"Eighteen," I lie.

"I don't really think age matters. Do you?"

Age has been everything to me. If I had been a year older, I may not have gotten out at twenty-one. Every month that pa.s.sed, every birthday, every holiday, every mark of time, was a step farther through the bars. "No," I say. "Age is artificial. It's soulless. It doesn't matter one bit."

The forest seems much less enchanted than it had when I was fifteen years old. Much more guarded. Still, I know exactly where I am and exactly where I'm going. I lead the girl over rocks, between brush, and under tree limbs, lifting branches over our heads so they don't thwack her in the face, managing a scratch on my neck from one of them. I lick a spot on my sleeve and use it to dab at the blood, determined to keep moving.

We walk a bit farther until I find the spot-a clearing now littered with green and amber broken beer bottles. There's a cross jammed into the earth; fresh flower bouquets cl.u.s.tered around it; and old, weather-beaten copies of Emily d.i.c.kinson and Sylvia Plath, Melanie's favorite poets.

I walk closer and see a picture of Melanie, laminated, and sticking up like a fresh daisy Her face, sweet and round and cheeky, like a cherub's, looking up at me-a time when she was still loving me. The picture is of her at her fifteenth birthday party. A wide birthday-cake smile across those cheeks, probably thinking how, in only a few hours, she would sneak out her bedroom window and meet me, me, who, per order of her parents, was not allowed to be at that party. And then how we would make love right here, on a blanket, under these stars. I think about those panties she wore. Pale pink with accordionlike strings that attached the front and back. A half-cup bra with ruffly pink shirring along the top. A bra that clasped in the front.

I wonder what type of underwear this girl has on.

"Robby?" she calls, a degree of concern in her voice. I wonder how long she's been trying to get my attention.

"Yes?"

"I think we should go someplace else. It's kind of creepy here. I've heard about this girl. Her boyfriend killed her. He beat her head in with a rock. Kids at school say she haunts these woods. They say sometimes you can see her carrying a rock around, seeking revenge on her boyfriend."

"What do you think about that?" I ask.

"Are you asking me if I believe in ghosts?"

"No. I'm asking what you think of some guy killing his girlfriend." I turn around to look at her, to catch her expression, but now everywhere I look is Melanie. Melanie's face. Melanie's smile. Melanie's eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with fear. Maybe this forest is haunted.

"I think maybe we should go," she says.

I'm able to blink Melanie away after several seconds. "Maybe it was an accident that she died." I approach the girl, put my hands around her waist like before and stare down into her eyes, do my best to fill them up with temporary confidence. "Maybe they just loved each other so much that their pa.s.sion couldn't survive them both."

"Is that what you think?"

"Maybe. Maybe he still thinks about her all the time."

"Do you think about Kelly all the time?"

"Not right now." This eases the girl. I can see it in her eyes. It's almost as though some thin, translucent layer of aversion, a layer not of her true self, breaks away, and what lies beneath is bright with innocence, like I could dive right in. I lead her away to a rock, and we sit down, facing one another.

"Do you think you guys'll break up?" she persists.

"I'm not sure she ever thought of us as together," I say, wondering if that in fact is the truth.

"I know what you mean. Remember that guy I told you about ... my ex? Well, I guess maybe I thought there was more to the relationship than there really was. It's weird how we do that, you know, just fill in the blanks with our own answer key."

"I think we create our own reality, our own truths. If we believe it to be so, then it is so."

"I know what you mean. I really thought Jay and I-Jay's my ex-had something special, you know? Just the way you thought you and Kelly had something, too. And you know the worst part of it all? It was Jay and Joy. Even our names fit perfectly together. I mean, it's almost worth it to stay together for that reason."

I ignore her mindless rambling, her failing attempt at trying to compare some adolescent infatuation with what I have with Kelly. I say, "Why don't you tell me now what you said to Duggan?"

"Huh?"

"The guy in the diner."

"Oh, I just told him he should ask his princess to marry him once and for all. He's been dating her since he was fourteen years old. He's, like, thirty now."

I nod, taking in the word princess again, fully understanding now her childish longing to really be one. Almost endearing. I say, "Tell me it the way you told him. In my ear.

"Why?" She giggles.

"You'll see."

She leans forward and repeats the phrase into my shirt collar. She says it quick and loud and nervously, and then follows it with that schoolgirl giggle. "Okay?" she asks.

"No. I want you to say it slower.

"Why?"

"You'll see," I repeat, and nod my head like I'm the teacher and she should trust me. "Pretend that I'm the prince and this is the most important moment of your life. This is the most important thing you will ever say to anyone. It needs to be slow and quiet ... and intimate, and you need to say it much closer to the ear."

