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essay for it.”
    Jesse stops walking.
    “What do you mean, study abroad? Study abroad where?”
    “I don’t know. Denmark, maybe. Somewhere where the boys are tall and dreamy.”
    They’ve reached the library and Wyatt starts to head up the sidewalk to the front door, but Jesse grabs his arm to stop him.
    “Excuse me, but what are you talking about? I mean, what are you
talking
about, Denmark? You can’t go to Denmark next semester, that’s ridiculous.”
    “It’s not ridiculous, it’s intercultural exchange. The American Field Service runs it. My mom thought it might be a good thing for me.” Wyatt’s trying to sound breezy, but he just sounds guilty and strained. He hasn’t made eye contact with Jesse since he dropped this bomb—he keeps looking over her head or just past her shoulder.
    “But Denmark is, like, practically a socialist country! You’d hate it there!”
    Despite the distance that has grown up between them, Jesse still can’t imagine making it through sophomore year without talking to Wyatt every night and seeing him at least a couple of times a week.
    “Just because they have the wrong idea about how to run their government doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy their fjords and clean public transit and herring-based cuisine,” Wyatt says. “If they even have fjords. I believe they have fjords. Anyway, I probably won’t even get accepted. I have to write an essay for the application about what I personally am willing to do to promote equality between nations. Obviously, my real opinions on that topic are unlikely to impress anyone at the American Field Service. As you know, I believe that all countries are equal, but some countries are more equal than others. I may have to lie about my beliefs.”
    Wyatt chunks open the heavy library door, and Jesse follows him inside.
    The Minot Public Library is one of the places Jesseknows best in the world. Before they renovated it, it was just like a big, old, funky Victorian house overflowing with books from floor to ceiling, with worn, blood-red Oriental carpets on the floors and mismatched chairs and tables set out here and there for patrons to sit at. There were so many books that some of them were just laid out in stacks on side tables, or shelved in weird cabinets like where you’d keep dishes in your dining room. Some of the categories were strange, too—traces of the curious mind of some long-lost librarian who ignored the Library of Congress and organized the place according to her own interests and predilections: Cowboy Romances, Science FACTion, Travel Guides for the Elderly and Infirm, Intergalactic Adventure Stories. If you wanted to find anything, you had to already know where it was.
    Growing up, Jesse knew every corner of every room. She knew exactly where to find her favorite picture books in the children’s room, and she even had favorite toys she would visit on a regular basis. The stuffed animals were overloved and overhandled—communally owned by every kid in town—and they smelled like mold and sand when she brought them up to her face to kiss them, but she adored them anyway: the long, rainbow-striped worm; the thin-furred, floppy-necked dog. As a kid, every time she walked in the front door she would rub the belly of the statue of the bronze boy holding his fishing rod on his shoulder that stood in the corner of the foyer next to thecreaky stairs. It was a ritual; it didn’t feel right to pass him without greeting him that way. For a long time he was taller than she was. Then she was taller than he was. Then one day she read the little bronze plaque on the base by his bare feet and realized that he wasn’t just some random country boy going fishing, he was supposed to be Huck Finn, from the books by Mark Twain. Somehow after that she didn’t feel close to him anymore, and she never rubbed his belly again.
    A couple of years ago, the library had a massive fund drive and raised the money to tear off the back half of the building