He seemed older than the other students, and every now and then Ms. Doogan caught an expression on his face that she thought might indicate something between tolerance and scorn. She had the feeling that he was only putting up with her until the end of the school year. Indeed, he seemed merely to be marking time until the day he turned sixteen, when he could legally quit school. Which would be a pity, as Johnny Morgan was one of the brightest students she’d ever had the privilege of teaching. She’d tried to reach him all year, but while he was unfailingly polite, he remained aloof. He did his work well and got it in on time in more or less readable shape, or as readable as you could expect from a kid living in a log cabin with no electricity. He was attentive and respectful, but she was always conscious of the shield he had erected around himself, high and wide and, by her, impenetrable.

“Seward’s Folly,” a small voice said. Ms. Doogan looked down in some surprise. Vanessa Cox, short, slight, dressed year round in Carhartt’s bib overalls with a turtleneck beneath in winter and a T-shirt in summer. It was economical, Ms. Doogan supposed, and even a practical solution to dressing a child to go out in any weather in the Alaska Bush, but every time she saw the girl she had to repress an urge to break out the crinolines, or even just a lipstick. If it weren’t for the delicate features of her face and the braid of thick fine dark hair that hung to below her waist, it would have been hard to tell that Vanessa was a girl. “That’s right, Vanessa,” she said, smiling. “ Alaska proved them wrong on that, though.”

Vanessa, rarely seen to smile, gave a solemn nod. She exchanged a glance with Johnny Morgan. Here, it seemed, was one person who had managed to reach through the shield. Good for both of them, Ms. Doogan thought. Johnny Morgan was only fourteen, but if her instincts were right, here was a young man with the ability to remind any young woman, no matter how deliberately neutered by her foster parents, just how female she was. And anyone as young as Johnny was all the better for a friend. Especially given that his father had been murdered a year and half before, and that he was estranged from his mother.