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I pay close attention to my pace, making sure a chubby lady dressed in bright orange pants at the back of the group doesn’t fall too far behind. With every step, my old compass bangs against my leg, rattling 25/262

around in the pocket of my shorts. Almost sounds like a giggle, the way the metal parts jiggle against themselves. Like the compass is teasing me—
think you’re gonna to get lost on the same path you’ve hiked
every summer for the past decade, Clint?

But the truth is, a weird sense of peace washed over me last week when I found my old Boy Scout compass.

“Come
on
,” Todd had shouted from the top of the stairs that led to my parents’ basement. “You
said
you knew where the tent was.”

I’d muttered under my breath as I picked up a dusty box. The cardboard flaps opened, letting Boy Scout relics—including my compass—fall onto a pile of family quilts. I stared at it, turning it over in my hand, not really understanding the calm sensation that filled me just from holding it.

“Morgan!” Todd had shouted. “Come on! Losin’ daylight. Are we going camping or what?”

I’d dropped the compass into the pocket of my shorts before tossing the box aside. “This’ll go a lot faster if you two losers’d come down and help me
look
.”

The compass has weighed down the pockets of my hiking shorts every day since.

I take a deep breath of sweet summer air. Birds in the branches above me chatter small talk; ducks follow their mother down to the lake, single file. The clucking ducks remind me, a little, of the tourists trailing mindlessly behind me. They chatter to each other, none of them paying enough attention to their feet; I can hear their sneakers stumble off the edge of the trail every once in a while. I glance over my shoulder at the first two people in line behind me. A father and daughter, obviously. I peg the dad for a runner. His daughter’s about twelve, wearing an awful pink
Girl Power
T-shirt and clutching her phone like it’s somehow going to save her from dying out 26/262

here in the woods. She smells like grape bubblegum and the comfort of a childhood bedroom. She blushes when she catches my eye. Even though I’ve tried to deny it, Earl was right about the
making
eyes
junk. Every single summer, younger girls like this one get crushes. Blush at one guide, then another. Twirl hair around fingers, get all giggly.

Frankly, a crush from a twelve-year-old is just plain embarrassing. Especially with her father watching. But the occasional older girls who come to the resort have a tendency to get a little goofy, too. And I wonder, sometimes, what good a summer fling really does the girls who are old enough to have them. What
good
is something so short-lived it’s practically disposable? Throw-away love. Maybe it’s okay for Todd or Greg, but I don’t get the point.

I’ve just started to hope, with everything I have, that Little Miss Girl Power won’t spend her entire vacation traipsing around after me, when she glances at the trail ahead of us and gasps.

“
Look
,” she says, pointing at the tattooed tree. At least, that’s what we’ve always called it here at the resort. And that’s exactly the way it looks—like the body of some old heavy metal rocker. Covered in hearts and letters. Some painted. Some carved with pocket knives. Every summer romance that’s ever played out at Lake of the Woods has been etched into the skin of the tree.

She’s just the right age to be infatuated with the idea of love. To maybe even be infatuated with the idea of heartbreak. I think that sometimes, heartbreak looks adult to little girls like this one. Same as lipstick or high heels.

I look at the tree even though I really don’t want to. And I find it, instantly, like I always do every time my eyes hit the bark:
Clint & Rose
. At the bottom, near the thick, gnarly roots that poke up out of the ground. As I stare, I can still feel the tiny glass bottle of red model paint 27/262

I'd held in my hand while crouching to paint our names down there. God, I was younger even than Girl Power back then.
Rosie, Rosie, Rosie. I miss you …

“You all right?”

When I turn, I realize the girl’s dad, the runner, is staring at me, eyes filled with worry. Kind of rattles me, makes me remember the time when
everybody
was flashing me that look. Two years ago. Hard to believe days can stack up so fast, but there it is, just the same: the accident was a little over two
years
ago. Suddenly I’m thinking about Rosie’s room, and the paperbacks she’d leave open on her bed, spines cracked and broken so they’d lie flat. I’m thinking about her singing at Pike’s during the dinner rush, with the half-assed “band” she’d formed with Todd and Greg. I’m thinking about the little white Miata she drove too fast. I’m thinking about the way she wore her black hair in braids even when she was too old for pigtails. I’m thinking about how fantastic it was just to hold her hand. I’m thinking about the funeral, too. About the way Greg followed me across the snow-covered cemetery, all the way to my truck. Watched me swat away every
I’m so sorry
that came my way. Watched as I told my parents I wasn’t going right home.

