David was helping Melissa with the gardening. Almost a week now, he still wasn’t sure what to call her. Not Mom. Not Melissa. Not Mrs. Warner. Nothing seemed right. “Enough weeding for one morning,” she said. “Why don’t you hook up the hose and we’ll do a little watering? Remember, righty tighty, lefty loosey.” She pointed to the spigot on the side of the house and she laughed. A little sputter of a laugh. David nodded. As he unrolled the hose and dragged one end towards the spigot, he remembered something from his freshman year of high school.

It was after evening swim practice. He was outside the old brick school, waiting in the back parking lot for his parents to pick him up. It was cold, maybe ten degrees, and he huddled into his coat and tightened his body. It was snowing. It had been snowing for a while, and some of the snow was starting to stick. David scooped some of it up and packed it into a snowball and tossed it against the side of the building. But most of the snowball disintegrated in the air as it flew. Too dry. The splat against the wall was less than satisfying. David gathered some more snow in his mittens, but instead of packing it into a snowball he took it to the water spigot jutting from the bricks a few steps left of the back door. He wasn’t sure he had anything in mind. Maybe just get it a little damp. Just then a couple of kids came out. Rick Pike and Rick Weldon, seniors on the team. Weldon was combing his crew cut, trying to make the front stand up in a little tuft.