A baseball rolled past a teenager’s legs, tumbling underneath the porch behind him. “I’ve got it,” he called to the teenage girl behind him, who had thrown the ball.

He crawled under the porch and reached around, groping for the ball. He quickly found it, and got up, threw the ball back towards the girl, and dusted his shirt and jeans. “I’m sorry if I keep you running around catching my stray balls, Mark.” The boy, Mark, jokingly replied, saying; “It’s fine, Emma. If we keep practicing like this, not only will you be ready for your softball season, but I’ll be in great shape!”

Emma pulled her smartphone out of her pocket, checked it, and exclaimed, “Oh! I’ll be late for dinner. I need to get going.” Mark glanced at his watch, and said, “I can drop you off, I mean, if you want me to.” Emma looked at him. “That would be nice.” Mark walked inside, grabbed his keys, and opened his garage. He turned the key in the ignition of his 1984 F-150 and backed out. He reached across the bench seat and opened the door for Emma, then, after she closed the door, pulled into the street.

Emma’s house was several streets away, and he pulled into the driveway after just a few minutes. He got out to open the passenger-side door and held it open while Emma jumped out.  “Emma-,” he started, “Hmm?” “I wanted to know, would you maybe, want to, y’know, go out tonight?”  She looked at him, and quickly said, “I’d love to! Just give me a minute, and I’ll go and change!” She ran inside her house, leaving the door open behind her. Mark wondered at her; one moment she needed to be home for dinner, the next she had nothing planned that night. A second later that thought fled from his mind; Emma came out of her door wearing a dark blue sleeveless dress, and high heels that almost made her as tall as him. He opened the door of the car again, and she got in. He hopped into the driver’s side seat and backed out of the driveway.

He couldn’t help but look at her out of the corner of his eye, in five minutes she had put on makeup, donned a cocktail dress, and come out looking amazing. They parked in front of the Five Olde restaurant on the corner of Chelsea and Windsor Streets and went inside. They ate a dinner of pasta with meat sauce and enjoyed a glass of wine each, a new treat to them, since Vermont laws had just lowered the age for drinking alcohol back to eighteen. After the meal, Emma leaned back in her seat and sighed. “That was good. We should do this more often.” Mark looked at her and made up his mind. He got up and helped her into her sweater, and asked; “Do you want to go up on the hill and see the sunset?” She looked at him excitedly and nodded eagerly, “Yes! I would love to!” Mark wrote two checks, one for the waitress, and one for the bill. “Thank you…” He questioningly looked at the waitress. “Jen, Mr. Turner.” “Thank you, Jen.” He gave her both checks, with a wink, and he and Emma went back outside and got into the car. Many people knew Mark in the town, and even outside of it. He had raised enough funds to buy all of the land on one end of the town green and built a clock tower there for the town. Every hour, on the hour, the bells would strike. Even as Mark thought about the tower, it clanged musically. “One, two….” He started counting, “six, seven.” He backed out of the parking space rather quickly, and pulled up the road under the railroad bridge, towards the mountain. It was six or seven hundred feet up the mountain from the town, and the dirt road was rather bumpy. When they had driven more than halfway up the mountain, they had to exit the vehicle and ascend on foot, Mark carrying two large duffel bags, one in each hand, which he always had in the back seat of his car. The trail wound back and forth up the mountain, and it took almost half an hour to climb it.