There was a frost that morning, even in May. They made small talk, driving past hills and farms, a decrepit barn missing half the wall panels that still stood as a testament to the way things had been, to where they were headed.

These are our ruins, she thought.
***

A tall boy, Finnish, with Scandinavian coolness not fit for the weather, was sprawled on his back in the grass. He rested on his elbows and had a stalk in his mouth, the feathered tip grazing his nipple absently. His white chest repelled the sun, a Nordic shield. She counted each rib.

“You should wear a hat. You’re as pale as I am.”

He reached his hand up her leg, caressing her calf and lingering. She did not move away or towards him.

“Why are you still wearing sunglasses?” She asked him later, the nearly extinguished sun to their backs on the country road. It was dark, cooler. “You’re not one of those people are you?”

For a moment he did not reply.

“To shade me from your beauty.”

He said it so sheepishly she almost laughed. But she did not react at all. Their hours together had been numbered from the beginning.

***
There it was again. What was this special power she had to draw men in and then repulse them, claiming they had lost ownership of their actions with her presence? Was it unique to her alone? She wished for the men of the nineteenth century novels she read, firm of intention. What she knew were tall boys.

“How old were you when you got your license?”

She looked at her hands on the wheel, making sure they were at ten and two.

“Sixteen.  The day of my birthday I went down to the DMV.”

“How old were you when you lost your virginity?”  She supposed that was not a shocking question anymore, at least between them.

“Eighteen.”

She looked straight ahead, gazing somewhere past the dashboard.

“It was in the moment,” he said.

He touched her hand as it sat on the gear switch.  “It wasn’t anything you did.”

That was the biggest insult.

***

It was so cold near the Falls. She clambered on the stone ledge just before the iron partition and asked him to take her picture. She stood with her back to the camera, fingers through her hair, hands on her head. Face and body bearing towards the blue.