The next free moment I got, I retraced my steps along that back fence. I wanted to hear the music again; I wanted to know if I'd just been dreaming the notes I'd heard, or if they'd really been there. And, if they had been there, where had they been coming from?

It was late Saturday morning, and it was cold outside. It was overcast, but the rain wasn't falling. It had been replaced by a bitter chill. I was just glad that the wind had died down, because if there was music, I would be able to hear it easier.

I was alone, but I wanted it that way. My sisters didn't go outside unless they had good reason to, and accompanying me on a wild goose chase wasn't their idea of fun. Of course, I hadn't told them what I was looking for. They wouldn't have believed me if I had said anything about that music. I didn't even know if I believed myself, so how could I expect them to understand? Besides, if I was alone, there would be no one to delay me, or to make noise when all I wanted was hush. If I didn't have hush, I wouldn't find a thing.

Suddenly I found myself back in that spot between the trees and the backyard fences. No one was out. The windows and porches I could see in the houses were empty. The field I was standing in was empty. Not a soul was within my sight. If I hadn't been so set on my mission, I would have honestly wondered at the strangeness of that. Mosspond wasn't a large town, but it did have people in it, and people needed fresh air to survive. At least small children should have been out, see-sawing or swinging in their backyards. Maybe adults should have been out as well, making sure their bulbs were buried before the winter arrived or raking some of the leaves that were already beginning to fall in haphazard patterns across their browning lawns.

There was no music as I stood there. I was very still for almost ten minutes, waiting like one of those Greek heroes who was petrified by Medusa's steely glare when they looked into her face. I tried to hold my breath, hoping that if I fell deadly silent, the music would come again. But it didn't.

I decided to move closer. My feet crunched across the grass as I took soft steps right up to the first of the trees. The spiny branches crept toward my cheeks as I leaned in toward the bare white trunks. Wiry twigs snagged my hair. I was very close to actually being in the woods, but if I hadn't gone in just as far as I did – if I had kept one inch back – I would not have seen the path that snaked like a creek through the naked trees.

There was no question about what to do. I needed to see where that path led.

Before I knew it, my legs were carrying me along the narrow dirt trail, leading me deeper into the trees. I wasn't afraid. These were not like the eerie woods in fairy tales where wolves tried to trap you or eyes peered out of the dark holes of haunted, knotted trees. They were not sunlit and twittering with birds, either. They were just sparsely placed trees, growing out of the ground in various patches, reaching their sorry limbs toward nonexistent rays of sun. I pitied them during my walk. It was all I had to think about.

I was able to see the house through the trees long before I came to it. It was a small, brown, one-level building. Its windows seemed dirty, and as I drew closer, I noticed that the land around the house was uncared for. Plants had grown up around and over the front path, and the bushes reached halfway up the windows by the door. At first I supposed that the place was uninhabited, so I didn't worry about whether I'd be welcome or not.

I was only about ten feet away from the left side of the house when a figure stepped out from around the corner of it. The untidiness, then, was to my advantage, because I immediately slipped behind a long stretch of brambles. While my quick-beating heart tried to calm itself from the fright it'd had, my eyes strained to see between the branches.

The person I saw was Jude Wood. He hadn't seen me, but I could certainly see him now. He looked paler than ever with his dark hair hanging over his forehead like spilt ink on a sheet of paper. In his hands, he was lugging a metal pail. I couldn't see what was inside of it.

Just before the boy got to the front door, it opened. I saw the screen come out and a hand holding it back, but I didn't see the face of the person there. "You got that wood, boy?" was what the person said. I thought it was a man.

"I got it," said Jude, although his voice was so soft that I wasn't even certain I'd heard him speak at all.

"You got it, what?" said the door-holder, and his voice rasped hard.

With his long sleeve, Jude wiped his forehead. "Sir."

"What, sir?"

"I got the wood, sir."

The hand pressed against the screen moved away, and Jude pulled back the swinging door and went on through it, leaving it to shriek shut behind him.

