Leni jackknifed up. Oh, God. “Stay here.” She scrambled up and ran for the weathered steps. She rushed up their zigzagged path, her down vest flapping open, her boots clomping on the chicken-wire-covered steps. “Here I am, Dad,” she yelled, out of breath, waving her arms.

“Thank God,” he said. “I got up to take a leak and saw that your boots were gone.”

Boots. That was her mistake. Such a small thing.

She pointed skyward. Did he notice how hard she was breathing? Could he hear the thud of her heart? “Look at the sky. It’s so beautiful.”

“Ah.”

She stood beside him, trying to calm down. He put an arm around her shoulders. She felt claimed by the hold. “Summer is magical, isn’t it?”

The grassy hillside hid the beach from view, thank God. Leni couldn’t see the curl of pebbled stone and crushed shells, or the blanket Matthew had carried over. Nor could she see Matthew. He was well below the crest of the hill between the cabin and the beach.

She clasped the bone heart around her neck, felt its sharp point burrow into her palm.

“Don’t do that again, Red. You know better. The bears are dangerous this time of year. I almost grabbed my gun and came looking for you.”

PERSONAL STATEMENT

by Lenora Allbright

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

If you knew me, you wouldn’t be surprised at all that I start my college essay off with a quote from Tolkien. Books are the mile markers of my life. Some people have family photos or home movies to record their past. I’ve got books. Characters. For as long as I can remember, books have been my safe place. I read about places I can barely imagine and lose myself in journeys to foreign lands to save girls who didn’t know they were really princesses.

Only recently have I learned why I needed those faraway worlds.

I was taught by my father to be afraid of the world, and some of the lessons stuck. I read about Patty Hearst and the Zodiac Killer and the massacre at the Munich Olympics and Charles Manson, and I knew the world was a terrifying place. He said it all of the time, reminded me that mountains could blow up and kill people in their sleep. Governments were corrupt. A flu could come out of nowhere and kill millions. A nuclear bomb could fall at any second, obliterating everything.