She nods as though she understands, as though she wants to get it right. She leans in toward me and places her lips by my neck. Her breath is close to my ear. It's warm like dryer heat and I can smell the cherry candy from her mouth. She says softly, slowly, "I think you should marry your princess."

I close my eyes and imagine Kelly there, at my neck, reciting one of her poems or telling me we'll be together soon and forever. I almost have to hold myself back from taking this girl, pressing her into my chest and holding her mouth at my ear for as long as I have strength or imagination.

When she draws her mouth away, I catch her glance with mine. Her eyes are wide and expectant, like endless tunnels of hope.

"Was that okay?" she asks, so close to my face I could kiss her.

"It was perfect."

"You're really handsome," she says. "People probably tell you that all the time, huh? Can I ask you a question that's going to sound a little dumb?"

I nod.

"Do you think I'm pretty? I know it's stupid and you don't have to answer. I just kind of wanted to know, you know?"

I stare down into those eyes-oddly large for such a tiny face, cinnamon-brown with bits of muddy black. Layer upon layer of gold-and-sparkling eye shadow-an attempt, perhaps, at making them appear smaller-only to make them look bigger. I stroke across her cheek, soiled with tan, Irish freckles, and teenage acne, and feel the layer of baby-hair fuzz beneath my fingers. A face that only a father could love.

I close my eyes and picture Kelly's face, her eyes, her skin. "I think you're beautiful," I say, reaching behind her head and drawing her mouth closer, until our lips smear together. I wiggle my tongue through her lips and feel her mouth accept me. Her tongue folds over mine, and I feel myself reaching closer and closer inside her, my hands now kneading over the tops of her thighs, working their way under her dress, to see what panties she has on underneath-if they're pink and frilly and dip down low in the front.

"Wait," she says all of a sudden, plucking her mouth away, a loud and unpleasant suctioning sound. "What am I doing? I mean, I just met you."

I close my eyes and count to ten, try to remind myself of calmness. I say, "I really feel close to you right now. We can take this slow if that makes you more comfortable."

"What about Kelly? I mean, do you think you guys'll stay together? Because if you do, I wouldn't feel right."

I take a deep breath in and filter it out slowly, discreetly. I lean forward and kiss her lips once more, noticing for just a blink that her big red lipstick has smeared all over her mouth and chin, making it look like she's bleeding out the mouth. "I'm with you right now, okay? Remember that."

Melanie had been like this, too. Giving me excuses. Putting me off. Saying things that were irrelevant to the moment at hand. We never did get to make love that night. The night of her fifteenth birthday.

I close my eyes again, to picture Kelly harder, clearer, but it's just Melanie again behind my eyes, in my head.

"Do you want to talk some more?" the girl asks.

"Of course I do," I say, and kiss her stronger, deeper, feel myself nearly biting her lip, suckling her tongue.

"Okay," she says, pulling away. "I'm an only child and my parents are divorced. They got a divorce when I was seven. It was kind of hard at first because I had to choose who to live with. So I chose both, you know, because I didn't mind traveling between the two of them. I'd live with my mother in the summer, then my dad during school, then back with Mom again for the holidays."

I nod and clench my teeth, counting up the number of freckles across her nose.

"Oh, and I also used to have a cat, Moses, but he died. Do you or did you ever have any animals?"

"No." Thirty-six freckles. One tiny pear-shaped birthmark beside her left nostril.

"How about your folks? Are they still together?"

I focus a moment on her neck, noticing how my hands would fit nicely around it, imagining my thumbs pressing in right below her windpipe. "Yes," I say finally.

"Do you have brothers or sisters?"

"An older brother," I say, still pondering, wondering how long she would put up a fight.

She smiles at me, apparently exhausted of her futile ramblings. I lean forward to kiss her again, noticing how her mouth is dry from all her trifling chatter. Still, I press myself into her, picture Kelly beneath me, and apply my weight to get her to lean back against the rock. My hand crawls up her thigh, finds the waistband of her panty hose, and begins to tug them downward. Her mouth pulls away and she takes a breath inward, as though to speak, to ask me another of her senseless questions, but I'm able to kiss it up and swallow it down just in time.

After a few moments, our kiss breaks and I catch my breath, working her panty hose down from soft, fleshy hips and b.u.t.tocks. I can feel the panties now. I tug at them, feel the ample elastic, the cotton seams. The wrong kind.

"Robby?" she whispers into my ear. "What do you think of me?"

"Shut up," I bite, tugging up on her panties, getting them to wedge up into her thighs.

"Why?" she whines. "Why are you being like this? I really like you."

