Sophie and I sneak out of her parents' house while everyone is sleeping and we go down to the barn to saddle up the horses. The sunlight is slanting through the windows of the barn, making the spiderwebs up near the hayloft glow softly. We saddle up Angel and Blaze and I follow her down the mossy path and soon we are riding along the beach in Maine listening to the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks and the seagulls cawing in the misty sky. The air is cold and the horses' breath comes out in clouds. There is a lobster boat collecting traps out on the water and I can see steam rising from the cup of coffee one of the lobstermen is holding.

"Jonah," Sophie says. "Are you coming?"

I squeeze Blaze's ribs with my heels and we gallop down a path that leads away from the ocean and into the woods. Sunlight shines through the trees and the air smells like pine needles. Ahead of me I can see Sophie's back. Her blond ponytail swings back and forth between her shoulder blades and I can just see the outline of her bra underneath her gray long-sleeved T-shirt. Just above the waistband of her jeans is a patch of bare back, where her shirt has ridden up -- the very spot where I am going to kiss her as soon as we get off our horses.

Sophie stops suddenly and turns to look at me. I pull back on the reins."What?" I say.

And she says, "Listen."I stop my horse beside Sophie and reach out to hold her small, perfect hand while we listen to the sound of the woods. There are squirrels chattering and blue jays squawking and the wind is shushing through the pine trees and in the distance the waves thunder against the beach. Sophie is trembling. I have never felt this.

Okay, so exactly as I was writing that, this girl bumped my elbow with her hip and she looked at me and said, "Sorry." Then the girl did a double-take and said, "Jonah?" which took me by complete surprise. I mean, I had absolutely no idea who she was. And then she said, "It's me, Luna? Luna Hayes?" And I was like Are you sure? because the last time I saw Luna was the end of ninth grade and back then she didn't have hips. From her head to her toes she was just one long skinny thing like a piece of spaghetti. I just sat there in homeroom, staring at her.

"I heard you were coming back!" she said, combing her curly brown hair with her fingers. "You haven't changed at all."

I wasn't sure if not changing in two years was good or bad. In Luna's case, though, changing had definitely been good. Her body was seriously developed now and her face had grown up, too. There was a depth to her eyes that wasn't there before and I wondered if something sad had happened to her. I thought about what Thorne had e-mailed me about Luna, but I never believed it was true.

"Are you okay?" she asked me.

"Yeah, I'm great. It's good to be back in Pompano Beach," I said.

It wasn't a real answer. I mean, am I okay? I'm not really sure. Not as okay as I'd like to be, I guess. But I'm hoping that after today things will be getting more and more okay, because they've been sort of not okay for a while.

"Well, good," Luna said. "I guess things didn't work out in Pennsylvania." She said it, but it was more like a question.

"Not exactly."

"And you're . . ." She was trying to say something but whatever it was she couldn't say it. "Well, I'm glad you're okay. I heard these stories, you know."

"What kind of stories?" I said.

"I don't know." She looked up at the front of the room where our homeroom teacher, Mr. Bond, was reading a thin book called Howl. Then she turned back to me. "Well, you look great, Jonah," she said. "Better...