I winced.

  “Nicely, of course,” Indira said with a laugh.

  “I’m sure he loved that.”

  “He stared at me. You know the look.”

  I did, as a matter of fact, know the look. The look showed up in some of my more bone-melting nightmares.

  “By that point, I’d been living here for almost a year. I’d heard about this wild boy, the one who ran around town, the one everyone was slightly afraid of. And I thought, I’m too old for this kind of nonsense. So, I told him again.”

  Even though I knew how things had eventually worked out, I couldn’t help imagining a particularly gory ending to this story. “What happened?”

  “He picked it up,” Indira said. “And I told him I’d give him five dollars to help me load the groceries in Vivienne’s car. He threw the gum wrapper in the trash, and he carried the groceries. My God, Dash, he was such a pitiful thing. He was skin and bones in ratty old clothes. He hadn’t washed his hair—he had grass in it, as a matter of fact, because he’d been sleeping outside, although I didn’t know that until later. And that tiny, angry face. He was so angry.” She shook her head. “Vivienne didn’t want anything to do with him. She always liked things nice and neat. And I don’t know how to explain it, but it was like something inside me…opened. Something I’d been holding shut. Holding with both hands. I told him I wanted him to come to Hemlock House and do some chores, and I’d pay him. And he did. And I made him clean up afterward, and I gave him some clothes while I washed his, and he ate a full meal. And I cried that night like I hadn’t cried in years.”

  The shadow of a bird flowed like water across the lawn. And then it was gone.

  “He’s lucky he met you,” I said.

  “Is he?” Indira seemed to turn the question around in her head. “I think I’m very lucky to have met him.” She gave her eyes a final dab with the tissues and said, “All right. I promise I’m perfectly back to normal. Here we go.”

  And with that, she strode out of the kitchen.

  We were sitting in our seats. Bobby was at the podium. “Pomp and Circumstance” was still playing on repeat in the background.

  “Friends and family,” Bobby said. “Please rise for the class of 2019.”

  We stood. Fox clutched their recorder. Millie wiped her eyes.

  Keme appeared in the doorway. The black gown was a little too big, and it swallowed him. The mortar board was too small. He held himself with that familiar blend of wariness and belligerence that I’d noticed from the very beginning—like he suspected a trap.

  Indira’s hand found mine.

  I cupped my free hand around my mouth and cheered. Millie clapped. Fox gave a celebratory toot on the recorder.

  For a moment, there was no trap. No savage world. Nothing to fear. And my feral wolf child beamed with happiness.

  6

  I was in the den, trying to write. Keme and Millie were making it difficult.

  The scene in question was—well, I wasn’t sure. I mean, I knew my protagonist, Will Gower, was investigating a seedy pawn shop. But I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. Was the pawn shop empty? Probably. I mean, otherwise, whoever was in there would call the police—

  “Dash,” Keme shouted from the billiard room. “How much does an apartment cost?”

  “What?”

  “HOW MUCH DOES AN APARTMENT COST?” (Millie providing backup.)

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It depends.”

  “On what?” Keme asked.

  “How many bedrooms it has, where it is, how nice it is. Lots of stuff.”

  “Does it matter which floor it’s on?”

  “I don’t know.” And then, in case they’d missed it: “I’m writing.”

  I returned to my seedy pawn shop. But then—did a pawn shop make sense? What if it were a seedy…butcher’s shop? Or a seedy florist! I’d never read a scene set in a seedy florist. And it wasn’t empty, it was full.

  Wait. Did that make sense? Why would all those people be there? Was it a party?

  “How many bathrooms did your apartment have in Providence?” Keme shouted from the billiard room.

  “Well—” That was actually kind of a complicated question—and an interesting one—so I levered myself out of my writing chair, set my laptop aside, and padded into the billiard room. Keme and Millie were lying on the floor, looking at Millie’s phone. “That’s actually kind of a complicated question,” I told them, “and an interesting one—”

  “Don’t care,” Keme said. “Already bored.”

  “See, I had several apartments in Providence. My first apartment—”

  Keme made a buzzing sound.

  “—had two bedrooms and one bathroom, and let me tell you, that is not the ideal ratio—”

  “What didn’t you get about—” Keme asked, and then he made the buzzing noise again.

  “Rude! I’m trying to help—wait, what are you doing?”

  “Looking for an apartment,” Millie said, still staring at her phone. “Want to help?”

  “An apartment for who?”

  “For us. Oh Dash, look at this one! Isn’t it adorable?”

  “That’s only three thousand dollars a month,” Keme said. “We can afford that.”

  The staggering obliviousness of that statement must have been why my brain went blank. Objections presented themselves, each one immediately discarded: you’re too young (no, technically they weren’t); you can’t afford it (apparently they could); and then, simply, you can’t. My mouth switched over to autopilot. “But you live here.”

  “Millie doesn’t live here, you donkey,” Keme said. “Show him that one with the jacuzzi.”

  “I’ll be right back,” I said.

  I barely made it into the hall before a wave of heat rose in my body. It ran up my chest, up my throat, into my face—every inch of me stinging as sweat popped out under my arms. Somehow, I kept walking—I needed to get away.

