"Chapter 7: LilyAs I made my way through school that morning, I suppose I wasn't paying much attention in class. I wasn't even paying much attention t... being naked, and being groped, and all that. Nope, I was thinking about two things. First was the tryouts. I had expected to be thinking about them. I had been expecting to be preoccupied by them. That was fine.What I hadn't been expecting to be thinking about was Mike Kirkland.But I was. A lot.By the time I got to lunch, my brain was just. "Because that would have been more polite and social, don't you think?" Mercy persisted."Guess it would, yes," David acknowledged."Not that I mind drinking alone, I don't, but still." Yes, I see."He didn't, not really.Mercy was staring stonily at him. David feared that he had disappointed and displeased her, hence this impasse. He needed to find a way out of it, find the key that would allow them to continue.The silence went on for some time. It didn't seem to bother Mercy one iota. She sat. . ... Men?No.A man.One man.The reason for her difficulties?She didn't know... ... And once, they had found a comfortable and secluded spot by the canal, a spot usually fought over but on that night oddly and fortuitously abandoned, as though an invitation to treat. They had made love twice that night, a heaving bundle of rolled back old clothes.He had touched her breasts.He had kissed them.She remembered little of her life, but she remembered that night.He would never have agreed even then to. The steady hiss of static ruled the airwaves. Alice handed me the radio’s microphone and instructed me to repeat the call to base every five minutes.Backing up the steep slope was a royal pain in the ass. Reverse gears are slow, and the best speed our Mule could manage up the incline was not much faster than a slow walk. Our retreat finally paid off when we came to a wide spot on the trail after twenty minutes of travel. Alice executed a tight three-point-turn, and at last, the front of the ATV.