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walked in, as people poured out of the dockside doors, ignoring the officers’ command.
    Sissy knew Elijah was supposed to be arrested now. Instead, he grabbed her hand. Ducking beside Satchmo, he dragged her into the crowd and away from the deputies.
     
    “W EREN’T YOU supposed to get arrested?”
    “Don said I might .” They sat on rocks at the water’s edge a quarter mile from Jackson’s Dock. The problem with not being arrested was that he’d lost his ride home. Normally he would have hitchhiked, but he was worried about doing so with Satchmo. People in the area would know he’d been at the fight, might turn him in, and he’d rather avoid that. One of his uncle’s friends had driven him and Satchmo to Jackson’s Dock, but Elijah had no idea where the man was now.
    “How did you get there?” he asked Sissy.
    “Allie Morgan.”
    “You told her?” exclaimed Elijah.
    “Of course not. I had her drop me at Eldon Ice Cream. I told her I was meeting someone.”
    “Did you tell her who?”
    “Well, yes.” Even in the dark, he could see her whole face darken, flooding with color. “It’s not like we’re dating, and she knows that.”
    Elijah didn’t want to talk about this. Sissy was attractive—well, more than she used to be—but his big problem was that he was supposed to be out feeding dogs, his bike was at his uncle’s house and he and Sissy Atherton were stranded. He’d be lucky if her father didn’t kill him. Who did he know with a car?
    Sissy said, “I could call Kennedy.”
    Elijah shot a look at her. “Is she around? Wouldn’t she tell your parents?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Don’t you think you’ll be in less trouble if you’re alone? I mean, I’ll wait with you until Kennedy gets here,” he said, knowing this was what he should do. He couldn’t leave her alone. “But won’t it be worse if you’re with me?”
    “I don’t care,” Sissy said. “And I’ve caught her sneaking in late. We’ll be even.”
    Uneasily Elijah agreed.
     
    “I CANNOT BELIEVE you were with Elijah Workman.” Kennedy’s diatribe started the minute she pulled the Thunderbird away from the Workmans’ crowded two-story house, crowded cheek-to-jowl with others just like it, in West Echo Springs. Because Elijah was running late, when they’d reached his uncle’s house and he’d left Satchmo there, Kennedy had agreed to put his bicycle in the trunk and drive him home. He could say a friend had given him a lift.
    “There is nothing wrong with Elijah!” Sissy exclaimed. She’d not had to argue this point since that one conversation with her mother weeks before, but she really couldn’t see the big deal. “Dad likes him.”
    “Dad likes him as a dog-sitter. Not as a boyfriend for one of his daughters.”
    “I wish he was my boyfriend,” Sissy muttered.
    Kennedy glanced at her with a look of appraisal and pity. “You wish that now , but trust me, the older you get, the more you’ll be grateful your wish never came true.”
    Sissy considered that, hoping her sister was right. Yet somehow she doubted she would ever feel that way about Elijah, that she would ever get over him, that she would ever not want what she wanted right now.
    Echo Springs, Missouri
May 2, 1961

    I T WAS ALMOST the end of junior year, and Elijah had been drinking beer, which was unusual for him, and Lucia D’Angelo was sitting beside him in her yellow-and-black polka-dot bikini. The party was at Allie Morgan’s family’s lakeside cabin, which was three cabins down from the Athertons’. Two families who could afford to own two homes in Echo Springs. The Morgans were out of town, and the Athertons were at their farm, so the party was a secret from the adults.
    Elijah watched the fireflies, thinking that he’d like to kiss Lucia, like to put his hand in her bikini top, like to do more than that. His whole life his parents, his aunts and uncles, the priests at church—everyone—had emphasized that sex would happen