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the most pleasant place at times. Especially in winter. It snows, you know, and some days the wind has ice in it, rips through everything you’re wearing. The mornings are already chilly. Winter’s coming fast this year.”
    I decide she has a right to her privacy—the past obviously hurts. Well, so does mine. We have at least that much in common. “Dad had an accident that injured his leg pretty badly. He got so depressed that Mom thought he needed the serenity a place like this could offer.”
    She nods, accepting that it would. “How did it happen? The accident?”
    “He washed his hands in the garage where he’d been working on an old tractor, and dropped the soap. A few minutes later he slipped on it, falling against some steel shelving, which came down on top of him.”
    “Ouch.”
    “Smashed his leg, causing permanent tendon and muscle damage.”
    Her almond-shaped eyes grow roundish, her mouth opens just a little. “Freaky.”
    “That’s what they called it—a freak accident.”
    She’s probably remembering now how I fell off my stool this morning in the lab. “You don’t have to say it. I know, clumsiness is inherited.”
    “I wasn’t going to say that.”
    “Yeah, sure,” I say softly.
    “It must happen often then.”
    “What?”
    “Accidents in your family.”
    Bad luck follows us like a plague, but I don’t say this. Instead I shrug. “We’ve had a few broken bones.”
    She looks surprised. “Yeah? How many?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. Seven, eight, ten.”
    “What?”
    “There was the car accident. Mom broke two ribs, an arm, and chipped her collarbone. Casey, my little brother, he broke his elbow falling off a swing set a couple of years ago. When I was four, I fell out of my bunk bed and broke a leg in two places. When I was seven, I broke my hip jumping over a bench at the local park. There’s Dad’s leg—though that’s not technically broken.”
    She’s staring at me with disbelief. “I’ve never broken anything.”
    “You’re just lucky.”
    “Any other incidents worth relating?”
    My fingers run through my hair. It’s a habit. I do it a lot when I’m pushed. I’m reluctant to tell Kate about the family business going broke, or the fire at our last school that demolished the entire Art department. I had nothing to do with it—I just happened to be the only student working late on my major art work when a gas leak exploded, taking with it three classrooms. I was lucky, I’d just stepped outside to go to the bathroom only seconds earlier.
    She’s perceptive though. I think she can see straight through me. “C’mon, let it out.” She pushes my shoulder with her palm.
    “All right, all right.” I grab her wrist to stop her doing it again, but don’t let go of her hand. I like the feel of it. “There was a flood that wiped away the house we were renting.”
    “Really? Was anyone hurt?”
    “No, but it was close. The State Emergency Service helped us evacuate. But Mom stubbornly insisted on rescuing a box of photos and nearly got swept away.”
    “A lot of people say they’d do that—rescue photos. Not me. I’d go straight for . . .” Her eyes flick briefly to mine, then back to the creek again. “Never mind. Were you near a river or something?”
    “Sure, but it was only a stream. It had never flooded before. Took the whole town by surprise.”
    She’s shaking her head sympathetically. I’m amazed at the ease with which I’ve been spilling my guts. I’ve never been so open with anyone about my family’s continual run of bad luck. But with Kate it’s just slipping out. No, more like pouring out.
    “So you lost everything?” she asks. “Except for the photos?”
    “And Dad’s precious family heritage book,” I explain. “He guards it with his life. It was the first thing he saved. He’s been working on it for more than twenty years. Traced the Thornton line right back to the Middle Ages, 1200s I think. To the borderlands that fell between