“You jerk,” she said, and she was off the porch. He was coming from behind a crab apple tree. Megan dove between two dogwoods and tore away across the lawn, the marshy ground trying to steal her sneakers. Five yards past the end of the house she turned right sharply, sprinted to the privet hedge, stopped short, and sidestepped neatly through the dead spot. Then she was running again, along the big bow of the living room, under the kitchen windows, around the rear corner of the house, across the flagstones to the corner where the big porch began.

Megan could hear him thrashing around in the privet, trying to bull his way through. She dropped to the ground and pulled herself under the broken latticework with a single move that Michael would have applauded. She was beneath the porch. She scampered on hands and knees along the side of the house and turned the corner. She went twenty more feet, then stopped and huddled, the mailbox almost directly over her.

“Jesus,” she thought. “How long has he been here?” It was a truly awesome image: Mr. Davis standing in the rain hour after hour, waiting for her to show. She forced herself to take slow, deep breaths as she held her body still. There was a scrape along her shin and she was wet clear to the bone. Now Mr. Davis was clomping around on the porch. “Who are you?” he called into the night. “I just wanted to talk. Please come back.”

Three feet below him, Megan lay slowly down on the muddy ground and stuck out her tongue. “Got you,” she mouthed, grinning widely. “Got you!”

Friday’s history class began with Mr. Davis launching into an account of the McKinley and Roosevelt presidencies. Megan listened for a while but couldn’t pull the meaning from his words. It hardly seemed to matter. He specialized in knowledge of the past, while she could tell his future. She would tell him in a letter.

“Dear Mr. Davis,” it began, “You broke the rules and I am quite angry with you. You will have to do penance before you can be in my good graces and my mouth. Please perform the following actions precisely as described….”

She realized he was staring at her. She tried to replay his last few words, but they were gone.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “I seem to be having trouble concentrating today.”

The final ten minutes of class crawled by as she struggled to look attentive. Kirsten caught up with her in the hall.

“What happened to that famous bulletproof brain? I’ve never seen you space like that.”

“I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

Kirsten raised one eyebrow, showing off another physical skill that Megan lacked. “Care to talk about it?”