Sapere

Chapter 1: The Time We Met

Mae Anderson didn’t cry when the moving truck pulled away from her old driveway in the city. She didn’t cry when her bedroom disappeared behind cardboard boxes or when her best friend Eliza waved a little too long. But she did cry the first night in Willow Creek—quietly, under her new floral bedspread that smelled like cedar and distance.

She had turned thirteen three weeks earlier. Too young to feel completely in control, too old to admit she felt lost.

Willow Creek was the kind of town where time moved slower. The river carved its way gently through the middle of it, and the people were either too friendly or not friendly at all. The only grocery store had one cashier. The movie theater played the same film three weeks in a row. And Mae was convinced nothing interesting would ever happen here.

Until she met Leo.

It was a Tuesday morning, two days after the move, and the air smelled like sun-warmed grass and riverbank mud. Mae wandered toward the park with a sketchbook under her arm. Drawing helped her forget things—like the silence in the new house and how her mom spoke in careful half-sentences ever since Dad left.

She found a shaded spot under a sycamore tree by the river and began to draw the water. It never stood still, but she tried anyway, chasing curves and shadows with her pencil. That’s when she heard a voice.

“You’re making the river too tame.”

Mae looked up, startled.

A boy stood a few feet away, hands in his hoodie pockets despite the summer heat. His hair was sun-bleached and messy, and he had a little scar on his chin that looked like it came from a fall on gravel. He couldn’t have been much older than her—maybe fourteen, tops.

“It’s a river,” she replied. “Not a lion.”

He grinned. “Exactly. Rivers don’t sit still for portraits. You gotta let them be wild.”

Mae stared at him. “Do you always talk like that to strangers?”

“Only if they’re making rivers look boring.”

She smirked despite herself. “I’m Mae.”

“Leo. I live in that blue house across the street from the bakery. You must be the new girl. My grandma said your mom teaches literature or something?”

Mae nodded. “At the middle school.”

Leo stepped closer and sat beside her without asking. “You gonna draw me next?”

“Only if you sit perfectly still and stop interrupting.”

He laughed, but he did sit still, tilting his chin just so. “Do I get to see it after?”

“Maybe.”

They sat in silence for a while, the kind that doesn’t feel awkward. Birds chirped from the trees. Somewhere across the river, a dog barked once, then again.

Mae glanced up as she shaded the curve of his cheek. “You live with your grandma?”

“Yeah. My parents are… far away.” He shrugged. “Military stuff.”

She didn’t push. He didn’t ask about her dad. That was nice.

By the time the sun had shifted and the sketch was almost done, Leo stood, brushing grass from his shorts.

“Wanna see something cool?”

Mae hesitated, then nodded.

He led her down a narrow path beside the river. The trail wound between tall reeds and wildflowers, and eventually opened onto a tiny wooden bridge, hidden from view. It was old and half-collapsed, but sturdy enough.

“This is my favorite place,” Leo said. “No one comes here except me. Well, and now you.”

Mae walked to the middle and looked down. The water sparkled below, alive and endless.

“You can hear everything from here,” he whispered. “Frogs, dragonflies, even secrets if you listen close.”

Mae tilted her head, eyes closed. “I don’t hear secrets.”

Leo shrugged. “Maybe they’re shy today.”

They sat on the bridge’s edge, legs dangling, and Leo pointed out names of clouds and stories behind the shapes they made. A dragon chasing a boat. A girl holding a locket. A castle turned upside-down.

Mae had never met anyone like him. Not in the city, not in books.

As the sun dipped lower, Leo turned to her. “Are you gonna stay here forever?”

“I don’t know,” Mae said truthfully. “Maybe. Mom says we need a fresh start.”

He nodded. “Fresh starts are like blank pages. You get to choose what to draw on them.”

Mae liked that.

That night, she drew the bridge. She drew Leo, too, not because he asked—but because she didn’t want to forget how he looked when he smiled at nothing in particular. She taped the sketch inside her closet, behind a sweatshirt. Just for her.

---

Over the next few weeks, they became inseparable.

They met every morning near the park bench by the bakery. Leo always brought something weird—rock candy, a leaf shaped like a heart, once even a frog in a jar (which Mae made him release). In return, she shared her sketchbook and her stories, making up little worlds they could escape into.

Willow Creek no longer felt like exile. It felt like a story unfolding.

They built a hideout in the woods using old boards and milk crates. Leo called it “The Paper Kingdom.” Mae painted a sign with blue stars and crooked letters. They kept a jar of wishes inside, each written on a tiny folded scrap. Someday, they said, they’d read them all aloud.

Sometimes, they fought. Over silly things—who could climb trees faster, what the best jelly flavor was, how to pronounce “pecan.” But the fights never lasted more than a day. Leo would leave an apology at her doorstep: a doodle, a flower, once even a pinecone with googly eyes glued on.

The town noticed, of course. Mrs. Halloway at the post office called them “the river kids.” Teenagers on bikes teased them with sing-songy chants. Mae blushed. Leo didn’t care.

But on her birthday in September, he gave her something that changed everything.

They were sitting on the bridge again, watching the sunset melt into orange and gold.

Leo pulled a crumpled paper heart from his pocket. “I made this. It’s not perfect, but…”

Mae turned it over. On the back, he’d drawn the bridge. And the two of them, stick figures holding hands.

“I wanted to say—” he started.

But just then, Mae’s phone buzzed. A text from her mom: Come home now. Emergency.

She looked up, panicked. “I have to go.”

Leo stood with her. “Is everything okay?”

“I don’t know. I’ll tell you later.”

He handed her the paper heart, silent.

Mae clutched it all the way home.

That night, her mom told her the truth.

Her dad wasn’t coming back.

Not this time.

---

The next day, Mae didn’t show up at the park. Or the bridge. Or anywhere.

Leo waited, but she didn’t come.

He left another pinecone at her door. This one with a smile drawn on it.

Mae didn’t open the door.

That’s how the first summer ended—on a cliff of unspoken words, with a paper heart folded in a drawer and a boy still waiting beside a river that never stood still.