We walked up the bowl and over to the swings. I made quick work of my call to Ruby. “Tell them it’s about Marley and it’s urgent,” I said. Details would bog everything down.

“I’m on it,” she told me, never requiring much context before diving headfirst into action.

Nick and I sat on the plastic seats and generated small swings. Wood chips worked their way into our shoes. Time bent back and forth between the past and the present. He’d always been gone. He never left. I’d always been gone. I never left. Young Ollie wrote our initials somewhere on the legs of the swing. My eyes sought to find the spot, to prove to myself that I always knew we’d be back here. To challenge the other challenge I’d issued myself. We wouldn’t hurt each other. We were kids, but we weren’t young anymore. If we wanted to build a new world for ourselves atop the wreckage of our past, we could do it.

Couldn’t we?

After a long bout of quiet, much longer than most people could sustain, Nick dared to speak. “I’ve really missed you.”

Ruby rolled up over the hill as he finished his sentence. My voice quavered as I announced, “Ruby’s here,” as if he couldn’t already see her. As if that was all that needed to be said.

She tossed her bike onto the ground and filled the space of the third swing in one unbroken sequence. “I’m scared. But I’m excited.” Her breath betrayed the ease of her action. “Everyone was talking about your exit after you left.”

Running out of the memorial already felt like another life. It was the last action of the Olivia who had been created in the five years since Marley died. When Nick and I sprinted down the streets of Cadence, I’d shed that layer of me like a snake molts.

I still looked the same, but everything was different.

“I’m sure they were glad to have something new to talk about,” I said back.

Ruby and Nick both laughed.

The three of us swayed back and forth. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t unmarry my swing from Nick’s. Ruby shot me a look. I squinted as if I didn’t know what she meant. She clarified by glancing toward our synchronized swinging. I rolled my eyes, even though I’d noticed it too.

The Campbell twins came next. “I told everyone they had to use their bikes,” Ruby said as Bigs and Teeny pedaled up. “I said it was a Marley thing.” She smiled to herself. “Can’t believe that worked.” Even without knowing, she could sense what needed to happen.

When we were kids, Ruby loved to pedal at the back of our flock, blasting music from an iPod in a cup attached to her handlebars, always screaming the lyrics louder than the singer. Between choruses, she’d beg us to ride all the way to the southeastern edge of Cadence, where the train tracks disappeared into weeds and a handmade sign read THE POINT OF NO RETURN. Rumor had it, there was quicksand beyond the sign. We never went far enough to know for sure. Ruby always asked anyway. It was enough for her to get us onto our bikes for a long ride.