This sunny Monday I wore new-to-me hiking pants I’d found at the Humane Society thrift shop—they fit pretty well, gray and lots of pockets—with my best T-shirt, blue and the newest I had. I was worn out trying to look…pretty…around Sean, and simultaneously berating myself for caring to do it. I walked outside and leaned against the edge of our unofficial “counselor picnic table” to tie my shoes. Two busloads of summer school fourth graders arrived from a district I once was in, a school I attended. I recognized one of the teachers, but she either didn’t know me or was too busy trying to herd the insane ten-year-olds whacking each other with their backpacks and water bottles to notice me.

“Hey,” I called to two boys climbing a tree beside a really big wooden sign clearly painted with twelve-inch letters: Do Not Climb. “Your reading skills suck! There are trees to climb on the trail we’re taking. Cool it for ten minutes.”

The boys dropped to the ground, panting and red-faced, eight in the morning and full of bottled energy from the ferry and bus ride to get here, tearing around full-throttle.

“Are we going with you?” one of them asked.

“Maybe,” I said. They looked at each other and sprinted to the teacher.

“Ms. McKinstry,” they screamed. “We want to go with the girl!”

“I would, too,” Sean said, tossing his pack on the picnic table. “If you’d let me climb trees.”

I wished so badly I didn’t like his voice, his…everything so much.

Be. Cool. “I’d let you,” I said. “The ones you’re allowed.”

All his T-shirts seemed worn and faded: this one blue with REI in block letters and, like the rest, humbly revealing his defined arms.

“The kids always like you best. Got a lot of brothers and sisters?” he asked.

“Hundreds,” I said, and right then small hands grabbed my arm.

“Muir?”

I looked down, disoriented, at a familiar face.

“Zola.”

“Muiriel!” Her arms wrapped so tight around my hips that my circulation slowed.

“What…are you…?”

“What are you?” she squealed into my side. She would not let go, she nearly knocked me off balance, and I reached to steady myself against the table. Sean was watching the scene unfold, and I tried to not see him seeing us. “Why are you with this school?” The bad-penny house was not in this district.

“This is my school,” she said. “I’m home. With my mom.”