do that here too. All the time.”

That wasn’t actually true. But it had been true. Once . . .

After that I wasn’t sure what to say. Finally I came up with“Are you . . . new? In Ormewood Park?”

She nodded. “Yeah, pretty new.”