“They’re Rumspringa boys,” Alice whispers.

Rumspringa.

The word means “running around.” If you’re Old Order, you can act English once you turn sixteen. You’re allowed to try out worldly things, in case you’re not sure about getting baptized. It’s your last chance to decide if you’re going to stay Amish forever.

As far as I can tell, nobody ever walks away from the church. Of course, that doesn’t stop them from having as much fun as possible, if only for a couple of years.

My dad says it’s wrong to step over the line of temptation. The Old Order can even wear English clothes—baggy jeans and tees. At least, the boys always do. If you asked me, the rules aren’t the same for girls. Still, I never hear anyone talk about it. They’d probably love to swap their long dresses for jeans.

I know I would.

Everybody says the Rumspringa girls have the same choices as boys, but I don’t believe it. Not when you see them sweating in their long dresses, while the boys run around in T-shirts. You see boys drinking more, too. When they toss their beer cans in the park, Dad says it’s just “boys being boys.” He says girls wouldn’t do something stupid like that. Girls aren’t supposed to mess up.

Yeah, that’s what he really means.

“So why did you ignore my letters?” she asks, staring at the ground.

Now I get it. Is that what’s bothering her?

“I’m really sorry.”

“Yeah?” Alice still won’t look at me.

“I feel bad for not writing back.”

That’s the truth.

“So why didn’t you?” she wants to know.

When I try to come up with an excuse, it doesn’t sound right.

“I’ve been so busy helping Dad at the shop . . .”

She nods. “That’s what I figured.”

I’m not sure she understands. Alice’s world up north is so different from mine. Living on a farm without electricity, it’s work, work, and more work. That’s how she describes it in her letters. To be honest, I was fascinated by it. The “chicken chores” and early morning cowmilking.

The tangy scent of wood smoke lacing the paper.

There’s another reason I haven’t answered Alice’s letters. We used to talk about all kinds of things. When I told her my secret—I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in Pinecraft. I want to go to college and study the ocean—she didn’t make fun of me. She listened. Lately, all she talks about is boys.

A plane slices across the sky, leaving a trail like a zipper.

Alice squints. “How does it stay in the air without falling?”

“The wings push it up,” I try to explain.

“But the wings aren’t moving.”

“Yeah, but the plane’s going really fast. So that makes it lift.”

“Whatever.” She crouches down and digs inside her sock. I have no clue what she’s doing. Then she pulls out a silver tube of lip gloss. Where did she get that? I bet she’s had it a long time because there’s hardly any left. Just a stubby lump of pink.

“Here,” she says, slipping it into my hand. “It’s almost gone anyway.”

I’m embarrassed, just holding it. On the bottom, it says, Summer Passion. I glance around the park, hoping nobody sees me.

“Go on. Try it,” she says.

Okay. Here goes.

I dab on the lip gloss. “Feels weird.”

Alice laughs. “Don’t you wish you had Rumspringa?”

Actually, I’m dying to know what it’s like. A small taste of freedom.

But there’s no Rumspringa for Mennonites. That’s one of the reasons my church broke off from the Old Order, a long time ago.

The Old Order girls keep their secrets hidden. They whisper to each other in Deitsch, hunched at picnic tables under the oaks. They move a little quieter, as if they’re trying to take up less space.

The Rumspringa boys are different from the guys in Pinecraft. They hang out in packs like dogs and make a lot of noise, drinking beer in the park. That’s why there’s so much broken glass sparkling in the dirt. To be honest, it’s really annoying. Sometimes I wish they’d get back on the bus and go home.

I wipe off the lip gloss on the back of my hand, but my mouth feels sticky. If Dad caught me wearing makeup, I’d be grounded for life.

Alice leans against the chainlink fence. “Have you kissed anybody yet?”

I look away. “What about you?”

She smiles.

“Tobias.”

I can’t believe it. Alice is a year older than me, but sometimes I feel like she’s my little sister. She’s always asking questions. What’s this thing? How does it work? I used to think she’d never catch up. Now I’m the one falling behind.

“Don’t be jealous, okay?” she says, grabbing my hand. “I can’t wait for you to meet him.”

Maybe I am a little jealous.

“There’s a party on the beach tonight,” she says, never taking her eyes off the boys. “It’s going to be so amazing. You should come.”

