“Put it on,” Prof says. “You’ll find out.” So I put it on, and today the bus ride home has a jazz soundtrack. Normally, spring afternoons on the bus are pretty rowdy, but today the music has everybody, even the seventh graders, staring contemplatively out the windows. We know the doors on every house we pass by. We know every bend and rise in the road. When we get out into the country, I know the shape and lay of every pasture. I know every rock and maple tree in the windrows that separate them. Watching it all roll by one more time, accompanied by saxophone music, makes it not exactly new, but neutral, separate from me. I see it as if I’ve already moved far away. It’s just land; it was here before we were, and it’ll still be here after we’re gone. It’s not limited by anyone’s experience or opinion. The story’s not over. Anything could still happen here. I catch Prof’s eye in his big rearview mirror.

“This music is good,” I tell him.

“It never gets old,” he says. He turns onto my road and downshifts for the last rise. “So,” he says. “You went to find her. You brought her back. You saved her.”

“Maybe, but … she didn’t really want to be saved.” At this, Prof throws back his head and laughs a good one.

“Yeah,” he says. “They say that’s been going on for about two thousand years.” We’re approaching Versailles. We’re the last stop on Prof’s route. He swings open the door. Coltrane is still playing.

After I get off, I turn around and wave through the door. “Bye, Prof. See you tomorrow.”

“You take care, now,” he yells after me. Even after the bus disappears over the rise in the road, I can still hear the saxophone coming to me through the open windows and over the trees.

When I get home, I tear the letter out of the notebook and fold it up and put it in my pocket. I get on my bike and pedal to Grimshaw’s house, down the dirt road, out onto the highway to coast the half mile down to her house