“
What
?” I snapped at Greg as I unlocked my driver side door. We were both still in our black overcoats. Uptight wool things our moms had bought, insisting we’d need them for special occasions, that we were getting to the right age for them. We kind of looked stupid though, not really even like ourselves.

“You think I’m gonna
crack
or something?” I shouted at him. Greg shrugged, his hands hidden in his pockets. “I dunno, man. I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not. Okay?”

“It’s okay to—”

28/262

“To
what
?” I yelled, the driver side door of my truck screeching open in the cold.

“To—I don’t know—want to—scream—or something. I’m just saying—if you want to scream—”

“I gotta go to work.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Work,” I said again. “Inventory. Pike’s.”

“We just
buried
your
girlfriend
,” Greg said. “You can’t tell me your parents—”

“I gotta go,” I said, climbing into the cab.

I flicked the radio on and drove through the winter streets until I hit Baudette. When I got to Pike’s, I parked two spaces over from my usual spot and unlocked the front door of the restaurant, even though I always used to come in through the back. And I tossed my coat onto the first table inside, even though I always used to keep it on the hook in Pop’s office. And I swore that everything would be different. Where I put my shoes. What I ate for breakfast. Where I went every weekend. Because if I changed every single thing I did, wouldn’t that mean I had a different life? Wouldn’t that mean that I’d
feel
different, too? I wouldn’t hurt so bad anymore?

I’d work. I’d work like I never had before. Starting with counting the jars of mustard in Pike’s.

“Sure you’re okay?” the twelve-year-old’s dad says again. I pull myself back to the hiking trail. Everybody’s looking at me with that awful worried look
.

Suck it up
, I tell myself.

“Of course,” I answer, smiling at the entire group. “Fine.” By now, I’ve said it so many times over the past two years it’s practically a mantra.
What’s done is done.
29/262

I hate that being here, remembering, has suddenly made me as tattooed as that tree. I figure I’ve got disaster and heartache written all over my face.

“Just feeling for the poor tree, you know?” I say.

“Yeah,” the dad agrees, snorting a chuckle as he glances back to the carved-up trunk.

His daughter cocks her head at me. When she catches my eye, she blushes again. Her thumbs jab her phone. She lets out a squeal of frustration when she realizes her reception sucks. I cringe as I lead the group up the hill.

We press forward. The sun shines down on us like she’s completely oblivious that anything bad could ever happen on the beautiful planet she lights every single morning.

Chelsea

air pass

The entire senior class is packed into Hill Toppers’ Pizza, which, in Fair Grove, is pretty much the only place to celebrate commencement. Like every single year on graduation night, one of the pretty corn-fed girls in camisoles and tight jeans (sitting on the laps of the more-than-willing boys) will turn up pregnant. One of the football players who passes a bottle of Wild Turkey under their table and spikes their Cokes will be rushed to a Springfield hospital to get his stomach pumped. And five or so kids from the honor roll, who were never so much as tardy to a single class, will find themselves suddenly aching for a splash of wildness and decide to take a cue from the name of the town’s only pizzeria; they will, in fact, go hilltopping after midnight, cars racing eighty miles an hour down some rolling back road. We’re at a table in the back, me and Gabe and the team, orange smears of grease making abstract art of our empty plates. Everyone has gotten so rowdy at this point that the radio might as well be dead. And Hank, the sweaty-faced owner of the pizzeria, keeps glancing up from 31/262

the pale circles of dough he smears with blood-red sauce, anxious about what all this screaming and toasting and carrying on will mean for him.