Yeah, right. There’s no way Dad will let me go. If I can have things like cars and washing machines, why can’t I have Rumspringa too?

I watch the boys lunge at the basketball net. “How are we supposed to get there?”

“Easy. Tobias knows somebody with a car.”

A car is the first thing the Rumspringa boys want. And if they want something, they’ll find a way to get it.

“What if my dad finds out?”

“Just tell him you’re going to the Friday Night Youth Fellowship.”

My stomach burns. “I can’t lie to Dad.”

“You don’t have to lie. When it gets dark, walk over to church,” she says. “Then call my cell.”

“Your what?”

Alice reaches into her bag. She takes out a sparkly pink cell phone. “Pretty sweet, huh? My boyfriend gave it to me.”

Dad has a cell phone for work, but he never lets me borrow it. Alice’s cell looks brand new. On the back, her name is spelled in tiny plastic diamonds.

“So I’ll see you tonight?” she says.

“Maybe.”

“Come on, Lucy. Remember when we used to sneak out?”

Me and Alice used to climb the mango trees in the empty lot near my house. Hours would pass without our feet touching the ground. I never felt so free.

“Let me give you the number,” she says, taking a pen out of her bag. She pushes back my sleeve and scribbles on my wrist like she’s drawing a tattoo. “There. Now you can’t lose it.”

I almost want to rub it off.

 “I have to go,” I tell her. “My dad needs help at the shop.”

She makes a face. “You’re always working.”

“Tell me about it.”

“At least we’re finally done with school,” she says. “If I had to do that again, I’d go crazy.”

When you’re Old Order, you have to drop out of school in eighth grade. The boys go straight to work with their dads. They usually end up in a factory, building furniture or painting RVs.

That’s what Alice told me.

She never said what girls are supposed to do.

In Florida, the rules are different. I finished all my classes last year. Tenth grade. That’s as far as it goes. A lot of my friends were homeschooled. Nobody goes to college, unless you’re studying something like nursing.

“Don’t you miss school?” I ask.

“Yeah, right,” Alice says. “I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”

“It’s better than sanding lumber all day.”

Although I love whacking nails with a hammer, love the smell of sawdust and cedar, sometimes I wonder if my fingers will ever feel soft.

“If you don’t get out of Pinecraft now, you’re going to be stuck here forever,” Alice says.

“Soon as I save up, I’m moving to California.”

I can’t listen to Alice anymore. Her head is full of dreams. I’ve got big dreams too. I want to go to college and learn about the ocean. Swim with dolphins and sharks. Watch loggerhead turtles lay eggs under the full moon. The world is a living thing that changes and grows.

Try explaining that to Dad.

When I talk to Dad about college, he says it’s too much money. But I’ve been looking up schools at the library. A nice lady who works there helped me apply for scholarships. I’ve got my hopes on a school for marine biology in St. Petersburg. I sent the applications last summer. I still haven’t heard back.

 “I really have to go,” I tell Alice, handing her the lip gloss.

“Here. Keep this. My dad’s going to kill me.”

As I turn to leave, she reaches inside her bag.

“Got a present for you,” she says, handing me something wrapped in brown paper.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yeah, I know,” she says, smiling.

I tear off the paper. “Is it a book?” I ask hopefully.

It is.

The Blue Planet: A Natural History of the Oceans.

“Because you love the water so much,” she says.

As I turn the pages, I look at pictures of animals from far away. Seals bobbing in the frozen seas of the Arctic. Tiny fish with enormous eyes, glowing in water so deep, we could never find them. Birds that migrate for thousands of miles without ever stopping to rest.

I stare at those pictures a long time.

“Don’t you like it?” she asks.

“It’s beautiful. But I can’t keep this.”

“Why not?”

“You know why,” I say, wiping my face.

If Dad catches me with a book about the e-word—evolution—I’ll be in big trouble.

For a minute, Alice doesn’t say anything. Then she gives me a big hug.

“You’re supposed to say thank you.”

When I get home that afternoon, Dad’s on the front porch. He’s been working in the yard all day and his face is slick with sweat.

“Been waiting for you,” he says, marching across the lawn.

Excerpted from SnowbirdsCopyright © 2017 by Crissa-Jean Chappell and published by F+W Media, Inc./Merit Press. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.