Swim Back to Me by Ann Packer

friend to call me.”
    I grabbed the bag and dashed out of there. Stuffing it in my pocket, I ran down the stairs and out into the bright, stinging sunlight. I ran up the street, kept running until I’d reached the Old Barrel and my bike. My fingers shook as I dialed my combination. I was looking at the lock, but in my mind I saw myself pounding the seat with my fist, over and over again.
    Once I was on my bike I headed in the direction I’d taken after my first trip to that neighborhood, toward and then across the railroad tracks, and then along the busy road parallel to them. In about five minutes I’d reached the underpass to the Stanford side of the tracks, but I kept going. I was in the older part of Palo Alto now, and the mature trees offered shade, but I was too hot for it to make much difference. Sweat stung my eyes, made my shirt stick to my back. Abruptly, I turned onto a residential street and stopped. I patted my pocket, making sure the bag was still there. I could be home in ten minutes, in time for Gladys to make me a milkshake before she left for the day, but when I set off again I headed deeper into Palo Alto, aiming, I was starting to realize, for the street where the Mile Ten check-in station had been. Where the tall guy lived.
    I found the street, then wasn’t sure which of two little white houses was his, one with a fence around the yard or one without. The house with the fence had a station wagon in the driveway, while the other had a two-door sedan, a Chevelle the blue-green color of the ocean. I got off my bike in front of that one. The yard was familiar, the steps up to the porch, the faded black of the front door. Standing there, I thought for some reason of the charred log I’d noticed in the fireplace, and I wondered if it was still there. My father’s area of interest was between-the-wars America, Prohibition, the stock market crash, the Depression; he’d told me that in the early thirties fuel was so scarce people would burn a log halfway and then smother the flames so they could get a fire going again the next night without having to use more wood. I imagined that the tall guy would do that, not to be frugal but because he was alone.
    The Chevelle’s windows were open, as if he’d used the car recently and planned to go out again soon. I left my bike on the sidewalk, went up to the porch, and knocked.
    Footsteps, and then the door was opened, but not by the tall guy: it was a woman with mousy brown hair in a ragged cut and, oddly, braces on her teeth, which she revealed in a broad smile that disappeared as she took in the sight of me.
    “Sorry, I was expecting someone else. Can I help you?”
    I looked past her: it was the guy’s house, with the guy’s saggy couch.
    She cocked her head, waiting.
    I said, “Is anyone else home?”
    “You mean Karl? Are you looking for Karl? Karl,” she called over her shoulder, “there’s a boy here for you.”
    She was a little ugly: “plain,” they would say in a book. She was flat-chested, and her eyebrows were so pale it was almost as if she didn’t have any. I hoped she wasn’t his girlfriend. I preferred the idea of him alone to the idea of him with her.
    The tall guy appeared in the doorway, and I could tell he had no idea who I was. He was just the same, though: the lean, lanky frame; the light blue eyes.
    “Yes?” he said.
    Suddenly worried my bike might be gone, I swiveled around, but there it was, leaning against the tree where I’d left it. I faced them again, the woman with her hand on the doorframe, Karl towering over her.
    “Can I help you?” he said. The way he spoke was soft, easy—very different from how he’d talked on the day of the Walk. “Are you selling something?”
    “Gorp,” I said, and then I began to laugh. I backed down the steps, then turned and made for my bike.
    “Hang on,” he said, coming after me. “You’re that kid, aren’t you?”
    I kept going.
    “You’re that kid who wanted to sterilize a