“You go ahead,” I told him. “I’m going to work in the schoolhouse. I’ll see you in a little while.”

Back in the schoolhouse, I thought of what I might do to hold Lee’s attention the next week. We couldn’t spend every day racing and telling fairy tales. We could try our math lesson standing up, away from the small desk. We could make a game out of it, with movements and prizes. I planned it all out. And then I spent some time with the shelf of novels, reading chapters from a few of them, deciding which one we should read next.

___

When I was finished, I closed up the schoolhouse and headed to my room.

I was nearing Liz’s cabin when I heard something. I thought it might be a cat at first, or another kind of animal. I waited quietly, and then there came a deeper sound, and I realized what it was. Billy and Liz were in there, together, the curtain closed, the door shut. I heard her moan. Not a cat at all.

I took a step closer, as quietly as I could. I didn’t mean to listen—not really—but I also didn’t want them to hear me there on the path and know I had heard them. I was so close, only a foot away, and the cabins were so old and simple that I could hear the bedsprings groan up and down. I couldn’t help myself—I imagined their position, imagined him moving inside her, imagined her hips and breasts and the looks on their faces. My knees went weak. They were louder now—I could hear them breathing hard, the springs moving faster, so I hurried toward my own room.

I took off my shoes at the door and climbed into my bed, suddenly hollowed out. I had known that first morning heading to the shower that they might have been together. Every night, when they walked into one cabin or another, they weren’t hiding anything. But still—I hadn’t known for sure that it was something more than friendship, and knowing for certain now left me feeling foolish.

And yet, I couldn’t get the sounds out of my head, nor the vision of them I’d created. I didn’t want to get them out.

Was it wrong to think of Billy and Liz this way? Was it wrong to imagine them as I slid down my jeans, as I made myself moan the way they’d made each other?