He cut across what had once been Heavenly Haven’s crazy golf course, now overgrown, and began to get excited about bringing Esta here. She had spent the first ten years of her life in Boston, but her parents, who were teachers, had come to town seven years ago with a crazy notion about returning to the land. She had changed so much in this last year, had filled out, grown her hair a little longer. Sometimes she joined the group he hung out with, but she was different from those other girls, quiet, her face mostly closed off with shy pride but at times opening to you so trustfully it just broke your heart. One night she turned up at the Kar-a-Nova, and he had laughed at how badly she danced. She came to the floodplain also, where a dozen of them built a fire, drank, and horsed around, but she went completely quiet, clutching her knees. He wondered if she were judging them a waste of time. But she joined in their makeshift game of foxes and hares, dodging him with impressive athleticism, missing the point, until he cheated, running directly to her. She didn’t let him kiss her, though; said he hadn’t caught her and that was that. Afterward, walking back to the cars with her, he asked why she had been so quiet. She said it was as if the bottom had fallen out of her personality; she had been seized with shyness. He had never heard anyone speak like that: seized. Who used the word seized, except to describe an engine? And he noticed her lovely but bitten-down fingernails and the green of her eyes, and all in all she appeared before him complete and astonishing, only as someone you have known for years can. He felt seized. Yes, exactly right. Seized.

They met a couple of times at Snyder’s for malts, and she agreed to go out with him this Friday. He was going to bring her here and get her to climb with him onto the roof of the cabin the Garrisons used for storage. He, Jude, and Linus used to climb on it all the time. A maple gave shade above it and there was a view of the lake. That’s where he planned to kiss her. Annie said it was a neat idea. Then again, climbing a tree and swinging down onto a roof was pretty normal behavior for Annie. He sensed Esta would be game, though, and was here to check that the tree wasn’t too difficult to climb.

As he got closer to the cabins, which were spread out through the woods, he became more cautious. Maud—Dragon Lady—who everyone said was a drunk and beat her husband, had once caught the three of them, when they were kids, on that roof. She marched them into her house, where they were sure she was going to call their parents. Instead, she brought them cookies and milk, and told them how naughty she had been as a girl. It was strange to see her soften, to realize that the raw red in her face wasn’t drink or anger; she was just high-colored.