It’s Monday, Columbus Day, around six p.m. They get points for waiting for me at the streetlight in front of Unit Eight like Bree said they would, but I doubt they would’ve hung out long. Nervous energy crackles around them in electric halos, mixing with smells of Tommy Girl, fruity lip gloss, and fresh deodorant. Whoever these boys are, they’re getting the full treatment, and the butterflies in my stomach turn to ravens, talons dragging down my insides. Despite all my “boys are good” talk, I’ve never actually done this, met up with some like an almost-date, and what the hell made me think I’d be able to fake it?

Sage is already moving, bouncing on the balls of her feet, walking backward to face me. “Your mom’s cool with this?”

“She’s at work now. I’m good until nine-ish.” Ma’s probably still in shock; I waited until she was almost out the door to ask if I could go to the park with the girls, leaving her speechless for a full three seconds, looking at Dad, who’d stopped at the stove, a stolen forkful of spaghetti halfway to his mouth. Shocked I’ve already met kids in the neighborhood, I guess. Complex coded messages shot between those two, making me wonder what they say about me behind their bedroom door at night, especially since the hair-dyeing incident. I’ve overheard enough when they think I’m sleeping—feel so bad, putting Clara through it again—to know that they worry about it, our three-person caravan in perpetual motion.

Now, I tug my long cardigan around me. The temperature’s dropped—it’s the third week of October and feels every bit of it.

Bree leads the way down the hill to the development’s coin-op laundry building, where fluorescent light glows through steamed windows. Beyond, in the woods, a trailhead waits for us, the ground carpeted in dried pine needles. Those pitch pines are everywhere, splintered limbs, trunks jeweled with streams of hardened sap.

Bree sees me hesitate at the sight of that shadowy opening. “It’s okay. We take the trails all the time. This cuts right over to Maple.”

We walk the trail three abreast, hands in our pockets, footsteps crunching. It’s dark here, patches of fading daylight showing through branches like cutouts in a black valentine doily. Nobody speaks until Sage says, “Wait till you see Trace.”

“Please.” Bree hip-checks her. “It’s all about Kincaid.”

Sage giggle-snorts, and we all laugh. Their giddiness is catching, like riding whiffs of nitrous oxide down the trail, and I don’t pay much attention as they choose a fork here or there, because it all looks so much the same: walls of brambles grown spindly with the colder evenings, tiers of black evergreen branches stirring in the slight breeze.

And then we’re there, stepping out onto the fringes of a public park.