who is linda? what does tim's relationship with her have to do with the stories?

Tim and Linda were both nine years old. They were in love. "It had all the shadings and complexities of mature adult love, and maybe more, because there were not yet words for it, and because it was not yet fixed to comparisons or chronologies or the ways by which adults measure such things. I just loved her." Chapter 22, pg. 228 They somehow arranged to go on a date. His parents took them to a movie. She was wearing a strange cap, like one of Santa's elves might wear, and when he commented on it, trying to be nice, his mother gave him a severe look that surprised him.

Telling a story about someone brings them back to life. The men did this with Ted Lavender. After he died they talked to him and answered for him. It almost makes him seem alive--something that happened with Linda, too, after she died.