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Just then a blob of black soot blew in the open window, smearing across Michael’s shirt as he tried to brush it away. As he heard Rob laughing in the front seat, he felt his face redden.
    “It’s called Maui snow,” Rob told him.
    As the car climbed the flank of Haleakala, the cane fields were replaced by pineapple, and a few miles farther on, the pineapple, in turn, gave way to pastureland. But they were pastures that looked nothing at all like the farms of upstate New York. Here the pastures were an emerald-green, and dotted with jacaranda trees covered with lavender flowers.
    A few miles farther on Rob turned off to the left. “That’s where you’ll be going to school,” he said, tipping his head toward a cluster of buildings that lay off to the right. Peering out the window, Michael saw a campus that bore no resemblance to the school he’d attended inNew York. Instead of a huge brick block of a building with a fenced-in, asphalt-paved lot next to it that served as an athletic field, this school consisted of a group of single-story buildings shaded by enormous trees, set in a spacious lawn. Beyond were a baseball field, basketball and tennis courts, and a full track as well as a football field.
    Half a dozen guys were on the track, and as they drove past, Michael studied their speed and pacing, measuring his own abilities against the runners’.
    His mother turned in the front seat. “Do I get credit for being right about them having a track team?”
    Michael tried to suppress the grin that was threatening to lighten his mood, but failed miserably. “I guess so,” he admitted. “And I guess I can’t really say the school in New York had a nicer campus, can I?”
    “Hallelujah!” Katharine exclaimed. “Maybe there’s going to be life after New York after all.”
    Less than a mile farther on they came to a tiny town. “This is Makawao,” Rob said. “It used to be a cowboy town, but now it’s the New Age capital of Maui. More different kinds of therapy than there are residents. All the most interesting people live up here, myself included.” As the Explorer slowed to make a right turn, Katharine looked to the left and saw a two-block-long stretch of false-fronted buildings that looked as though they’d come out of a Western movie.
    “Are they real?” she asked.
    Rob nodded. “They’ve been fixed up, but they’re pretty much the way they were when they were built. Except instead of selling saddles and bridles, now they have herbal teas and homeopathic remedies.”
    Just beyond Makawao, the street they took narrowed andwound steeply up the mountainside in a series of hairpin curves. Soon the tropical growth around the town yielded to groves of eucalyptus, then pines and cedars began cropping up. “Where are we going?” Katharine finally asked.
    “To your house,” Rob replied. “I found a place for you pretty close to the site. It’s not very grand, but the school bus stop is only about a quarter of a mile away.” He glanced in the rearview mirror once again. Michael, if he was even listening, said nothing, and when Rob looked over at Katharine, she only shrugged. “I hope you’ll like it,” he said.
    “It seems like it’s kind of far away from everything, doesn’t it?” Michael asked from the backseat. “I mean, I can’t drive, and it seems like it’s an awful long way from the town, doesn’t it?”
    “How about a bicycle?” Rob suggested.
    Michael gazed out at the steepening road. “That might work going downhill, but how do you get back up again? You’d need about fifty gears, wouldn’t you?”
    Rob winced as he realized Michael had a point, and that when he’d looked at the house, he hadn’t thought about how Michael might get around. “Maybe I goofed,” he admitted. “Actually, I guess I just picked the one I liked best. So if you hate it, you can find something else. Okay?”
    Michael shrugged, but didn’t say anything more.
    Emerging from the cedars, they slowed