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an apple on the front of his shirt and bit off a mouthful of tart crunchiness.
    That’s when it happened.
    “Hi Tim.”
    The patterns of sunlight that made it through the leaves looked like camouflage on Lesley’s white T-shirt and jean overalls.
    “Are you picking any,” she asked, “or just working on a tan up there?”
    Tim swallowed the bite of apple. “A bit of both, I guess.”
    He scrambled down the ladder with all the agility he could muster, which didn’t feel like much.
    “What are you doing here?” he said.
    Her smile lit up her face. “What do you think? Same as everybody else.”
    “No, what I meant was, I didn’t expect to see anyone I know. I mean, my mother basically had to kidnap me to get me to come along. Same thing happen to you?”
    He was astounded at how easily the words spilled out.
    “Not at all,” she said. “Mom and I have gone apple picking every year since I was a kid. Kind of a tradition, I guess. Autumn comes and we just … go.”
    “That’s cool. Different from my family, but cool.”
    “And this year was easy. It used to be quite a drive to find an orchard when we lived in New York.”
    Tim watched her pony tail bob as she turned away momentarily to check her mother’s whereabouts. Man—so beautiful. This couldn’t be happening. Not only had she come over to talk to him , but he wasn’t even nervous. He knew it; she was different from the others.
    “So how does a family from New York end up in Worcester?” he said.
    He was surprised to see frown lines appear when she turned back toward him. “Oh, I don’t know.”
    He waited for her to finish the thought, but she didn’t.
    Tim saw his mother marching back up the hill, replacement basket firmly in grasp. He was struck by the certainty that if he missed this chance then he could stop waiting. Such an opportunity wouldn’t come up again. Gathering his small store of pent-up courage, he stepped to the edge of the cliff of vulnerability and leapt off.
    “Are you busy tonight?” he said.
    She hesitated, and Tim began to experience ground rush toward the boulder-strewn surface beneath the cliff. His breath caught in his throat. He could feel red heat blossoming on his face.
    But then Lesley rescued him by saying, “No, I guess not.”
    Tim found he could breathe again. He swallowed and said, “Maybe we could see a movie or something.”
    She recovered from her initial hesitancy with incredible grace.
    “Sure,” she said with a warm smile.
    Tim’s happiness lasted just over three weeks. Twenty-three days filled with texting and studying together and holding hands between classes. Three weeks when he learned to kiss and even flirted with making it to second base. Three weeks when he could hold his head up while traveling the hallways at school, when he was a part of the conversations in the corners, when his self-image started to transform.
    And then Rob stole it all away.
    Lesley was nice enough when she broke up with him. She used all the right words, like “This is going too fast for me,” and “I still want us to be friends.” But Tim knew there was more to it than that. She would never hurt him on her own. There had to be someone else, a source of malevolence lurking in the shadows.
    Two weeks later he saw Lesley and Rob together in the cafeteria. That’s when the hatred began.
    So Tim went back to waiting. He waited to see if Rob and Lesley would last. Then he delayed his own plans until he learned they were going to Boston College. His true feelings stayed hidden behind a happy-go-lucky façade while he remained in the picture by becoming good old life-of-the-party, just-a-close-friend-now Tim. He even waited to accept a job offer until Rob had chosen.
    Tim smiled grimly as he scrolled unseeingly through another page of computer program code. A lot had changed in the seven years since high school. The one constant during all that time, however, was Tim’s certainty that he would find a way to get Lesley