“Better not be a bottle out there,” he shouts, wiping his wet forehead with the back of a hand. Which makes laughter roar out with the force and volume of a V-8 engine revving to life. At my table, Theresa and Megan, our starting point guard and power forward, are acting out a scene from last season. Lily, our small forward, whose skinny frame has always made her look like a tetherball pole no matter how many all-you-can-eat rib dinners she’s consumed, joins in, shooting an imaginary basketball the same way Brandon plays air bass to his favorite songs on the radio. Hannah, our center, who’s built like a highway billboard, launches into belly laughter so fierce her chestnut hair starts to work loose from its ponytail. While the rest of the team rehashes all the highlights of the season, my eyes zip across the newspaper articles pasted on the Hill Toppers’

walls. I stop when I find the picture of me, number twenty-three, fists pumping the air victoriously after a game back in the spring of my junior year. As I stare at the bold black print of the title that hangs above my picture
(FINAL FOUR, HERE WE COME!)
, I swear I can
feel
my Tin Man metal plate and screws scraping against my hipbone. The team could have gone this year, too, without me. But for all their laughing and joyous recapping tonight, we all know it was the worst season in eighteen years of FGH Lady Eagles basketball. And it didn’t matter how many pep talks Tindell barked out in the locker room; the team ran onto the court defeated. Without their star player, they visualized losses rather than wins. They weren’t even
present
during the last game of the season; Lily pulled a history study sheet out of her gym bag, and Hannah put an iPod bud in one ear. Theresa and Megan wore glassy, distant looks—the kind of expression that usually fills classrooms during long lectures on osmosis. 32/262

As I stare at the walls, I realize that my picture is actually starting to yellow a little around the edges.

On the other side of the pizzeria, Bobby Wilcox, yearbook editor and honor roll president, stands up, swaying on his feet. His face turns about as green as the peppers on Hank’s pies as he raises his cup like he’s about to toast the entire class. But before he can get out a single word, his eyes go all doorknob and he turns to the side, gagging and puking up about six slices of pepperoni.

The cheerleading squad screams in disgust. Three of them actually climb up onto their chairs, as if Bobby’s vomit has feet and can scurry across the floor and climb their bare legs.

What I notice—what makes me grimace—is the cup. Bobby’s dropped his cup, and it’s rolled across the floor. The brown bubbly puddle, polka-dotted with crushed ice, makes my skin squirm far more than the sight of his half-digested dinner does. I stare at it, keeping watch, thinking that maybe Hank should get some yellow crime scene tape, mark off the area. After all, anyone who was at my last game should know that spilled soda is just as dangerous as knives or bullets or a car with no brakes.

Staring at the puddle, my head pulses with the memory of the ref’s frantic whistle. I hear, once again, the shocked gasp that rose from the crowd. And I remember my own terrified shriek, which overwhelmed the scream of the whistle and the collective groan of the fans; my screech was so violent it practically diced up my throat like a Ginsu knife.

“That puke better not smell like booze, Wilcox,” Hank yells, just like he does every year, smashing a different last name onto the end of the sentence. He stomps out from the kitchen, his face flushed and dripping with sweat. The football team moans and points; a chorus of
I didn’t bring a
bottle, not me, no way,
climbs into the air; chairs scrape; the bell on the 33/262

entrance starts jingling. The Wild Turkey is carried out tucked under a football player’s enormous biceps. My own table is emptying, too, as Gabe nudges me, sticks his nose against my ear. “Come on,” he murmurs, his breath warming my neck. “Let’s go.”

We step outside, stop in a clump just beyond the enormous slice of pepperoni painted on the plate glass window. The front door of Hill Toppers’ does an excellent imitation of a playground swing, flying open and shut again in rhythmic bursts. We—the former Lady Eagles—linger on the sidewalk, awkwardly toeing pebbles with our sandals, as they—the former Fair Grove High seniors—start piling into the cars lining the curb, ready for the hilltopping and stomach-pumping and babymaking portions of the night to officially begin. We stare at each other, knowing there’s no way to change a scoreboard after the final buzzer. So we finally start exchanging hugs, plastering on smiles and pretending to be overjoyed that high school is over. Pretending we all don’t wish we could hit some magical
rewind
button and start again.

Especially me. Only I’d need to go back a little farther than the team; I’d start with those driveway practice sessions, those daily runs, the pounding, the stress, the overuse. Because Gabe and I are
still
going to college together, as we’d planned since the start of our senior year—now, though, it’s nowhere exotic. Just Missouri State University in Springfield, a mere fifteen miles from my front door, just like Gabe’s older brother and three-fourths of the college-bound Fair Grove High seniors, Gabe to become a journalist, as he’d always planned, and me to