Spring finally came. Blackbirds, spraddle-legged on the grass, poked it for grubs, and the high-school track team, their bare legs, some hairy, all pumping hard, began to run through the town. Below the great bridge across the Hudson River, the fishermen set their shad nets in the water. Early each morning, Moira Huckins would get up, wash, dress, run downstairs for milk and a doughnut, run up again, make her bed, straighten her room, then stand at the window and watch for Gustie Lauter, coming up the street on his way to the high school. She saw them walking together, holding hands. But only in her mind.

And Gustie, going past her house, would look at it sideways, a small Victorian with peeling paint and a narrow bay rising up the middle from the ground floor to above the roof and ending in a peak like a dunce cap. There were always gum and candy wrappers, cigarette butts, bottle tops, pieces of plastic, and crumpled tissues in the front yard. Once he'd seen Moira planting a small tree in the yard that had a sign on it saying Please Do Not Litter. But someone cut it down, leaving a five-inch stump. He could see her, half-hidden, behind the thin bedroom curtain, the slight mass of her body, the small head. What was the big idea? Most girls were three things. They were something or dogs or okay. She was different, like something hiding in the woods. A bird, a cat gone wild, a rabbit, a baby raccoon, half-hidden by leaves and twigs, still, silent, afraid, ready to vanish. When she came to his house to babysit for the baby his mother took care of, Moira would look at him, an eye dart, a small "Hi," then rush to the baby, turning her back on him as if he were nothing. His mother liked her.