The Mourning Hours. Paula DeBoard Treick

and three blue Pixy Stix, the kind of pure-sugar pleasure I was never allowed at home. Clutching the soda in one hand and my book in the other, I scanned the bleachers for a place to sit. A few people from church smiled encouragingly in my direction, but I spotted Emilie in the center of a tight, whispering circle of recent Watankee Elementary graduates and changed course. A few of my own soon-to-be-fourth-grade classmates were sitting in the stands with their parents, but we glanced away from each other with summertime awkwardness, as if we knew we weren’t meant to connect again until the Tuesday after Labor Day.

      I lugged my volume of Myths and Half-True Tales to a shady spot beneath the bleachers and opened to the dog-eared page on Atlantis. The game began and cheers erupted.

      We were only a mile or so from our farm, but to hear Dad yell, “Hammer one home, Hammarstrom!” during Johnny’s turn at bat was to imagine that we’d been transported somewhere far away, like an island in the South Pacific. Dad was only here at all because he’d worked out a deal with Jerry Warczak: Jerry, who had no interest in softball, would cover Dad’s last milking on these nights if Dad and Johnny would lend him a hand on Saturdays with the chickens. This was typical of the sort of deals they worked out. “It’s just being neighborly,” Dad had explained to me, but it had seemed that he was being more than neighborly when he’d clapped Jerry on the shoulder and said, “He’s like another son to me.”

      When the noise of the game finally faded into the background, I spent the next few innings reading about Atlantis and wondering how a city could go missing—poof!—just like that. What would happen if Watankee, Wisconsin, and all the people I knew were to fall off the face of the earth one day—a sudden crack, then a quick slide into Lake Michigan? How long until the rest of the world missed us?

      I lay back and closed my eyes, listening to the crack of the bat, the sudden burst of applause. I imagined the ball hurtling through a blue sky deepening into purple with the sunset. The tall grass under the bleachers prickled and dented the undersides of my legs, and a mosquito seemed intent on sucking my blood. I was swatting my ankle when a shadow covered me.

      “Hey, you’re Kirsten Hammarstrom, aren’t you?”

      I struggled to sit up. For a moment, it looked like an angel was standing over me, even though my Sunday School teacher Mrs. Keithley said there was no such thing anymore, unless maybe you were a Catholic. The voice belonged to a girl who wore cutoff denim shorts and a checked shirt with the tails knotted at her waist, so that just a teensy strip of skin at her stomach showed. I realized that what looked like a fiery halo on top of her head was actually just her red hair, backlit by the stadium lights.

      “Yeah,” I confirmed. “I’m Kirsten Hammarstrom.” Suddenly I felt guilty, as if I’d been caught sneaking a sliver of pie before dinner.

      “Your brother’s Johnny Hammarstrom, right?” she said, bending down to my height. Up this close, she was the loveliest person I’d ever met. Creamy white skin, a tiny bridge of freckles spanning her nose. A smile so wide and welcoming, she might have been pictured on a travel brochure.

      “Yeah,” I said again, suddenly ashamed of my dirty hands, my teeth sticky with the residue of Coke. “Why?”

      She smiled and held out a hand, poised as any church greeter. “I’m Stacy Lemke.”

      We shook hands. Nothing drastic happened, no fireworks or a sudden crack of thunder, but somehow the moment felt significant.

      Stacy’s hands were cool, her nails painted the softest pink, like cotton candy. If she noticed that my nails were ringed with dirt, she didn’t say anything. “Kirsten. That’s such a pretty name,” she said.

      I smiled. “Do you know my brother?”

      She laughed. “Everyone knows Johnny Hammarstrom.”

      This hadn’t really occurred to me until I heard it said that way, so boldly, like a biblical fact. During wrestling season, Johnny’s name was a regular appearance in the sports section of the Watankee Weekly; whenever I was in town with Dad, someone always approached him to ask about Johnny’s prospects for the fall.

      “I go to school with him, but we don’t really know each other,” Stacy said, smiling a little sadly. “I mean, I don’t think he would ever notice someone like me.”

      I looked at her more closely. Her tiny freckles glistened under small bubbles of sweat, but I didn’t see any kind of defect—no eyeteeth or harelip or deformed thumbs. If my brother hadn’t noticed Stacy Lemke, he was either blind or stupid or both. “Why not?” I asked, blushing. “I think you’re really pretty.”

      “Oh, you’re so sweet!” She gave me a quick touch on the knee and stood up, brushing invisible dirt from her legs.

      “I would have noticed you,” I said, swallowing hard.

      “Aren’t you just the cutest thing in the world!” She laughed, tossing her head so that her red hair briefly covered her face and then swung free again. “Well—it was nice meeting you.”

      She started to walk away. I watched her until she got to the edge of the bleachers, where she stopped and did a little rubbing thing with her shoes in the grass, to toe off the dust. I was still watching her when she turned back to me, and I looked down, embarrassed.

      “You know, maybe you could tell Johnny that I said hi.”

      “Sure.” I smiled. She could have asked me anything, and I wouldn’t have said no.

      When she smiled back at me, I could see a little tooth in the back of her mouth that was turned sideways and slightly pointed—the only thing about Stacy Lemke that wasn’t absolutely perfect. It made me like her even more.

      three

      The crowd dispersed, and the Hammarstroms reassembled in the infield, half of us sweaty and all of us satisfied.

      “Watch out, shorty!” Johnny yelled, appearing from the dugout. I pretended to dodge his grasp, but he caught me by the arms and hoisted me to his shoulders. I shrieked while he ran the bases, my hands grabbing on to his neck for dear life.

      “Be careful!” Mom called from somewhere, her voice lost in the darkness.

      I screamed as Johnny gained speed, heading for home plate. I squeezed my feet against his chest, too terrified to look until he eased up and carefully deposited me on the ground. That was Johnny—rough and gentle at the same time.

      It wasn’t until later, when we were gathered around the kitchen table dunking chunks of apple pie into bowls of soupy vanilla ice cream, that I remembered about Stacy. For a moment I hesitated to say anything, wanting to hold Stacy’s existence close, like a treasure gathered in my fist.

      Johnny had finished giving Grandpa the play-by-play, and Grandpa was just about finished pretending to be interested in his analysis of Sandy Maertz’s triple, when I managed to get a word in.

      “A girl named Stacy Lemke says to tell you hi,” I said.

      “Who’s that?” Johnny asked gruffly, looking down into his bowl. His cheeks suddenly flamed pink.

      I shrugged, trying to be casual. “Stacy Lemke. She has red hair and freckles.” She has creamy skin, the softest handshake in the world. She said I was adorable.

      “That must be Bill Lemke’s daughter. He played for the other team tonight. Is she in your class, Johnny?” Mom asked.

      “I don’t know,” he said, shrugging.

      “Sure you do,” Emilie piped up. “Stacy Lemke? She used to go out with what’s-his-name, the Ships quarterback.”

      I smooshed my finger into a drop of ice cream. “She says she goes to school with you.”

      “Well, I don’t know. Maybe I’ve seen her around,” Johnny said. He brought his bowl to his lips, trying to drain the last of his ice cream into his mouth. Mom cleared her throat pointedly, and Johnny set the bowl back on the table.

      “Bill