I waited in those bushes for what seemed an eternity. I didn't know what I was waiting for, but I suspected that it had something to do with wanting to see that boy again. He was too strange. There was something in him that was pulling at me, drawing me in, yanking at this place behind my ribs but not as far back as my heart. I had no idea what it was, but it kept me sitting there for at least half an hour. I can't even tell you what was going through my mind during all that time, because I don't know if anything was at all. I was just thinking empty thoughts; I was wondering blankness.

Jude didn't come out again.

It occurred to me, as I was wandering home later that afternoon, that the music I had heard was somehow connected with the house in the woods. Where else could it have come from? I hadn't seen anything more through those trees, not even an old tree-house. So the music had to have come from that house. Nothing had been playing when I found it this time, but maybe I'd heard a recording that day that I'd stood at the edge of the woods listening.

"Nat, you've got to eat something," said my mother in concern at dinner that night. I had too much on my mind to consider food. I would've told her about it, but she would probably have thought me strange. I didn't want my mother worrying about me. If I had stated right then that I was hearing music and snooping around houses in the woods, that's exactly what she would have done. I didn't think my mother could handle it.

So I tried to eat my potatoes and peas, and I even attempted to swallow the chicken and gravy. It was an honest try.

"There was a girl in school on Friday who told me that one of the boys she knows was looking at me all during our basic art class," said Vanessa, gazing at us out of the tops of her eyes as she scooped some peas onto her fork. "Her name is Nora."

My mother waited to hear more but realized there wasn't going to be any. "Well what was his name?"

Confused, Vanessa thought. She then replied, "How should I know?"

"It's just as well," sighed Mother. "I don't want my fifteen-year-old daughter dating anyone yet anyway."

"What? But Mom, what if someone asks me to go to a movie or something?"

"Has anyone?"

"That's not the point."

"Has anyone?"

Vanessa was in full pout. "No. But that's not the point. What if –"

"That's exactly the point. I don't want to talk about what ifs."

Allison glanced up from her side of the table. Talking with her mouth full, she said to Vanessa, "It doesn't matter. Any boys who take art are weird anyway. They always think they're so creative."

"That's not even what I was talking about," replied Vanessa miserably. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. "I don't care about him. He's not even cute. I just think it isn't fair . . . that's all."

Our mother's silence settled the matter. Vanessa sulked the rest of the meal. I sat in my own silence for some time. It was a sure thing that Vanessa would get looks from boys. Both of my sisters were very pretty. They had the dark hair that my mother had and her straight nose and chin. I had ended up with my father's plainness, but it didn't worry me. It was a matter of pride to have my father's features. Somehow I felt it was all I had left of him.

There were instances where my opinions of my sisters weren't too nice, but more often than not it was because I worried for them. They probably saw my worry as irritating, but I couldn't help that. I was only anxious for them because I couldn't relate to either Allison or Vanessa, and I was afraid that if I was ever supposed to talk seriously to them, I wouldn't be able to say much of anything at all. Lately, I'd been too wrapped up in all the changes around me to pay them as much attention as usual.

"How was your day, Nat? What were you out exploring all afternoon?"

My mother's question caught me slightly off guard. I tried to look busy with eating my food, but in my daze I'd eaten every bit of what was on the plate before me. All I could do was answer. "The town . . . you know. Just the streets and the fields behind some of the houses."

With a smile (which I felt rather than saw) my mother added, "You know, I was talking to Mrs. McBride across the street, and she told me that not so far past the school – if you go on down through the hills behind it – there's a river there. Moss River, she called it. She said it's just beautiful, and there's a large part where it scoops out into a lake, or a really big pond. I guess that's why they call this place Mosspond. Maybe we should go check it out sometime . . . you think?"

I stared at my plate. "Sure."

Her smile warmed. "Well, we'll have to wait until the weather lightens, but we'll do it as soon as the rain lets up."

Shoving away from the table and moving to put her dishes in the sink, Vanessa said, "You might be waiting forever."