“Get in,” I said, pulling alongside a startled Jack, just feet away from the spot in the school parking lot where he’d once pulled the same line on me.

“What?”

“Get in.”

“I can’t. I’m on my way to Walden.” He braced himself against my car door.

This was not going according to plan. He was supposed to think my switch-up of last fall’s kidnapping cute and clever and covered in awesome sauce.

“Get. In.” I said.

He sighed, jogged around to the passenger side, and lowered himself into the seat. I took off before he could even buckle up, another turning-of-the-tables from last year.

“Where are we going? I need to call in if I’ll be late.” He pulled out his phone and began punching keys.

I grabbed his phone, swerving to the left with the maneuver. He tried to get it back; the tussle resulted in me sitting on it and us nearly having a head-on with a big black SUV.

“Give me my phone.”

“No.” I squirmed in my seat, possibly butt-dialing Bangkok. He crossed his arms and stared straight ahead but didn’t dare go after the phone. He didn’t like my driving under the best of circumstances.

We drove in silence for a long time. At least twice, I almost pulled a U-ie, aborting the mission, but something in my recent mindset — an overall resolve to be more proactive in everything — won out.

When we turned down the snow-banked lane to Elkhorn Lake, he finally spoke to me. “So, it’s a full reenactment?”

“Something like that.”

“Why?”

I pulled into a parking spot overlooking the fateful scene of our skating accident and near drowning. It was a bitter cold day. The wind skittered ripples of snow across the iron-banded surface of the lake. No skaters had braved today’s conditions; we had the place to ourselves.

“Because”— the words I’m afraid edged dangerously close to forming —“I miss you. Can we walk?”

Though the wind bore down from above, making quick work of my warmest jacket as we followed the path down to the lake, another force was lifting everything from the fringe of my scarf to the wisps of my hair to my spirits. I could tell that the place was having a similar effect on Jack. His pace slowed, the trudge of his step was audibly lighter, and when he took my gloved hand, I could feel the warmth of his touch through two layers of wool.

At the lake’s edge, I crumpled into him. Without uttering a word, we kissed urgently and greedily, a silent exchange of apologies and promises.

“Now I get the need for a field trip,” he said, tangling my hair in his roaming fingers.

“Field trip? No way. This was an abduction. Never forget the lengths I’ll go to.”

“As if I could forget anything about you.” With his hands on my shoulders, he spun me half a turn. From behind, he wrapped his arms around me. We then gazed out onto the lake for many moments.

“OK,” I said. “I got what I came for, but now I’m freezing. Race ya!” I was fueled by the prospect of blasting the heater; he, by some macho can’t-fail-gene — another of the Y-chromosome traits. He beat me; no surprise there. But I had the keys and dangled them teasingly. I found his cell phone on the driver’s seat and tossed it to him before sliding in.

He waited until we were on the road, but punched in what appeared to be a speed dial.

“It’s Jack. I know. . . . I’m sorry. . . . I’m not feeling well, but I should have called.”

I barely recognized the groveler before me. He was even tipping his head forward in some sort of subconscious genuflect. As if Stanley wouldn’t understand the need for a little personal time.

On an impulse — a naughty one — I leaned over and said, “Just tell Stanley the truth: that, for once, I won.”

Jack’s face went white. He half-choked into the phone, “It won’t happen again,” after which he snapped the phone shut, turned to me, and glared.

“What?” I said. “Like Stanley doesn’t come running every time my mom snaps her fingers.”

“Except that wasn’t Stanley.”

I gripped the steering wheel, not wanting to hear the rest.

“That was Brigid,” Jack continued, “and, for the record, she’s pissed.”

The rest of the drive home was awkward. Jack kept scratching his right index finger against his thumb as he stared out the passenger window, his mood so foul he dirtied the glass. A part of me was livid that it had been Brigid’s number Jack had on speed dial. Another part felt bad that I’d put him in the position of lying to an authority figure. But the lion’s share felt entirely justified. We had needed to shut out the rest of the world and reaffirm our connection. Proactive was the word I murmured all the way home.