“What do you think you’re doing?” her father said to her.

March hadn’t imagined her father catching her. “Nothing,” she quickly told him.

When she looked at Hollis, she saw that if she hadn’t gotten a laugh out of him, then at least she’d gotten a grin.

“She wasn’t doing anything,” Hollis agreed.

“That’s good to hear.” Henry Murray finally turned his attention to his food. “One rude child is more than enough.”

Alan should have been too grown-up for games of revenge, he should have set his mind to finding a job or studying for his classes, but after that dinner he went after Hollis wholeheartedly. He waited for the time to be right, and at last, on a cold winter day, when a beautiful light snow was falling, Alan and some of his cronies captured Hollis on the path which led to Olive Tree Lake. Staked out long enough to have ice form around their nostrils, fueled by six-packs of beer, these friends of Alan’s were ready to beat someone senseless. They tackled Hollis and spat in his face. They held him down and took turns hitting and kicking him, usually in the ribs, carefully aiming with their fists and their boots.

The horizon was gray that day, and crows were circling in the sky. Alan and his friends hit Hollis until his nose and mouth gushed with blood. They wanted him to call for them to stop, to beg for mercy, to cry, but he did none of these things. He closed his eyes, so that he wouldn’t accidentally be blinded by one of their punches. He cursed them so deeply inside his mind that his expression revealed nothing. There was blood seeping into the snow, and from the other side of the lake came a droning sound, as Mr. Judson, who owned so much land up there, rode his snowmobile through the woods.