The specter of school’s end cast a long shadow. Today, when Leni slid into her desk at school, she looked at Matthew and almost started to cry.

He reached across the desk, took her hand in his. “Are you okay?”

Leni couldn’t help thinking how small they were in this big dangerous world, just kids who wanted to be in love.

Ms. Rhodes clapped her hands at the front of the room, demanded attention. “There’s only a week of school left, and I thought it would be a good day for a boat ride and a hike. So, everyone, grab your coats and let’s go.”

Ms. Rhodes herded her chattering charges out of the classroom and through town and down to the docks. Everyone boarded Ms. Rhodes’s aluminum fishing boat.

They motored out into the bay and sped up, bumping across the waves, water splashing at their sides. The teacher guided the boat up the waters of the fjord, mountains all around them, down one stretch of water and up another, until they stopped seeing any cabins or boats at all. Here the water was aquamarine. Leni could see a sow and two black cubs walking along an isolated shore.

Ms. Rhodes pulled up to a dock in a narrow cove. Matthew jumped onto the weathered dock and tied the boat down.

“Matthew’s grandparents homesteaded this land in ’32,” Ms. Rhodes said. “It was their first family homestead. Who wants to see a pirate cave?”

Pandemonium.

Ms. Rhodes led the younger kids up the beach, marching through the heavy sand, stepping over huge pieces of driftwood.

When they rounded the corner of the bay and disappeared, Matthew took Leni by the hand. “Come on,” he said at last. “I’ll show you something cool.”

He led her upland, into knee-deep grass that ended at a sparse forest of stunted trees.

“Shhh,” he said, pressing a finger to his lips.

After that Leni noticed every twig that broke beneath her and every whisper of the wind. Occasionally a bush plane puttered overhead. At a wall of greenery, bushes grown to Alaskan size from all the water that ran down from the mountains, he showed her a path she wouldn’t have seen on her own. They ducked into it, walked hunched over in the cool shadows.

A small seam of light drew them forward. Leni’s eyes adjusted slowly.

A vista opened up in the break between the bushes: marshland, as far as the eye could see. Tall, waving green grass through which meandered a lazy, motionless river. Mountains were tucked in close, arms drawn protectively around the marshes.