“You never got the chance to find out,” he pointed out.

“No. Coming back and facing everything was exactly what I needed to do. And if I ever leave here again, I can do it with confidence. I won’t be running from it.”

That made him stop and turn to her. “Is that what you think I did?”

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “But here’s some advice you don’t want to hear: Spend more time here and maybe people will see you as you are now, and not as the Stick Man.”

“You sound like my sister.”

“Don’t give Paxton a hard time,” Willa surprised herself by saying. “She’s got a lot on her plate.”

“So now you’re bosom buddies?” he said, smiling as he took her hand again. “We’re almost there.”

He led her off the trail and through the woods, and eventually they stopped at a small tributary of the river they’d just crossed. It trickled down a very large, flat rock and into a forest pool.

Colin took off his backpack and threw it to the bank below. Then he sat down and unlaced his boots. “You know, the reason they say Jonathan Tinpenny survived is not because he fell off the falls but that he actually slid down this rock instead.”

“What are you doing?” she asked suspiciously.

“Just taking off my boots.” He stood and tossed his shoes down, too.

She suddenly understood what he was going to do. “Did you see those signs? It said no sliding down the rock.”

“No, I didn’t see them,” he said, walking carefully out onto the glistening rock. “I never see them.”

“You’ve done this before?”

He sat down and scooted to the edge, sucking his breath at how cold the water obviously was as it flowed over his legs. “Come on, Willa. I dare you.”

“You think that’s all it’s going to take. A dare?”

“I know you want to.”

“You cannot possibly know that.”

“Until you can tell me exactly what you do want, I’m going to make it up as I go along.” And with that, he propelled himself forward and went sliding down the wet rock.

“Colin!” she yelled after him.

He splashed into the water, disappearing for a moment. Then he resurfaced, shaking his head and flinging water out of his hair. He looked up at her. “Come on! The water feels great.”

“We’re going to get arrested!”

He floated on his back, still staring up at her. “That didn’t used to stop you.”

Staring down at him, her fingers twitching with the thought of what a rush it would be to slide down this rock, she realized that yes, there was some of the Joker left in her. Probably always would be. And when she acknowledged that, she could finally see how little there was left of it. Enough to get her into trouble every once in a while, to satisfy this crazy need to feel her heart pound with adrenaline, but not enough to ruin the life she’d made for herself. And that made her feel better, not quite so afraid of herself anymore. And not so afraid of Colin, either, and all that she thought he’d known about her just because she hadn’t had the courage to look there herself.

What an absolutely freeing epiphany.

So this was what she was going to do. She was going to take her boots off and throw them to the bank below. Then she was going to scoot onto the large, flat rock. She was going to slide on the water into the pool below, and enjoy it every moment. She was definitely going to come up laughing.

And that’s exactly what she did.

After a lot of swimming and flirtatious playing, they finally lifted themselves onto a rock on the bank to dry themselves in the sun. They stretched out side by side in comfortable silence. Willa was almost certain that Colin felt smug about getting her to do this. But she was feeling too good to call him on it. The rock was warm underneath her, the gentle sound of the water was lulling, and the forest smelled of mulch and green leaves, of both the past and the future. She wasn’t much of a nature girl, but she could get used to this.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Colin said.

Willa turned her head on the rock. He’d taken off his T-shirt, and his bare chest was tan and taut. His eyes were closed, so she felt free to study him at her leisure. She’d never spent time with someone so tall. There was so much of him. “Yes?”

“What makes you think your father got fired?”

That surprised her. “Because he never went back to teaching.”

“I was there the day he left,” Colin said. “And he wasn’t fired. He quit.”

Willa sat up and turned to him. “What?”

Colin opened his eyes, then lifted one arm to block out the sun. “When you pulled the fire alarm and then let that banner fall, announcing that you were really the Joker, my parents showed up almost immediately, demanding an apology from the principal because I’d been his number-one suspect since you put that Ogden Nash quote on the marquee. Your father was called in to apologize, as well. I could tell he was upset with your being escorted out of the school by the police. It was clear he didn’t want to be there, apologizing to us like he’d done something wrong. By that time everyone had figured out that the reason you’d been so successful as the Joker was because you had your dad’s keys and passwords. The principal said to your father, ‘I know it’s not your fault you have a sneaky daughter. You won’t be penalized for that.’ And your father just lost it. He said that if I had pulled something like what you had just pulled and was caught in the act, I wouldn’t have been hauled off by the police. In fact, when everyone thought it was me, no one took action, because of who my family was. He said he was proud of your acts of rebellion, that he wished he’d had the courage to do it himself when he was your age, and that he’d known what you were doing all along. Almost from the very beginning. He said something about being tired of living such a cautious life and for once he was throwing caution to the wind. And he quit.”

Willa was flabbergasted. “That doesn’t sound anything like my father.”

“I know,” Colin agreed. “But that’s what happened.”

“He knew?”

“Apparently so. I thought you should know.”

“That makes absolutely no sense.”

Colin shrugged and closed his eyes again, and it didn’t take long to tell that he’d gone to sleep. She sat there, her arms wrapped around her knees, thinking about the possibility of her father actually knowing about her pranks all along, about him saying he was finally throwing caution to the wind. What did that mean? She’d always assumed he was happy with his life, happy doing what Grandmother Georgie told him to do. And she’d thought he was ashamed of her actions as a teenager.

She and Paxton had planned to meet at the nursing home tomorrow to talk to Agatha again. Maybe Willa could ask Agatha about her father and Grandmother Georgie’s relationship. If it was like everything else she’d learned lately, there was a lot more going on there than she’d thought.

She didn’t know how long she’d sat there, lost in thought, before she turned to see if Colin was still asleep.

He wasn’t. He was staring at her, one arm propped under his head.

“Did you have a nice nap?”

“Sorry,” he said as he sat up, his ab muscles tightening. “I didn’t mean to conk out on you. I don’t sleep well, especially when I come home. It catches up with me.”

She gave him a sympathetic smile and brushed some of his dark hair off his forehead. “Yes, I noticed that when you passed out on my couch.”

“That is a great couch.”

Their eyes met, both smiling. As if by mutual consent, Colin leaned forward and she met him halfway, their lips touching gently, sun-warm and dry. It wasn’t long before gentle turned hungry and insistent. She found herself leaning back, and he went with her. She’d never felt like this with a man before. He made her chest feel like it was going to explode. God, to feel this way without actually breaking the law was amazing. Okay, so technically they had broken the law by sliding down the rock, but kissing here on the bank, this was simply living in the moment, and there was no law against that.