She lay down. He did the same. Leni felt the warmth of his body along hers and it made her feel safe even with all the risk they were taking. Normal kids would probably be talking nonstop, or laughing. Something. Maybe drinking beer or smoking pot or making out, but Leni and Matthew both knew they weren’t ordinary kids for whom sneaking out was expected. The crazy wildness of her father’s anger hung in the air between them.

She could hear the sea washing toward them and the spruce trees creaking in the murmur of a spring breeze. A pale ambient light shone on everything, illuminated the lavender night sky. Matthew pointed out constellations, told her their stories.

The world around them felt different, magical, a place of infinite possibility instead of hidden dangers.

He turned onto his side. They were nose to nose now; she could feel his breathing on her face, feel a strand of his hair across her cheek.

“I talked to Ms. Rhodes,” he said. “She said you could still get into U of A. Think of it, Len. We could be together, away from all of this.”

“It’s expensive.”

“They have scholarships and low-interest loans. We could do it. Totally.”

Leni dared—just for a second—to imagine it. A life. Her life. “I could apply,” she said, but even as she heard her dream given voice, she thought of the price. Mama would be the one to pay it. How could Leni live with that?

But was she supposed to be trapped forever by her mother’s choice and her father’s rage?

He slipped a necklace around her throat, fumbled to clasp it in the dark. “I carved it,” he said.

She felt it, a heart made of bone, hanging on a metal chain as thin as cobweb.

“Come to college with me, Len,” he said.

She touched his face, felt how different his skin was from hers, rougher, whiskery here and there.

He pressed his body to hers, hip to hip. They kissed; she felt his breathing turn ragged.

She hadn’t known until now how love could erupt into existence like the big bang theory and change everything in you and everything in the world. She believed in Matthew suddenly, in the possibility of him, of them. The way she believed in gravity or that the earth was round. It was crazy. Crazy. When he kissed her, she glimpsed a whole new world, a new Leni.

She drew back. The depth of this new feeling was terrifying. Real love grew slowly, didn’t it? It couldn’t be this fast, like a crashing together of planets.

Yearning. She knew what it felt like now. Yearning. An old word, from Jane Eyre’s world, and as new to Leni as this second.

“Leni! Leni!”

Her father’s voice. Yelling.