Rosebush (40 page)

Periodically the company is disturbed by a bubble of laughter erupting from under the apple tree. There’s a hammock there, old and so often mended that it looks like the hunting net of a powerful witch. In it, as though trapped in a spell, lie a boy and a girl. He’s wearing a button-down shirt with penguins embroidered on it and she has on a white eyelet dress that is probably last season. He’s devastatingly handsome. Her hair looks like it was styled with a machete and she will probably always have a faint scar on her forehead from where doctors stitched her back together, but she doesn’t care. They are facing each other, nose to nose, and grinning.

In its chaotic festivity it looks a lot like the photographs I’m taking these days, only it’s not one. It’s not a photo. It’s real life.

And I’m in it.