“According to Zim, Buddy is smaller than your mom but bigger than me,” the snowshoer said. We agreed I should call my mother and Molly to let them know there would be a third person—just a small one—visiting for the weekend.

Naturally, Molly answered the phone; I had to tell her everything first. “If she’s that small, she can wear Ray’s clothes—if she needs ski stuff,” the snowcat operator said.

“Who can wear my clothes?” I could hear my mom calling. I explained to Molly that Buddy wasn’t a skier. Zimmer had told the snowshoer that Buddy would be hanging out with me.

“Buddy isn’t Zim’s girlfriend—she’s just a girl,” I told the trail groomer.

“I’m not surprised Buddy isn’t a girlfriend—Zim has eyes only for your mother,” Molly reminded me.

“Buddy sounds like a boyfriend!” I could hear my mom shouting.

Molly was surprised that Zimmer had his own ski stuff. I told her his parents regularly went skiing in Gstaad.

“If Zim has been skiing in the Swiss Alps, he probably already knows how to ski—at least a little,” Molly said.

“I’m betting Zim is a beginning-to-intermediate skier—he’s no better than that as a wrestler!” my mother was screaming.

“I should probably let you talk to your mom, Kid, before she loses her voice,” the ski patroller told me.

“Who is Buddy? I wouldn’t name a boy Buddy—not even a dog!” my mom was yelling. “Nobody would name a girl Buddy!” she screamed.

“Don’t get started with the name business, Ray,” Molly said, before handing her the phone.

“Where did Zim find a girl named Buddy who’s as small as me?” my mom asked me.

“Buddy is smaller—it sounds like she’s between you and the snowshoer,” I said. I didn’t say that Zim had found her in Penn Station. What Mr. Barlow had speculated was good enough for me: New Yorkers were always running into old acquaintances at Penn Station. Elliot guessed that Zim must have known Buddy in elementary school, his pre-Exeter years. In the back of my mind, however, I was bothered by something I was either remembering or imagining. (Fiction writers, even young ones, often can’t or don’t distinguish between the two.) I either remembered or imagined something Matthew Zimmermann had said to me, in a musingly sad way, when we were at Exeter. Zimmer told me he’d never been in school with girls.

Upon meeting her, Molly was the first to notice that Buddy was too young to have gone to elementary school with Zim. When Zim was pre-Exeter, Buddy would have been prekindergarten—“if Buddy was even born,” Molly whispered in my ear.