The next day, on my usual walk down Furnace Road, the growl of a motor sounded behind me. I turned around and leaped to the side of the road as Aiden came hurtling toward me on an orange moped with black flames painted on the sides. Dust flew out from under its wheels, and the handlebars were as thick as arms. He came to a sudden stop, turning the handles sharply so the back wheels spun and growled. “Hey!” he grinned. “I was hoping I’d run into you today. You wanna go for a ride?”
I looked at the ever-present soft black hat on top of his head. “Where’s your helmet?”
“No helmet,” he said. “We don’t have to wear them up here.”
“Up here?” I repeated. “You mean you can’t get head injuries in Vermont?”
“Something like that.” Aiden grinned again. “Come on. This is just a quad. It’s not like we’re on a motorcycle. And I won’t take you out on the road. We’ll just stick to the dirt trails in the back.” He held out his hand.
I looked down at my shoes.
“Come on,” Aiden said. “I’ll go real slow.”
I looked up.
“Promise.” He held up a palm. “Scout’s honor.”
I took a step forward and swung my leg over the back part of the seat behind him.
“Hold on around my waist,” Aiden said, turning slightly to talk to me. His breath smelled like warm coffee. I put my hands tentatively on the sides of his jeans. “Tighter,” Aiden said. “Come on, hold on.”
“I thought you said we weren’t gonna go fast,” I said.
“We’re not. But you still have to hold on. Otherwise you’ll go flying backward.” My nervousness evaporated when he said that, and I adjusted my hands, threading three fingers on each through his belt loops. “Atta girl,” he said. “Okay, here we go.”
Aiden veered off Furnace Road almost immediately, hurtling through brush and leaves until we reached a dirt trail. After the initial heart-stopping sensation of moving forward and my fear of being thrown off the vehicle whenever he turned the wheel disappeared, I sat back as we sped along and actually looked around. We were riding through an entire forest house, it seemed, with walls made only of trees, and a carpet of dirt and pine needles. Up ahead, there were more trees, their leaves green as jade, with pockets of blue sky peeking through, and then more trees after that. The smell out here—mowed grass and sun-drenched hay—was new to me. Aiden’s back curved slightly over the handlebars, but I could feel the heat of his skin next to my arms. I closed my eyes, feeling the sun on my face, and wished for a moment that we could just keep going.
We didn’t, of course. The quad emerged suddenly from inside the forest house, spinning into an enormous yellow field. Tightly rolled haystacks, thick as tractor tires, dotted the field in a haphazard checkerboard pattern, and overhead the sky was as blue as a marble.
“Want to sit for a while?” Aiden asked, getting off the bike without waiting for an answer. I followed him as he walked over to a patch of grass and sat down. “I love it out here,” he said. “Sometimes I run out and leapfrog over all of those haystacks. Just for the hell of it, you know?” He raised his eyebrows. “It’s harder than you think.”
I smiled. “It’s pretty out here. So quiet.”
“And the light,” Aiden said, stretching out his hand. “Look. It’s perfect. Right now, especially, when the sun’s low like this.”
I’d never really looked at light before. But now, as I watched a few insects swoop lazily through the air, I realized that Aiden was exactly right. There was a clear, amber sort of hue to it, like looking at honey through the bottom of a glass. “I can tell you’re an artist,” I said.
Aiden looked at me. “How so?”
“The light and everything. You noticing it like that. Regular people don’t notice the way light looks.”
Aiden stared back out at the field. “You gotta pay attention,” he said softly. “To all of it. Otherwise, you might miss something. Anything can change your life. You never know. You just have to be patient. And watch.”
We sat there for a few minutes without saying anything.
“I think I’m waiting for my life to change,” I said suddenly. What? Where did that come from? “I mean, kind of,” I finished.
“Oh, you don’t want to do that,” Aiden said.
“Do what?” I felt a surge of impatience. He always seemed so sure of himself. It was borderline cocky. Not to mention annoying.
“You don’t want to wait for your life to change,” Aiden said. “That’s a huge mistake.”
“You just said…”