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sex, never having a boyfriend. Not after that stupid rabbi …
    I am sad. I whimper, whine. Very attractive, Rachel.
    “Hang in there, Rachel,” Jake says. “You’ll feel better when we get outside.”
    He steers me out the front of the building.
    When the cool air hits me, I laugh. “Oh, that does feel good!”
    “I’m so glad!” Jake laughs too. “Let’s walk.” He holds my arm as we go down the steps. They are very steep, these steps. I never realized that.
    “Can we get on flat land?” I ask him.
    “We’ll walk around the block, silly, stoned Rachel.”
    I know this block so well, but in my current state I am seeing all kinds of things I never saw before. Trees that need to be touched. How can bark be rough and smooth at the same time? A window that has to be looked into. An ordinary family watching TV. How nice. Steps to a house that have to be climbed up and down a few times, with Jake holding my arm.
    Jake talks, and keeps talking, about school, about swimming, how he sometimes thinks about trying to go to the Olympics, but he doesn’t think he’s good enough. I want to ask him more about that, but it will have to wait until I can actually form sentences from complicated thoughts. Or at least complete thoughts.
    “I don’t like feeling this way,” I say. “What if someone knows? What if I get arrested?”
    “Shhhh, shhhh,” Jake says. “I’ll protect you.”
    After a few minutes, or years, a few times around the block, I feel less panicked. And “I need some more cake!”
    Jake reaches into his pocket and says, “Ta-da!” He pulls out a chocolate chip cookie.
    “Aw,” I say. “I want the devil’s food cake.”
    “The icing in my pocket, not so good,” Jake says, and I don’t know why, but I reach up and kiss him on the cheek.
    “That doesn’t count as our first kiss,” he says, handing me the cookie.
    “It isn’t our first kiss!” I say.
    “Huh?”
    “Don’t you remember?” I feel so sad that he doesn’t remember. Dejected. Rejected. Ejected. “ Don’t you?”
    He looks at me with a question in those intense eyes.
    “In the kindergarten block corner. Remember?” I say. “I was wearing a cowboy hat and spurs. You were wearing a pink gown and pearls?”
    Jake laughs. “That was you ?”
    “Yes that was me !” Angrily I pull away from him and walk quickly by myself, chomping on the cookie.
    Ouch! That bump in the sidewalk got bigger since the last time we went by. Jake picks me up and puts his arm around me, holding me tight.
    “I remembered,” he says. “I was just trying to be, I don’t know, cool. But of course I remember.”
    I look at him. “And then you moved away,” I say. “Why did you move away?”
    “My dad had to go for his residency. We were supposed to move right back when he was done, but then …” Jake stops and looks at me, shakes his head. His eyes are really so beautiful. And sad. Why are they sad?
    “What?” I say.
    He shakes his head again and then looks like he’s going to say something, and for some stupid reason I start to giggle. The whole situation strikes me as very funny, but I couldn’t say why.
    “Never mind,” Jake says. “Let’s keep walking.” And so we walk, and we talk about nothing much, but his eyes stay sad, and even in my stoned state I know something just happened, but I have no idea what.
    By the time my mother calls me to say it is time to go home, I am still stoned, but I know to keep quiet.
    She and Dad pull up beside us, and Jake helps me get into the backseat of the car. Grandma’s not here. Must have gotten a ride home with someone else. Before he closes the door, he bends his head toward me, and I reach up my hand to touch him, his face, his slightly too long brown hair. I want to run my fingers through the waves—why didn’t I do that on our walk?—but I can’t quite reach, and he doesn’t bend any farther. Instead he stands up, gives me a nod and a little smile. I mouth, “Thank you,” and