The Miles Between

“It will hold you,” I say. It held Aunt Edie. We sit on the upper rail, each of us holding a post with one hand and our feet braced against the lower rail, facing out to the lake. The breeze blowing across the lake is gentle and slow, and yet it weaves through the branches overhead to make the softest of music, like a hundred fingers plucking the stringed bows of the tree.

“Beautiful here,” Seth says.

I shrug. “Think so?”

He shakes his head. “Why do you do that?”

“What?”

“Pretend you don’t care. It’s all right to care about something, even if it’s just the view of a lake. You don’t lose points by admitting that you care about something.”

I sigh and look away. “It’s a pretty view.”

“When was the last time you were here?”

“When I was eight. I came here with my aunt.”

“It’s been a long time, then.”

I nod. “Very long.”

“Want to talk about it?”

> I hear the inflection of his voice, the prodding of the word talk. He doesn’t really mean talk—he means reveal. “I am talked out, Seth.”

He grunts softly. Like he thinks I won’t hear?

I turn to face him. “Every boarding school I’ve ever been to has had their own resident expert who has wanted to pick my brain apart and talk, but I have never found talking to improve the status of anything.”

“To each his own. It helps me. I talk my way into and out of everything.”

“Oh, you mean like trash duty? Yes, your talking really helped you out there.”

He smiles and nods. “Touché.”

We sit looking out at the lake, and an orange butterfly flutters close to me. I reach out and it lands on my finger, its long delicate legs dancing along my knuckle. I watch the fragile beat of its wings, mesmerized. One small careless action, and life as we know it can unravel.

“A girl of many talents. You can even charm butterflies.”

“Are you implying I’ve charmed you?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” He fidgets on the rail. “Only semicharmed.”

“Here.” I reach out my hand, and the butterfly crawls from my finger to his.

“One of a kind,” he says, looking at me and not the butterfly.

“Thank God, right?”

He smiles. I look away, and another butterfly flutters near my face, and then another. In seconds, we are enveloped in a flowing stream of butterflies, a river of flapping color all around us. Seth laughs. So do I.

“I think it’s migration season. Aidan would probably know—”

“Don’t,” Seth says. And then, in a much softer voice, “We don’t have to explain it.”

We are transported, suspended like bits of glass in a spinning kaleidoscope of wings and flashing color, and explaining it becomes as ludicrous as counting the stars, and for that moment I decide Seth is right about something too.

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