Page 99

This brief page turns tenderness into style, linking hand-holding, speech, and sweetness in a tiny exchange.

Its scale is miniature, but the effect is intimate rather than slight. The page shows how gently spoken language itself becomes part of attraction.

A miniature page, only the closing beat of the love scene, but its smallness is intimacy rather than slightness. 'Yes, then let me have your hand while we walk to the trees.' She giggles, 'you say things so nicely,' and he answers 'And you say yes, so sweetly.' The gentleness of the spoken words has itself become the substance of the attraction - the whole tenderness compressed into two reciprocal compliments before the narrative turns toward Juvenile Hall.