“Pond,” I say out loud. The word tolls somewhere inside my brain like an ancient, unused bell, and pronouncing it like that, the world shifts a little under my feet. Suddenly, I understand a lot that I never understood before. Hey, Grimshaw, I want to shout into the empty space she disappeared into, you were right; I am from a rich family. I remember what she said about the spaces between people. She was saying something about rich people that day, about the space between rich people and everyone else, something specific that I can’t remember, but it feels like it pertains to me. I get a powerful urge to get on my bike and go to the cemetery to wait for her, so I can find out what else she thinks about it.

I look down at the phone in my hand. It turns out my father was a real person. Whoever he was, I feel a sense of pride that he did something that everybody thought was so stupid. Whatever I know, or don’t know, I’m glad I learned it myself, instead of having it bought for me with someone else’s money. I could cry about that, but that wouldn’t be crying about Grimshaw.

The next weekend, Angel asks me if I want to go out with the cheerleading squad. On the spot, I can’t think of any reason why not, so they pick me up and we go to Fox’s Falls. It’s still light. Nobody’s built a fire yet. I sit with a bunch of cheerleaders in the backseat of someone’s car, passing around cans from a six-pack of beer. Nobody mentions Grimshaw. It turns out that a lot less than a thousand years need to go by before a person ceases to matter. It doesn’t even take a month.