At the end of class, they walked out of the schoolhouse together, emerged side-by-side into the sunshine, and walked down the wooden steps and into the muddy ground.

“I’ll come back for my ATV,” he said when she pulled her bike away from its place along the chain-link fence that had been built two years ago after a sow and her cubs walked right up to the school door, looking for food. “I’ll walk you home. If that’s okay.”

Leni nodded. Her voice seemed inaccessible. She hadn’t said two words to him all day; she was afraid of embarrassing herself. They weren’t children anymore and she had no idea how to talk to a boy her own age, especially one whose opinion of her mattered so much.

She had a solid hold on her plastic handlebar grips, with her dump-recycled bicycle clanging along the gravel road beside her. She said something about her job at the General Store, just to break the quiet.

She was aware of him physically in a way she’d never experienced before. His height, the breadth of his shoulders, the sure, easy way he walked. She smelled spearmint gum on his breath and the complex scents of store-bought shampoo and soap on his hair and skin. She was attuned to him, connected in that weird way of predator and prey, a sudden, dangerous circle-of-life type of connection that made no sense to her.

They turned off Alpine Street and walked into town.

“Town sure has changed,” Matthew said.

At the saloon, he stopped, tented his hand over his eyes, read the grafitti spray-painted across the charred wooden front. “Some people don’t want change, I guess.”

“Guess not.”

He looked down at her. “My dad said your dad vandalized the saloon.”

Leni stared up at him, felt shame twist her gut. She wanted to lie to him, but she couldn’t. Neither could she say the disloyal words out loud. People assumed her dad had vandalized the saloon; only she and her mother knew it for sure.

Matthew started walking again. Relieved to be past the evidence of her father’s anger, she fell into step beside him. When they passed the General Store, Large Marge emerged with a bellow, her big arms outflung. She gave Matthew a hug, then thumped him on the back. When she stepped back, she gazed at the two of them.

“Be careful, you two. Things aren’t good between your dads.”

Leni started off. Matthew followed her.

She wanted to smile, but the vandalized tavern and Large Marge’s warning had taken the shine off the day. Large Marge was right. Leni was playing with fire right now. Her dad could drive up this road at any minute. It would not be good for him to see her walking home with Matthew Walker.

“Leni?”

She realized Matthew had run to catch up with her. “Sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”