It usually takes me a little while to talk when I meet someone new, but for some reason, the whole way home, I talked and talked and talked. I thought maybe I was being annoying, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from giving Jasper a guided tour of the neighborhood. It was like I needed her to love it, and so I found myself pointing out things I hadn’t thought about in a long time. All the things I’d been walking past without noticing them. And once I started talking, the words just didn’t stop.

As we walked along, I pointed out the protected overhang beside the creek where homeless guys sit when it rains. “They sing sometimes,” I said. “You can hear them up at the farm.”

We turned onto Berne Street, and I pointed out the yard with all the bottle trees in it, blue glass bottles stuck on every bare branch. A few houses past that, we came to the cracked stretch of sidewalk with the hollow tree growing up through it. Some mysterious neighbor had made the tree into a geocache years ago, and occasionally they still hid a tin box of hard candies there too. But when we looked inside, the box was empty.

“Oh well,” said Jasper. “Next time.”

Then, before I knew it, we were standing in front of Tess’s house. I hadn’t meant to stop walking, but somehow, that’s what happened. I felt my thighs graze the hedge of gardenias that separated the familiar green house from the sidewalk, and glanced down at the sweet white blossoms. I reached out a hand to touch one. So soft. How many times had I picked them, to wear in my hair or make a bouquet for Mom?

“Who lives here?” asked Jasper as though she could tell it wasn’t just any house.

“Oh, this is . . . Tess’s house,” I said. “But she’s not home.”

“Who’s Tess? A friend?”

I nodded. Because it was true of course, even now. But there was so much I wasn’t sure how to say. I didn’t say that Tess’s mother had given me my first tampon, when I got my period while making hand-cranked peach ice cream in their yard. I didn’t say that her mom was my mom’s best friend from high school. Or that I hadn’t set foot in her house for months now, and there was no way I could really explain that fact.