It didn’t take two weeks for Millie and Quinten to hang out again. On Wednesday, she stayed late after school and showed up at his baseball practice. He waved to her in the bleachers and looked completely at ease with an audience. She left before practice ended.

Vivienne left town Thursday morning for a nursing conference in Cincinnati. Blaise arrived in the pick-up-from-school-line with his own scheduling issues. He said he was going to an all-day event on Saturday (what kind of event was unclear; Millie didn’t press). He would be home late but she could stay at Remo’s.

The party didn’t stay at Remo’s. Soon after dark, and soon after the opening lines of a documentary on Mohammed Ali that Remo was compelled to watch, Millie joined Quinten, Ellen, Eric and a case of Old Milwaukee in a matte black Mustang. They drove to a park, or rather a swatch of brushy forrest that couldn’t be developed because of its proximity to the river. The perfect spot for teenagers to explore the wondrous mingling of alcohol and skin.

They sat on the car hood and threw rocks into the dark, told jokes they had heard in locker rooms, and repeated rumors they had heard about teachers. Quinten leaned on the driver’s side fender with Millie seated next to him. They shared a beer. She laughed at his jokes.

When they were nearly through the case, lights appeared — the bouncy clattering beam through the coal black tree trunks. Quinten popped open the trunk and they hid the beer and empty cans. It was a small car — a Chevy Nova, they saw eventually — carrying a small passenger. Nishon Praswani parked just behind Remo’s Mustang, got out, greeted the others, realized he hadn’t turned off his lights, went back to the car and did so, greeted them again and asked them how they could see anything, shouted “Hang on. I might have a flashlight,” went back to the Nova, tore about in his glovebox in search of one, gave up, slammed the door on the Nova, and greeted them a third time. “This where the party is?”

Praswani was a ninety-eight-pound junior math nerd. None of the Mustang crowd had ever spoken to him. They only knew his name because he had been heralded by every math teacher and Math Olympiad sponsor as the pride of their school. And Praswani had a habit of trying to convert that pride into greater social standing; this wasn’t the first party he had crashed.

“I brought beer,” he offered, and was suddenly, ingloriously, accepted.

The addition of another six-pack meant an extra beer for each of the Mustang group, as long as Praswani only had one. Millie was surprised again at the kindness and humility of her new friends. Most kids in their school would have stolen his beer and sent him away. Maybe even beat him up. But the Mustang crowd asked him questions about Math Olympiad as if it were, in fact, the Olympiad. Praswani feigned modesty and answered in detail.

With just three beers to go and Quinten starting to express concern about Remo getting worried about them (a concern which Millie found attractively mature) Eric proposed a turn in trajectory.

“Hey Nishon, ever been snipe hunting?” Eric said. He yelled it over his shoulder from the edge of the woods. Apparently, the idea had been such a good one he decided he couldn’t wait to share it until he had finished unloading some of the Old Milwaukee.

Praswani had not hunted snipe but immediately perceived the prospect as a rite of passage. Even called it such. Quinten said he would stay at the cars so he could honk the horn and turn on the lights in case anyone got lost out there. Millie offered to stay and keep him company. And so Eric, Ellen and Nishon Paswani, the pride of the high school, disappeared into the black wooded night.

They weren’t gone long, at least Eric and Ellen weren’t. They came crashing through the brush back toward the cars less than ten minutes later, grinning, breathless and satisfied. They found Quinten leaned against the same fender, facing it this time, with Millie’s legs and arms encircling him. Eric and Ellen made awkward noises, whispered to Quinten, and eventually grabbed him by the shoulder to pull him away from Millie’s kiss.

“We should go, bro,” Eric said.

“Oh, right. Ok,” Quinten stammered looking away from Millie. She was pleased that she could distract him so completely from his surroundings. Part of her wished the snipe hunt had lasted much longer.