  Somehow, I ended up in the kitchen (talk about running on autopilot). Fox sat at the counter, eating a heaping slice of huckleberry pie, and they hurriedly wiped their mouth and shoved the plate behind the toaster.

  “Indira said I could—what’s wrong?”

  I burst into tears.

  Fox watched me for a few moments. Then they led me to a stool, sat me down, and brought me my own slice of huckleberry pie. They handed me several paper towels, which I used to mop my face as I told them, in broken fragments, about Keme and Millie.

  “They’re young,” Fox said—not unkindly, but not terribly sympathetically. “They’re in love. Of course they want to have their own place.”

  “But they can’t. We live here. We all live here. Well, not you, but you’re here so much you practically live here, and you certainly act like you live here, like, you had that pallet of old bricks delivered here—which, now that I think about, you really need to take to your studio—”

  Fox shushed me. “We’ll worry about that later,” they said, which was exactly what they’d said the last time we’d gone out to brunch and they’d forgotten their wallet. “Dash, they can’t live here forever.”

  “I know,” I said. But I almost started crying again. Because I did know that. But there had been this part of me that had hoped it would be years and years before they left. “But they can stay for a while. Save up some money. You talk to them—Keme listens to you.”

  “You know it doesn’t work like that.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut.

  “You love them,” Fox said with surprising gentleness. “You care about them. Of course it’s hard to let them go.”

  “No, it’s not that,” I said. But then I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s hard to see things change. To see one phase of life end so that a new one can begin.”

  I didn’t say anything because there wasn’t anything to say to that. So I said, “I just don’t want them to leave.”

  Fox made a sympathetic sound, but they said, “But they are going to leave, Dash. Eventually.” They waited, as though I might interrupt; when I didn’t, they continued, “If I may offer you a tiny bit of advice, Dash, it would be this: you can either embrace this as an opportunity to deepen your relationship with them, or you can fight it—and, in the process, push them away.”

  I pressed my hands against my eyes as tears threatened to well up again. A voice told me I was being silly. Bobby and I would have the house to ourselves once Millie and Keme were gone, which would be awesome. No more cleaning up after a teenage boy. No more arguments about the Xbox. No more walking in on the two of them in compromising situations. This was a good thing. Obviously. And it was good for them, too. Good for them to be independent and mature and start building a life together.

  But, another part of me said, they’re my family.

  “Dash?” Keme’s voice moved toward us from the dining room.

  Fox squeezed my knee.

  Drying my eyes on my tee, I cleared my throat and did a few quick sniffs. I’d just finished when Keme charged into the kitchen.

  “Should we look at apartments that don’t have laundry in them?” he asked. “Millie says no, but my mom and I always just went to the laundromat. It’s not a big deal, right?”

  He was still looking at his phone, but it was impossible to miss the excitement radiating off him.

  The ache in my chest got bigger, but I found a smile. “Well,” I said, ignoring the faint scratchiness in my voice. “There are two schools of thought about that—”

  Keme groaned. “Never mind, I’ll ask Bobby.”

  “No, wait,” I said, sliding off the stool to follow him. “I’m the best at finding apartments. Just let me get my laptop!”

  Skip to the End

  1

  “What is this so-called emergency?” I asked as I walked toward the van. The gravel shoulder of the road crunched underfoot. Ahead, Fox leaned out of the driver’s window of their van, watching me approach. They were parked on the shoulder of a tree-lined road, engine idling, and the mixture of exhaust and Fox’s mysterious air freshener—was it Dragon Musk? or Dragon Must?—had me on the brink of a sneeze. It was a beautiful summer day, which on the coast meant a sky like a child’s drawing: Crayola Blue, with a few fluffy white clouds. As I reached the window, I added, “And why can’t you call anybody else? I’m getting married tomorrow, Fox. I’m on high alert; there’s still a chance Bobby could escape.”

  “I know you’re getting married.” Fox’s gaze was set somewhere between withering and disdainful. “I currently have a van full of decorations. So, unless you’d like to get married in desolation and squalor like—like some sort of medieval peasant, but without the dancing—” And then they must have come up with something better because they paused and delivered in an even more devastating tone, “Unless you want to get married like a straight, you’ll help me figure this out.”

  To be fair, I did not want to get married like a straight. I got the impression there were a lot of daddy-daughter dances.

  But Fox wasn’t done yet. “And for your information, I did call someone else. I called Mr. Del Real, and he’s out of town.”

  “Oh, okay, well—”

  “Then I called Mrs. Del Real, but she’s out of town too.”

  “Right. I guess that makes sense.”

  “Then I called Indira, but she didn’t pick up. I called Millie, but she’s busy with the flowers. I called Keme, but he was helping Millie.”

  I crossed my arms. “I get the point—”

  “Then I called Sergey, but he’s at work. I called that old goose Bruce, but he’s gone fishing.”

  “I said I get—”

  “I called the tourist bureau, and I called Bliss—she and Althea have a Suburban—and I even tried that lesbian bar I got thrown out of.”

  “I said I get the—”

  “And then I called Ryan and Paul, but they were busy playing video games with Keme.”

