There was a grated gateway that they would have to cross to get to the creek. She was always scared of the empty ground beneath her and how her skinny legs could slip through the metal bars, scrape up her shin, trap her thighs.

She never told him she was scared. They’d sit under the little concrete bridge in the shallow water and emerge at the rumble of an overhead car.

In high school, they’d go from the bus from the big town. Strip off sticky school sensibilities. Splash and swim in waters lower than last summer. Catch leeches on growing bodies. Forget their shoes, so walk across town barefoot, catching catheads and an increasingly magnetic attraction to the stagnant waters.