That’s why I want to go to college.
* * *
IN THE DAYS AFTER that night on the beach, Leni became a thief, invisible when she wanted to be. It was an illusion she’d practiced all of her life, and now, as she became a stealer of time, it served her well.
She also became a liar. Straight-faced, even smiling, she lied to her father to steal the time she needed. There was a test to be taken early—at least an hour—a field trip that would keep her at school late. A research project that required her to take the skiff to the library in Seldovia. She met Matthew in the woods, in the shadowy stacks at Large Marge’s store, or in the abandoned cannery. In class, they were always touching under the desk. They celebrated his birthday together after school, sitting on the dock behind an aging metal boat.
It was wonderful, exhilarating. She learned things no book had ever taught her—how falling in love felt like an adventure, how her body seemed to change at his touch, the way her armpits ached after an hour of holding him tightly, how her lips puffed and chapped from his kisses, and how his rough beard-growth could burn her skin.
Stolen time became the engine that powered her world; on weekends, when hours without Matthew stretched out before her, she felt an almost unbearable need to leave the homestead, run to him, find a way to steal just ten more minutes.
The specter of school’s end cast a long shadow. Today, when Leni slid into her desk at school, she looked at Matthew and almost started to cry.
He reached across the desk, took her hand in his. “Are you okay?”
Leni couldn’t help thinking how small they were in this big dangerous world, just kids who wanted to be in love.
Ms. Rhodes clapped her hands at the front of the room, demanded attention. “There’s only a week of school left, and I thought it would be a good day for a boat ride and a hike. So, everyone, grab your coats and let’s go.”
Ms. Rhodes herded her chattering charges out of the classroom and through town and down to the docks. Everyone boarded Ms. Rhodes’s aluminum fishing boat.
They motored out into the bay and sped up, bumping across the waves, water splashing at their sides. The teacher guided the boat up the waters of the fjord, mountains all around them, down one stretch of water and up another, until they stopped seeing any cabins or boats at all. Here the water was aquamarine. Leni could see a sow and two black cubs walking along an isolated shore.
Ms. Rhodes pulled up to a dock in a narrow cove. Matthew jumped onto the weathered dock and tied the boat down.
“Matthew’s grandparents homesteaded this land in ’32,” Ms. Rhodes said. “It was their first family homestead. Who wants to see a pirate cave?”
Pandemonium.
Ms. Rhodes led the younger kids up the beach, marching through the heavy sand, stepping over huge pieces of driftwood.
When they rounded the corner of the bay and disappeared, Matthew took Leni by the hand. “Come on,” he said at last. “I’ll show you something cool.”
He led her upland, into knee-deep grass that ended at a sparse forest of stunted trees.
“Shhh,” he said, pressing a finger to his lips.
After that Leni noticed every twig that broke beneath her and every whisper of the wind. Occasionally a bush plane puttered overhead. At a wall of greenery, bushes grown to Alaskan size from all the water that ran down from the mountains, he showed her a path she wouldn’t have seen on her own. They ducked into it, walked hunched over in the cool shadows.
A small seam of light drew them forward. Leni’s eyes adjusted slowly.
A vista opened up in the break between the bushes: marshland, as far as the eye could see. Tall, waving green grass through which meandered a lazy, motionless river. Mountains were tucked in close, arms drawn protectively around the marshes.
Leni counted fifteen huge brown bears in the marshes, munching on the grass, pawing for fish in the stagnant water. They were great, shaggy creatures—called grizzly bears by most of the world—with giant heads. They moved in a shambling way, as if their bones were held together with rubber bands. Mama bears kept their cubs close and away from the males.
Leni watched the majestic animals move through the tall grass. “Wow.”
A bush plane banked overhead, began its descent.
/> “My grandpa took me here when I was just a kid,” Matthew whispered. “I remember telling him he was crazy to homestead land so close to the bears, and he said, It’s Alaska, as if that were the only answer that mattered. My grandparents relied on their dogs to run off the bears if they came too close. The government created a national refuge around us.”
“Only here,” Leni said with a laugh.
She leaned against Matthew. Only here.
God, she loved this place; she loved Alaska’s wild ferocity, its majestic beauty. Even more than the land, she loved the people to whom it spoke. She hadn’t realized until just this moment how deep her love for Alaska ran.
“Matthew! Leni!”