“What happened?” Lucy demanded. “What did you do?”

“He just wanted to try a chaw. I didn’t see the harm, Miss Lucy, ma’am.”

“Oh, for-Don’t you know better than to give a boy his age tobacco?”

“Sure can puke.”

Since he seemed to be done, Lucy reached down. “Come on, boy, let’s get you inside and cleaned up.”

Brisk and pragmatic, Lucy hauled him inside. Too weak to protest, Coop only groaned as she stripped him down to his jockeys. She bathed his face, gave him cool water to drink. After she’d lowered the shades against the sun, she sat on the side of the bed to lay a hand on his brow. He opened bleary eyes.

“It was awful.”

“There’s a lesson learned.” She bent over, brushed her lips on his forehead. “You’ll be all right. You’ll get through.” Not just today, she thought. And sat with him a little, while he slept off the lesson learned.

ON THE BIG flat rock by the stream, Coop stretched out with Lil.

“She didn’t yell or anything.”

“What did it taste like? Does it taste like it smells, because that’s gross. It looks gross, too.”

“It tastes… like shit,” he decided.

She snickered. “Did you ever taste shit?”

“I’ve smelled it enough this summer. Horse shit, pig shit, cow shit, chicken shit.”

She howled with laughter. “New York has shit, too.”

“Mostly from people. I don’t have to shovel it up.”

She rolled to her side, pillowing her head on her hands, and studied him with her big, brown eyes. “I wish you didn’t have to go back. This is the best summer of my whole life.”

“Me too.” He felt weird saying it, knowing it was true. Knowing the best friend of the best summer of his life was a girl.

“Maybe you can stay. If you asked, maybe your parents would let you live here.”

“They won’t.” He shifted to his back, watched a circling hawk. “They called last night, and said how they’d be home next week, and meet me at the airport and… Well, they won’t.”