“Tom says he’s not talking much,” Ms. Rhodes said to Leni, leaning close.

“I don’t know what he needs,” Leni said, turning back, watching Matthew take a seat and strap his seat belt tight.

“A friend,” Ms. Rhodes said, but it was a stupid answer. The kind of thing adults said. Obvious. But what was that friend supposed to say?

The pilot climbed aboard and strapped himself in and put on a headset, then started the engine. Leni heard Marthe and Agnes giggling in their seats behind her.

The float plane engine hummed, the metal all around her rattled. Waves slapped the floats.

The pilot was saying something about seat cushions and what to do in case of an unscheduled water landing.

“Wait. That means a crash. He’s talking about what to do if we crash,” she said, feeling the start of panic.

“We’ll be fine,” Ms. Rhodes said. “You can’t be Alaskan and be afraid of small planes. This is how we get around.”

Leni knew it was true. With so little of the state accessible by roads, boats and planes were important up here. In the winter, the vastness of Alaska was connected by frozen rivers and lakes. In the summer all of that fast-moving water separated and isolated them. Bush planes helped them get around. Still, she hadn’t been in an airplane before and it felt remarkably unsteady and unreliable. She clutched the armrests and held on. She tried to sweep fear out of her mind as the plane rambled past the breakwater, clattered hard, and began lifting into the sky. The plane swayed sickeningly, leveled out. Leni didn’t open her eyes. If she did, she knew she’d see things that scared her: bolts that could pop out, windows that could crack, mountains they could crash into. She thought about that plane that had crashed in the Andes a few years ago. The survivors had become cannibals.

Her fingers ached. That was how tightly she was holding on.

“Open your eyes,” Ms. Rhodes said. “Trust me.”

She opened her eyes, pushed the vibrating curls out of her face.

Through a circle of Plexiglas, the world was something she’d never seen before. Blue, black, white, purple. From this vantage point, the geographical history of Alaska came alive for her; she saw the violence of its birth—volcanoes like Mounts Redoubt and Augustine erupting; mountain peaks thrust up from the sea and then worn down by rocky blue glaciers; fjords sculpted by rivers of moving ice. She saw Homer, huddled on a strip of land between high sandstone bluffs, fields covered in snow, and the Spit pointing out into the bay. Glaciers had formed all of this landscape, cut through and crunched forward, hollowing out deep bays, leaving mountains on either side.

The colors were spectacular, saturating. Across the blue bay, the Kenai Mountains rose like something out of a fairy tale, white sawlike blades that pushed high, high into the blue sky. In places, the glaciers on their steep sides were the pale blue of robins’ eggs.

The mountains expanded, swallowed the horizon. Jagged, white peaks striated by black crevasses and turquoise glaciers. “Wow,” she said, pressing closer to the window. They flew close to mountain peaks.

And then they were descending, gliding low over an inlet. Snow blanketed everything, lay in glittering patches on the beach, turned to ice and slush by the water. The float plane swerved and banked, lifted up again, and flew over a thicket of white trees. She saw a huge bull moose walking toward the bay.

They were over an inlet and descending fast.

She clutched the armrests again, closed her eyes, prepared.

They landed with a hard thump, and waves pounded the pontoons. The pilot killed the engine, jumped out of the plane, splashing into the ice-cold water, dragging the float plane higher onto the shore, tying it to a fallen log. Slush floated around his ankles.

Leni got out of the plane carefully (nothing was more dangerous up here than getting wet in the winter), walked along the float, and jumped out onto the slushy beach. Matthew was right behind her.

Ms. Rhodes gathered the few students together on the icy shore. “Okay, kids. The littles and I are going to hike over to the ridge. Matthew, you and Leni just go exploring. Have some fun.”

Leni looked around. The beauty of this place, the majesty of it, was overwhelming. A deep and abiding peace existed here; there were no human voices, no thumping footsteps, no laughter or engines running. The natural world spoke loudest here, the breathing of the tide across the rocks, the slap of water on the float plane’s pontoons, the distant barking of sea lions lumped together on a rock, being circled by chattering gulls.

The water beyond the shore ice was a stunning aqua, the color Leni imagined the Caribbean Sea to be, with a snowy shoreline decorated with huge white-covered black rocks. Snowcapped peaks muscled in close. Up high, Leni saw ivory-colored dots scattered on the impossibly steep sides—mountain goats. She reached into her pocket for her last, precious roll of film.

She couldn’t wait to take some pictures, but she had to be judicious with the film.

Where would she start? The ice-glazed beach rocks that looked like seed pearls? The frozen fern fronds growing up from a snow-rounded black log? The turquoise water? She turned toward Matthew, started to say something, but he was gone.

She turned, felt icy water shushing over her boots, and saw Matthew standing far down the beach, alone, his arms crossed. He had dropped his parka; it lay inches away from the incoming waves. His hair whipped across his face.

She splashed through the water toward him, reached out. “Matthew, you need to put your coat on. It’s cold—”

He yanked away from her touch, stumbled away. “Get away from me,” he said harshly. “I don’t want you to see…”

“Matthew?” She grabbed his arm, forced him to look at her. His eyes were red-rimmed from crying.

He shoved her away. She stumbled back, tripped over a piece of driftwood, and fell hard.

It happened fast enough to take her breath away. She lay there, sprawled on the frozen rocks, the cold water washing toward her, and stared up at him, her elbow stinging with pain.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “Are you okay? I didn’t mean to do that.”

Leni got to her feet, stared at him. I didn’t mean to do that. The same words she’d heard spoken by her dad.

“There’s something wrong with me,” Matthew said in a shaky voice. “My dad blames me and I can’t sleep for shit, and without my mom, the house is so quiet that I want to scream.”