  “I thought Keme was helping Millie!” And then the real horror set in: “You called Millie’s brothers before you called me?”

  Fox gave a pointed sniff. “As you said, you’re busy.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to argue about this, or if this was one of those things I should let go. I settled for saying, “Okay, well, I’m here now. Do you want a ride back, or…”

  “No, Dashiell.” They started at a dither and were quickly ramping it up toward a full-blown tizzy. “I do not want a ride. I want you to change my tire.”

  “What?”

  With grating slowness: “My tire.”

  I opened my mouth. Then I shut it again. I walked around to the passenger side, and sure enough, the back tire was flat.

  “Why don’t you change it yourself?” I said.

  “Because there are certain things that a person of refinement simply does not do,” Fox said.

  “Because you don’t know how.”

  Fox hissed at me. Then they snapped, “You don’t know how either.”

  “No, but we’re pretty smart. I bet we could figure it out.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Fox said. “Get that hunk of a man you call a fiancé to come do it.”

  “No way!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because—” The real answer was because Keme would inevitably find out and laugh at me. But I had the feeling it wouldn’t sound great if I said it out loud. Plus, I liked to call Bobby for favors when they benefitted me instead of Fox. “—we can do this.”

  “Oh God,” Fox said and pinched the bridge of their nose.

  “We can! We’re smart.”

  “So you keep saying.”

  “And we’re reasonably competent human beings.”

  Fox scoffed.

  “Well,” I said, “we’re functioning adults.”

  “Do I spy the elastic waistband of Pokémon underwear?” Fox asked.

  “Nope,” I said. “Catchimals. It’s a massive copyright infringement.”

  “Why do you sound proud of that?”

  “Come on,” I said. “We can do this. We can show all those high school bullies who made fun of us because one time in Driver’s Ed you were using the simulator and somehow you went off the road and into that crowd of anti-war protesters and it was, uh, graphic, and then the simulator started smoking, and Mr. Kennard had to send everyone out into the hall, and a couple of days later they replaced the simulator with a vending machine that only had healthy snacks.”

  The wind moved through the branches of the trees.

  “Uh,” I said, “that’s a hypothetical example.”

  “What comet or meteor or life-ending asteroid were you born under?” Fox muttered.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll do it myself.”

  This turned out almost immediately to be false because first I needed Fox to show me where the van’s manual was (thank God it had somehow survived forty years in the glove box), and then, when I tried to get the spare off the back, Fox eventually got tired of hearing me say, “It won’t come off,” and got out of the van to point out that I was turning the, um, screws the wrong way. (Bolts! Are they called bolts instead of screws?)

  But once Fox was out of the van, they got into the spirit of things. We blocked the front tires and found the jack, and after a couple of false starts, we raised the van until the rear tires cleared the ground. I got the flat off (full disclosure: Fox had to help me loosen the bolts, but after that I did it myself). Against all odds, the spare was actually still in decent condition, so we put it on, tightened down the bolts, and lowered the van.

  (I’m ninety-nine percent sure they’re called bolts.)

  Somehow in the process, I’d managed to blacken my hands, arms, and—according to my reflection in the window—face with tire grime. But I didn’t care; I was grinning. And to my surprise, Fox was grinning too. (They had somehow escaped all the grease and old oil and general muck.) They produced an old T-shirt from the back of the van, and I used it to wipe my hands.

  And that was when a familiar truck rolled to a stop on the road. The passenger window buzzed down, and Bobby said, “You guys okay?”

  “All good,” I said.

  “Flat tire?”

  “Yeah. No big deal.”

  “Need some help?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but Fox beat me to it: “Why? Because we’re not as butch as you?”

  “No—”

  “Because we’re not as strong as you? Because compared to you, Dash’s arms are as thin and frail as those of a mummy? Not a pharaoh, but maybe some lesser pharaoh’s forgotten concubine?”

  “I mean,” I said, “they’re not that thin. Also, weirdly specific mummy.”

  “I didn’t say any of that,” Bobby said.

  “We’re fine, Robert,” Fox announced. “We’re smart, competent, fully functioning adults. We can handle this all on our own.”

  “I know,” Bobby said. But his eyes sought me out.

  I flexed and did my manliest grunt.

  Laughing, Bobby said, “I’ll see you at home.” As he buzzed up the window, he added, “Drive safe.”

  Fox watched him go, hands on their hips. And then, once Bobby was out of sight, they turned and held up their hand, and I slapped them five.

  2

  Lightning flashed out over the ocean, and a few seconds later, thunder rattled the windowpanes.

  “Check the weather,” my mom said from where she stood peering out at the storm. Without looking, she waved a hand at me and said, “Dashiell.”

  I wasn’t exactly worried about the storm. Bobby was out in the rain, sure, but he was driving his dad to his hotel, and Bobby wouldn’t do anything like that if he thought there was something to worry about. Besides, the billiard room was warm. My dad had built a fire, and the flicker of light and heat was pleasantly lulling. Plus, I was deep into an article on Crime Cats—this one was about a tuxedo cat who scared himself while stalking a mop—so I mumbled, “Uh, yep, still says fifty percent chance of rain tomorrow.”

 

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