“I saw my dog give birth once,” said Angie. “Nobody tells you about the afterbirth. It’s like having a second baby. This sack drops out after the puppies are born, but that’s not the gross part. The gross part is that she ate it. I’m telling you, it was, like, crunchy.” Everyone was bent over with laughter, even Poppy, although her mind was starting to drift until she couldn’t remember what she’d been laughing at in the first place. She tried not to think about Ann and the pregnancy anymore. She looked at Lake Michigan, the blue-gray water somehow lighter than the sky. The waves, so gentle compared to the waves in the Atlantic, weren’t coming to the shore, they were pushing the shore away. How come she’d never noticed that pulling-away sensation when she’d ridden all those waves in Wellfleet? Kit told her a wave is just energy that never dies. It travels all over the world: one wave. She wished she could go back to the Cape and see Kit. She wished she could go everywhere, ride every wave. She couldn’t stand the idea of being trapped in Milwaukee all summer.

“Let’s explore,” Kurt said, reaching for Poppy’s hand. He wanted to screw around with her, she could tell. She wanted the same thing, only sex terrified her now that she lived with a cautionary tale. “I should have told you girls how easy it is to get pregnant,” her mother said. “You were both a one-shot deal.”

Poppy stood up and ran across the bridge. She raced after Kurt and Angie along a tamped-down dirt path between the old oak trees. They stopped, breathless, and began looking for patterns in the bark, marveling over a pinecone’s symmetry, folding a dead leaf from last fall into small origami squares. Kurt reached down and grabbed fistfuls of dirt, sifted through it, and rubbed it all over her face. She did the same to him, and then Angie. They stuffed twigs behind their ears, held hands, danced in circles. Poppy forgot all about the baby and her missing brother.

“The moon!” Poppy said. “Just look at it!”