Nikki smirked and shrugged. Fighting tears, Marie ran across the cemetery. Janie and Nikki let her go, then sat under the shade of the tall poplar trees, listening to the birdsong. In the distance they saw Marie kneeling at her brother’s grave, which they always avoided when they came here, the breezes carrying her voice as she sang Pike’s favorite song.

Some days Marie got so sad about Pike. Other days it was like she was almost glad he was dead. It was a little disturbing.

Now, after digesting Nikki’s suggestion, Marie said: “I do not want to go to the cemetery today.”

Nikki took stock of Marie’s face, reconsidered. “What about the railroad tracks or down to the creek?”

“We’ve done all those places to death,” Janie said.

“What about the restaurant at the golf course?” Marie said.

Nikki rolled her eyes and Janie gave Marie a sharp glance, correcting Marie’s memory lapse as to why the Eternity Country Club was off-limits.

Janie’s mother was a waitress at the club’s restaurant, a job she was still clinging to after the incident that happened the first and only time the girls had gone there.

It was in the spring and Nikki had dared them to go. “We’re just as good as those rich snobs,” Nikki had said. “I bet they’ve got the best desserts and I’ve got money from the creep.” She waved cash she’d stolen from her mom’s boyfriend.

Janie had been uneasy about going to the restaurant because of her mother’s caution. “I know you and your friends wander all over town but you are never to go there,” her mother had said. “It’s not for us. It’s not the mall—it’s where I work. Do you understand?”

Janie had never set foot in the place.

A few times in the past she, Marie and Nikki had walked up to the gate of the forbidden kingdom, marveling at its vast and perfect green lawns, the trees, the waterfall, people gliding around in the little carts and the clubhouse, a low-standing stone building that beckoned them.

They were curious about what it would be like to go inside.

Maybe it was Nikki’s bold defiance of authority that drove her to break rules. The way she saw it, the world owed her a better life than the one she was living, and maybe it was because she seemed older, more experienced, but these forces shaped her persona, never failing to pull Janie and Marie into her orbit.

“Are you little girls afraid to walk in there? Because I’m not.” Nikki had challenged them that day.

Marie turned to Janie—it was up to her.