We rode past the orderly shadows of the orchards, past the farms that lay beyond them, to the place where the woods began. He stopped where the road stopped and helped me out of the car. My knees were wobbly, my shorts slippery from the pleasure his voice had been giving me. The darkness swelled with an outcry of frogs, the occasional warning of an owl. John led me through the trees. I couldn't see anything but the white curve of my outstretched arm, but he somehow recognized a trail and knew where it ended. "Strip," he said hoarsely. "Strip like Mary June did." I stumbled out of my shorts and giggled as my arms tangled in my T-shirt. John stood behind me, watching me twist out of my panties. I held my hands together behind my back so he could tie the rope around my wrists. He pushed me to my knees and tied my ankles, too, with the rope running upward to encircle my neck. A mosquito landed on my breast and pierced the wrinkly skin of my nipple. I flinched. The rope responded instantly by squeezing my throat.

"Hold still, prisoner," John whispered. His chapped palms cupped my breasts, gently squeezed. I moaned, but I was afraid. If I moved, the rope would strangle me. I thought I could hear Mary June's ghost-breath in the darkness, and I understood why she hadn't laughed. The hands massaging my breasts grew rough. I whimpered. The rope was already chafing my wrists. I wasn't aroused anymore, only frightened. When I heard John unzipping his jeans, I panicked; my body jerked, and the rope tightened around my throat. For a moment my breath left me. When it came back, I screamed.

John knelt beside me, gripping me by the shoulders. "Shush, shush," he murmured into my hair. When my muscles were soft again, he untied me, but the sensation of the rope never left my skin.

"How did Mary June die?" I asked.

But John wouldn't tell me. Instead he described the time Mary June revealed that she had learned how to do something extraordinary, something she'd seen herself doing in a dream.