“I’m going.” Matthew didn’t sound scared at all, but that was impossible. He was a kid, being threatened by a man holding an ax.
Watching him go hurt more than Leni would have thought possible. She turned away from her father and went into the house and just stood there, staring at nothing, missing Matthew in a way that pushed everything else away.
Mama came in a moment later. She crossed the room, opened her arms, saying, “Oh, baby girl.”
Leni burst into tears. Mama tightened her hold, stroked Leni’s hair, then led her to the sofa, where they sat down.
“You’re attracted to him. How could you not be? He’s gorgeous. And you alone and lonely all these years.”
Leave it to Mama to say the words out loud.
Leni had felt alone for a long time.
“I understand,” Mama said.
It helped, those few words, reminded Leni that in the vast landscape of Alaska, this cabin was a world of its own. And her mama understood.
“It’s dangerous, though. You see that, right?”
“Yeah,” Leni said. “I see it.”
*
FOR THE FIRST TIME, Leni understood all the books she’d read about broken hearts and unrequited love. It was physical, this pain of hers. The way she missed Matthew was like a sickness.
When she woke the next morning, after a restless night, her eyes felt gritty. Light blared down through the skylight, bright enough to force her to shield her eyes from it. She dressed in yesterday’s clothes and climbed down from the loft. Without bothering to eat breakfast, she went outside and fed the animals and jumped onto her bike and rode away. In town, she waved to Large Marge, who was outside the General Store washing windows, and pedaled past Crazy Pete and turned into the school parking lot. Leaving her bicycle in the tall grass by the chain-link fence, she clamped her backpack to her chest and went into the classroom.
Matthew’s desk was empty.
“Makes sense,” she muttered. “He’s probably halfway to Fairbanks after seeing how crazy my dad is.”
“Hey, Leni,” Ms. Rhodes said brightly. “Can you handle teaching today? An injured eagle needs help at the center in Homer. I thought I’d go.”
“Sure. Why not?”
“I knew you’d be my ace in the hole. Moppet is doing some long division and Agnes and Marthe are working on their history papers; you and Matthew are supposed to read T. S. Eliot today.”
Leni forced a smile as Ms. Rhodes left the classroom. She glanced at the clock, thought, Maybe he’s late, and then set about helping the girls with their assignments.
The day crawled forward, with Leni constantly looking at the clock until it finally struck three o’clock.
“That’s it, kiddos. School’s done.”
When the kids were gone and the classroom fell silent, Leni packed up her stuff and was the last person to leave the school.
Outside, she retrieved her bicycle and pedaled idly down the center of Main Street, in no hurry to get home. Overhead, a bush plane puttered in a lazy arc, giving its passengers a good view of the small town perched on a boardwalk along the water’s edge. The marshes behind town were in full bloom, clumps of grass fluttering in the breeze. The air smelled of dust and new grass and murky water. In the distance, a red boat moved among the thick growth on its way out to the sea. She heard hammering at the saloon, but there were no workers to be seen outside.
She came to the bridge. Normally, on a day this bright at the start of the season, it would be crammed with men and women and children standing shoulder to shoulder, lines in the water, the kids on tiptoes, peering over the edge into the crystal-clear river below.
Now there was only one person standing here.
Matthew.
She coasted to a stop, stepped down on one foot, rested the other on the pedal. “What are you doing?”
“Waiting.”
“For what?”
“You.”
Leni dismounted the bike and fell into step beside him as he led her back toward town. The bicycle clanged and thumped over the bumpy gravel of Main Street. Every now and then the bell made a shivering little ringing sound.
Leni glanced nervously at the saloon as they passed it, but didn’t see Clyde or Ted working. She didn’t want anyone to tell her dad they’d seen her with Matthew.
They hiked up the hill past the church and ducked into the Sitka spruce trees. Leni set her bike down and followed Matthew to the point that jutted out over a black rock cliff.
“I didn’t sleep last night,” Matthew said at last.
“Me, either.”
“I was thinking about you.”
She could have said the same thing but didn’t dare.
He took her by the hand, led her to the bower he’d made before. They sat down, leaned back against a crumbling, moss-draped nurse log. Leni heard the waves on the rocks below. The ground smelled fecund and sweet. Shade fell in star-shaped patches between the strands of sunlight. “I talked to my dad last night about us. I even went to the diner to call my sister.”
Us.
“Uh-huh?”
“Dad said I was playing with fire wanting you.”
Wanting you.
“Aly asked if I’d kissed you yet. When I said no, she said, ‘What the hell, baby brother, get going.’ She knows how much I like you. So. Can I kiss you?”
She barely nodded, but it was enough. His lips brushed tentatively against hers. It was like every love story she’d ever read; this first kiss changed her, opened her up to a world she’d never imagined, a big, bright, shining universe full of unexpected possibilities.
When he drew back, Leni stared at him. “Us. This. It’s dangerous.”
“Yeah, I guess. But it doesn’t matter, does it?”
“No,” Leni said quietly. She knew that she was making a decision she might regret, but it felt inevitable. “Nothing matters except us.”
*
COME AWAY TO COLLEGE WITH ME, Len. Please …
U of A is beautiful … you could still get in for fall. We could go together.
Together …
At home, she put her bicycle away and fed the animals, but she was so distracted she dropped an entire bucket of grain. Then she hauled water from the spring at the top of the hill. An hour later, when she’d finished her chores, she saw her parents go down to the beach and stand by the boat. They were going fishing.
They’d be gone for hours.
She could ride her bike to Matthew’s house, let him kiss her again. Her parents wouldn’t even know she’d been gone.
Stupid plan. She would see Matthew tomorrow.
Tomorrow felt like a lifetime away.
She yanked up her bicycle and jumped aboard and pedaled away, past the canoe Dad had dragged home from the dump last week and the rotting husk of a dirt bike he’d been unable to get running again. The shadows of the driveway plunged down around her, chilled her.
She pedaled out onto the main road, back into the sunshine, and rode the quarter mile to the gated driveway. Wheeling around the open gate, she passed beneath the painted arch, with its tanned silver salmon carved into the wood, and kept going.
This is dangerous, she thought, but she couldn’t make herself care. All she could think about now was Matthew, and how it had felt when he kissed her, and how much she wanted to kiss him again.
Here, the road was not so muddy. Someone had obviously taken the time to regrade the earth and put down gravel. It was the kind of thing her father would never do: smooth out a road to make life easier.
She came to a bumpy, breathless stop in front of the Walker house.
Matthew was carrying a huge bale of hay over to the cattle pen. He saw her and dropped the bale and came toward her. He wore an oversized hockey sweater and shorts and rubber boots. “Len?” She loved how he had renamed her, made her into someone else, someone only he knew. “Are you okay?”
“I missed you,” she said. Stupid. They had barely been apart. “I wish … we need time together.”
“I’ll come over to see you tomorrow night,” he said, taking her in his arms. It was where she wanted to be.
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“I’ll sneak over to see you.” He said it with such conviction that she didn’t know what to say. “Tomorrow night.”
“You can’t.”
“At midnight. Sneak out to meet me.”