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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.”
    “If they did, would you want to?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You want to go back?”
    “I don’t know.” It was awful not to know. “I wish I could visit there and live here. I wish I could train Jones and ride Dottie and play baseball and catch more fish. But I want to see my room and go to the arcade and go to a Yankee game.” He rolled toward her again. “Maybe you could visit. We could go to the ballpark.”
    “I don’t think they’d let me.” Her eyes turned sad, and her bottom lip quivered. “You probably won’t ever come back.”
    “Yes, I will.”
    “Do you swear?”
    “I swear.” He offered his hand for a solemn pinky swear.
    “If I write you, will you write me back?”
    “Okay.”
    “Every time?”
    He smiled. “Every time.”
    “Then you’ll come back. So will the cougar. We saw him the very first day, so he’s like our spirit guide. He’s like . . . I can’t remember the word, but it’s like good luck.”
     
     
     
    HE THOUGHT about it, how she’d talked of the cougar all summer, had shown him pictures in the library books, and the books she’d bought herself with her allowance. She’d drawn pictures of her own and hung them in her room, among her baseball pennants.
    In his last week on the farm, Coop worked with his penknife, and the carving tool his grandfather let him borrow. He said his goodbyes to Dottie and Jones and the other horses, bade a not very fond farewell to the chickens. He packed his clothes, along with the boots and work gloves his grandparents had bought him. And his beloved baseball bat.
    As he had on the long-ago drive in, he sat in the backseat and stared out the window. He saw things differently now, the big sky, the dark hills that rose up in rocky needles and jagged towers and hid the forests and streams and canyons.
    Maybe Lil’s cougar prowled in them.
    They turned in the far road to the Chance land to say another goodbye.
    Lil sat on the porch steps, so he knew she’d been watching for them. She wore red shorts and a blue shirt, with her hair looped through the back of her favorite ball cap. Her mother came out of the house as they pulled up, and the dogs raced from the back, barking and bumping their bodies together.
    Lil stood, and her mother came down, laid a hand on her shoulder. Joe rounded the house, stuffing work gloves in his back pocket, and flanked Lil on the other side.
    It etched an image in Cooper’s mind—mother, father, daughter—like an island in front of the old house, in the foreground of hills and valleys and sky, with a pair of dusty yellow dogs racing in madly happy circles.
    Coop cleared his throat as he got out of the car. “I came to say goodbye.”
    Joe moved first, stepping forward and offering a hand. He shook Coop’s and still holding it crouched to bring them eye-to-eye. “You come back and see us, Mr. New York.”
    “I will. And I’ll send you a picture