The picture that inspired a passage

From Farewell Bend, page 163:

My first encounter with what I thought felt like love snuck up on me that spring. . . .

Sally was a Payette cheerleader who accompanied Joyce to the one public performance of our senior play that March. After the curtain call, Joyce and Sally followed our cast members to a classroom where we removed our make-up. Joyce and her friend joined our kidding about fluffed lines and a lot of laughing about the moment in the second act when I tripped over a bookcase and had to chase my rolling police officer’s cap across the stage through the bookstore props.

“I thought you were going to fall on your face,” Sally giggled after Joyce eagerly recreated the scene. More than half the twenty-five students milling around the room clapped loudly at her mimicry.

“I almost did,” I mumbled. “Fall down.”