Darla grabbed my hand and pulled me back out the front door, under the crazy crooked porch and then down onto the earth. The flip flops felt foreign and so did the pants. My nakedness had lasted for so long that I’d become accustomed to it, and now I had both hands free again, no Mylar to use as a sort of fig leaf. She took me around the corner and then walked straight up to a little junky shed, the kind of thing my parents would have had removed from their property long ago. Moss grew into the roof, so much that I started to wonder if it was one of those green-roof experiments, a biodiversity project that maybe she’d started back in eighth grade. No – it was just that neglected. “What is this?” I whispered. “Hang on,” her voice held a tone of hope and pride that made me even more intrigued, and that made me feel comfortable and in my own skin again. She pulled a key out of her pocket and slid it into a padlock, unclicked it, unlooped it and then opened the latch.
