Dutifully she shifted from third to first when they stopped at the highway that led over the bridge.

Then, with great deliberation, Adam Cramer turned left. Away from town. Away from town and toward the forests.

He drove for ten minutes, then pulled off onto one of the tiny paths and continued for a mile.

“When the world ends,” he said, almost in a whisper, “it will sound something like this. Have you ever been alone in some quiet place and pretended everyone else was dead?”

Ella had, but it was one of her secret thoughts and she was surprised to hear it voiced. “Yes.”

“Really? Try it now. Close your eyes and think, No one’s left on the earth, no one but us. The cities are empty and the machines have all stopped and there’s only the wind, singing through the buildings . . .”

Ella pretended.

“It’s a funny feeling, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.”

Adam Cramer lit another cigarette. The smoke had a nice smell, and the little glowing tip of fire excited Ella for some reason. She slowly became all the movie stars she had ever envied from her seat in the dark theatre, and this moment was the fantasy world of her sighs. She could not think of her father and how peculiarly he had been behaving, or of her mother, or even of the strange and complicated things Adam Cramer had been saying. He wasn’t real. He was only a means of showing her, briefly, what lay beyond this town of hers, beyond her years, beyond the tight little knot of her experience.

She thought none of these things, however, consciously.

When he turned in the seat and put his arms around her, she made her mind go white of any thoughts at all.

“Do you want me to kiss you?”

Ella closed her eyes.

Adam Cramer parted his lips and pressed them against hers, but not softly this time. She could feel the heat of his body, the moist heat of his mouth.

Then the kiss became something else.

His lips parted wider and she felt his tongue moving. Lucy had told her, but still it made a sudden chill go across her flesh. His tongue touched hers and traveled deep. He pulled her closer, until her breasts were pressing against his chest, hard, and then his hands began to move also.

Ella trembled. She felt an odd pain, a hurting; and when Cramer’s­ fingers traveled to her sweater, she became frightened.

“Do you want me to do this?”

She resisted for a moment, but she had only known Hank’s chaste, scared little kisses before, and she did not know how to resist.