Seventeen

William Sylvanus Baxter, a tremulous seventeen-year-old Hamlet in knickerbockers, squanders every coin of his allowance on Lola Pratt, a glittering, gum-cracking siren whose laughter sounds like coins tossed into a tin cup. When the coquette elopes with a moustachioed automobile dealer, William wanders the gas-lamp streets clutching an empty wallet and a heart cratered like a battlefield. May Parcher—barefoot, strawberry-scarred, and armed with a slingshot of memories—appears on his porch at dawn, offers him a stolen peach, and quietly rewrites his epitaph into a love letter.