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“It’s a free country,” I replied.
“You got a name?” he asked.
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“Well, do you want to tell me what it is?”
I shook my head. “Not particularly.”
He sat there for a moment, just staring at the water, and then he said, “So, you’re just going to sit here and get wet?”
“You’re already wet, so what does it matter?”
Suddenly, he lay back on the dock so he could reach into his pocket. “Do you want to see what I found today?” he asked. He held out his hand, and in his palm he held two perfectly shaped skipping rocks. They were almost perfect ovals, flat on both sides. He shoved his hand toward me. “You want to hold them?”
I let him drop them into my hand as I tested the weight of them. “They might work for skipping.”
“Might?” he said, his adolescent voice cracking when it went high. “Those rocks are perfect.”
I rolled one over with my thumb. “Can I have one?”
He looked like I had just punched him in the gut. “You want one of my rocks?”
“Only if you want to give me one,” I replied.
“Well, I reckon it would be all right.” He took the rocks back, pretended to weigh one in each palm and then passed me one. “You can have that one.”
“Did you keep the best one?” I asked.
He opened his hand to look down into his palm. “How do you know which one is the best one?” And I could tell he was afraid he’d just made a mistake and gave me the wrong rock.
“I think you kept the best one.” I tossed mine up and down in my palm, catching it over and over. He grinned at me and started to do the same.
The rain began to fall, and I just sat there. He sat next to me, occasionally blinking his eyes to get the rain out of them.
“Why do you like the rain so much?” he said, loud enough so I could hear him over the pounding noise it made against the dock and the lake.
“I don’t know,” I replied just as loudly. “It just makes everything seem better.”
I could tell that he really didn’t understand. But he didn’t seem to mind the rain.
“My name’s Abigail,” I told him.
He grinned. “I’m Ethan.”
And that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
13
Ethan
She stands there in the rain, just like she did the first day I met her. She’s a little rounder now in all the right places, but the essence of her is exactly the same. She’s kind and smart and funny and th
oughtful and…she’s not mine. I have to remind myself that she’s not mine.
“I still have that rock,” Abigail says.
I’m startled at her comment. “You do not,” I taunt.
