“Did you find that in an actual book or just Google it?”

“What if I Googled to find the source, then checked the book out of the library and read the actual letter because I knew you would ask me that?”

With all this smiling, my face was going to accumulate more lines in a matter of weeks than I’ve had all my life. Happiness was aging me. “Then I’d say you were right and…well done. Muir approves.”

“Which one?”

“Both.”

For someone not well versed in witty flirting banter, it sure was rolling off my self-deprecating tongue. I could not believe that he bothered to find Muir’s words, the true circumstance of the quote, and that he wanted me to know.

“First day go okay?” he asked. “How was it after lunch?”

“It was fine. Good.”

“Excellent. So…I meant it. About the movie. You know there’s two movie theaters on this island?”

Seventeen years old and I’d never had a phone call like this. Never had a conversation like this, not once. Ever. My hands were all jingly. I sat on the kitchen stool.

“Can I—let me talk to Francine. I need to. First.”

“Oh, right, okay. See you at school. Oh, and Salishwood after?”

“Yes.”

“All right. We’ll make a movie plan.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Good night.”

“ ’Night.” I sat in the chair and breathed.

“Didn’t mean to be nosy,” Francine called. “Just doing my job.”

“I know,” I said.

“He ask you on a date?”

“Not a date. Just out. Movie.”

“We need to get you a phone. Remind me.”

I groaned.

“Suck it up—I need to keep track of you. And you don’t need to ask my permission to go on a date if I know the person.”

“Not a date…”

“Whatever. Sean’s a nice boy. You’ve got a curfew, just tell me when and where. You know that.”

I stood up and went to the living room, where she sat Netflixing it up with lap-bound Terry Johnson. “But can I say I have to ask you?”

She looked up at me. “Yes,” she said. “Of course. That’s what I’m here for.”

This woman had a habit of saying the right thing, always when I wished she would. It was interesting. And strange.

The mountains are calling, and I must go, and I will work while I can, studying incessantly.

John Muir wrote these words in a letter to his sister in 1873, while feverishly writing his first book and letters to the legislature begging for help to protect Yosemite Valley from irreparable harm.

The mountains were not calling to him to take a nice hike; the mountains were calling to him for help, and Muir was in a constant battle every moment he was awake, compelled to save the wild. Because no one else would.

I gathered my homework and climbed the stairs.