I pull back a moment, have to shake my head to get Melanie out. Like deja vu. The girl is crying now, sobbing like the baby that she is; the baby that Melanie was.

"I'm sorry," I say after a giant breath. "I guess I just got carried away."

"Did I do something wrong? Because I really like you. I just want you to like me, too."

"I do," I snap, lamely trying to appeal to her incessant sense of insecurity. I take yet another deep breath in an effort to get a grip.

"A lot?" she asks, seemingly unaffected by my tone. "Like a girlfriend?"

"We'll discuss this later," I tell her.

She nods slightly and lays back, her head c.o.c.ked to the left, toward the shrine-a faraway stare. I lean in and kiss her neck, try to bleed the image of Kelly into the moment, working my way up toward her mouth, still mauled with lipstick. Her stomach quivers beneath me, but when I look up at those eyes, that faraway stare, I see they're shrouded with resolve.

It makes me want to snap that stupid little neck of hers. "What's wrong with you?" I shout.

"I don't know. I thought maybe you might want to know something else about me. I mean, before we do ... important stuff."

"Is there anything else you need to tell me?"

"How old was I when my parents divorced?"

"Why are you testing me?"

"How old?"

"Nine."

"No." She closes her eyes, I suppose to try and hide what she's feeling, the disappointment. "I was seven. Your parents are still together. You have one older brother, no pets, you don't think age matters, you like cheese omelets and sausage for breakfast, and you were away for five and a half years-maybe in military school."

I smile slightly, somewhat impressed, more so surprised. I sit up, moving my weight completely offher. "I think you should go," I say.

"No," she says, startled. She jumps to a seated position and wipes at her eyes. "I don't want to go. I really like you. A lot. I just wanted to talk some more. But we don't have to talk if you don't want to. We don't have to say anything."

It's almost tempting. I reach into my pocket and offer her a napkin. It's the note for Kelly, but I give it to her anyway. The girl wipes at her eyes and blows her nose into it. "Just stay," she says.

I look over at Melanie's shrine and shake my head. "Maybe one day you'll realize what a lucky girl you are." I walk away, leaving her watery-eyed and red muddy-lipped. A dress rolled up around her hips. Torn panty hose pulled down to the tops of her thighs.

Just another lost princess.

SAt.u.r.dAY, AUGUST 12, 5:35 P.M.

On my to-do list of life, there are three things I have yet to accomplish: 1. Save someone's life.

2. Plant my roots somewhere and sprout a full garden.

3. Make lovecup with a boy who doesn't finish before I do.

I am determined to conquer at least one of these by the end of the day.

I'm standing in the lobby of the art theater at the Peabody Museum, waiting for Ache to finally meet here with me as planned. I peer out the window toward the street, antic.i.p.ating his arrival, but knowing somehow that he isn't going to make it.

My eyes stray up to the clock on the wall. He's already twenty-two minutes and seven seconds late. So why did he call me? Or, more important, why did I jump in response? Especially since I was already having a perfectly luminous time-losing myself in someone else's roots.

I look up at the movie board, noticing how it's blank. Just like me. Like the way I feel sometimes: a giant slate waiting to get filled, for someone to etch in all the missing parts-my history, my family, my genealogy. Why am I so drawn to the moon? Where did I get this jet-black hair, like a raven's wings? How come the tips of my upper eyelashes curl downward instead of upward?

I need to know these things.

I peek inside the theater, and it's empty, too. And so I just stare back at my reflection in the gla.s.s door, doing my best to make out any detail, checking that the two wooden wands that hold my hair in place are somewhat even, that there's a thick hennaed strand across my crown, like a halo waiting to happen. I rub under my eyes, noticing how some of my makeup has smudged, from my love-fest with Derik, I'm sure. I fish a tube of mascara from my bag and reapply, somewhat pleased by the look of the darkest eye makeup coupled with the palest lips, but still a bit disappointed-since my cheeks are filled with fallen milkweeds instead of perennial roses.

I take a step away and glance back out the window, wondering where Ache is, if he intended on taking me to a show, or if it's because of the theater's emptiness that he wanted to meet me here.

Either way, I need to leave.

I make my way outside and inhale the warm, haunted air; the taste of sea and the promise of home. I'd give almost anything to be able to call someplace home-to plant my roots, grow a th.o.r.n.y bush of offspring and roses, and bathe under a fiery yellow sun forever and ever. I've been living here in Salem for the past year, the longest I've ever stayed anyplace, but I haven't actually rooted. Before here, I'd choose my many residences by their name. And so it was Mystic and Pleasure and Paradise and, before that, Clearview, Sunny dale, and Love Valley.

But then I met Brian.