Cooper’s fingertips brushed Peter’s. It was just a graze, faint like tall summer grasses across the back of the hand, but it was so electric, his heart leaped like it hadn’t been alive before now. Peter held his breath, watching Cooper’s drowsy eyes search first his body and then his face, finding thrill and excitement in the act of being seen again after so long without it. Their hands gripped on to each other’s tightly and Cooper looked up, his dark eyes still full of dreams but bright. So bright.

“Your hair’s gotten real curly,” he said.

Peter’s throat went tight. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll get Dad to cut it some time, then.”

Cooper shrugged. “Only if you don’t like it.”

“I don’t.”

“Best get it cut, then.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“Mine smells funny,” said Cooper after a while.

“That’s because it’s clean.”

“Like I said. Funny.”

Peter smiled. “We can soon fix that.”

“Will we, though?”

“Yes. We’ll fix everything, I promise.”

“But I thought you dint like it when I honk.”

“No,” said Peter. “I like it. It’s you. It just hasn’t been us for the longest time.”

Cooper’s dark eyes journeyed across Peter’s face like he was travelling over vast mountains and lakes and finding great wonder in them. “I get real scared if I can’t smell you, Pete.”

“I know. Me too.”

Cooper nodded, as if he took comfort from knowing that Peter didn’t want to lose that part of them either. Peter smiled. Few things in life were more painful than the distance two people can place between them when they choose to close themselves away. Whole worlds could exist between one soul and another. And yet it was somehow a greater wonder how quickly all distance could be removed when two people decided to banish it.

“I don’t know how to snap out of the trance by myself, Pete.”

“Ssh.”

“I can’t seem to shake it off no matter how hard I try.”

“It’s OK now. You won’t have to try any more.”

“It’s like I died but my body stayed here. That’s what being here feels like. And I don’t even know where I’m gone to.”

“But I do.”

Cooper looked up, his dark eyes wide and full of wonder that he might have all the answers and for a moment something struck Peter. No matter how old they’d grow to be together, and no matter how old the world would turn them, the two of them would always be boys, to each other at least, each in need of the other’s safety. Peter swivelled one of the tin cans round to show Cooper the salmon flying above the mountains and gently wiped a strand of hair from his lips.

“Coop, you went home.”

“It’s the mountains,” said Cooper. “A canoe, too.”