He took her by the hand, led her to the bower he’d made before. They sat down, leaned back against a crumbling, moss-draped nurse log. Leni heard the waves on the rocks below. The ground smelled fecund and sweet. Shade fell in star-shaped patches between the strands of sunlight. “I talked to my dad last night about us. I even went to the diner to call my sister.”

Us.

“Uh-huh?”

“Dad said I was playing with fire wanting you.”

Wanting you.

“Aly asked if I’d kissed you yet. When I said no, she said, ‘What the hell, baby brother, get going.’ She knows how much I like you. So. Can I kiss you?”

She barely nodded, but it was enough. His lips brushed tentatively against hers. It was like every love story she’d ever read; this first kiss changed her, opened her up to a world she’d never imagined, a big, bright, shining universe full of unexpected possibilities.

When he drew back, Leni stared at him. “Us. This. It’s dangerous.”

“Yeah, I guess. But it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“No,” Leni said quietly. She knew that she was making a decision she might regret, but it felt inevitable. “Nothing matters except us.”

*   *   *

COME AWAY TO COLLEGE WITH ME, Len. Please …

U of A is beautiful … you could still get in for fall. We could go together.

Together …

At home, she put her bicycle away and fed the animals, but she was so distracted she dropped an entire bucket of grain. Then she hauled water from the spring at the top of the hill. An hour later, when she’d finished her chores, she saw her parents go down to the beach and stand by the boat. They were going fishing.

They’d be gone for hours.

She could ride her bike to Matthew’s house, let him kiss her again. Her parents wouldn’t even know she’d been gone.

Stupid plan. She would see Matthew tomorrow.

Tomorrow felt like a lifetime away.

She yanked up her bicycle and jumped aboard and pedaled away, past the canoe Dad had dragged home from the dump last week and the rotting husk of a dirt bike he’d been unable to get running again. The shadows of the driveway plunged down around her, chilled her.

She pedaled out onto the main road, back into the sunshine, and rode the quarter mile to the gated driveway. Wheeling around the open gate, she passed beneath the painted arch, with its tanned silver salmon carved into the wood, and kept going.

This is dangerous, she thought, but she couldn’t make herself care. All she could think about now was Matthew, and how it had felt when he kissed her, and how much she wanted to kiss him again.