The summer after fourth grade my next-door neighbor Rachel and I would ride our bikes the two or three miles out of town to the old McCollough farm to pick blackberries. The farm was abandoned and rundown—a tornado had knocked down the barn and house years before, and only an old shed still stood. It was weathered back then and falling apart, with nothing inside but a broken-down table, but the roof had only a few holes in it so there was shade.

Now we would be starting our second year of high school in a couple of weeks, and somehow we got to talking about what things were like when we were kids, and we remembered picking blackberries those years ago. Rachel said she could go for some right now, so we got on our bikes and set off.

The McCollough farm was pretty much as it had been before, except the barn and house were gone, just some crumbled cement where the storm shelter used to be. That old shed was still there. We pedaled our bikes up the path to the blackberry patch. It was mostly brambles, but there were a few blackberries the birds hadn’t got, and we picked them and ate them, feeding each other the way we did five or six years earlier, pretending we were birds or bears. Rachel smooshed one of the berries against my nose, and she laughed when my tongue couldn’t reach it. “Need some help with that?” she teased, but before anything else could happen we heard a car.

We looked down the hill and sure enough a car had parked near the old shed. A pretty lady with golden hair got out of the passenger side, and then a man with a white beard got out of the driver’s side. They walked around the shed, and then the man went back to the car and got some things out of the trunk—an easel and a canvas, which he set up near the shed. Meanwhile the woman took off her clothes—all her clothes, until she was entirely naked, and she leaned against one of the walls of the shed and the man had some brushes and began painting a picture of her on the canvas. The woman stood very still except once she seemed to look in our direction, and though I’m pretty sure she couldn’t see us, she smiled in a strange way.

Off in the distance it looked like a storm was gathering. They sky over there was this yellow green and the clouds were tinged with purple. Rachel and I looked at each other. I’m sure we both thought about the tornado that had leveled the McCollough place. The man kept painting. Then a raindrop fell, though the sun was still shining, and then another raindrop, and the man gathered up his painting stuff, and he and the woman went inside the shed.

Now was our chance to escape, especially if we wanted to get home before the storm hit. We hopped on our bikes and rode down the path, but Rachel stopped not far from the shed. I shook my head at her, trying to tell her that we should get going or we’d be soaked for sure, but she got off her bike and approached the shed, so I had no choice but to follow her.