I took off my coat. “I care about you, Joshua. I care that you sit here night after night and drink and moan to yourself.” This, too, was a part of myself. “I’d like to touch you . . . in a different way.”

His look never wavered. I felt a flicker of interest flash across the back of his eyes, felt it, as if it were my own, my own wish to change, to merge with a better portion of myself, but on Joshua, it was a hope too radical to be real, the hope that a girl, a real girl, would ever look at him, ever touch him in a loving way again. He continued to stare at me, and I realized that I did care for him. I cared for Joshua, and I cared for myself, my own well-­being. His face was suddenly young and innocent, my own superimposed upon it, as in some accidental photograph, both wrapped up in the ravages of disappointment.

A shudder ran through my body and I rubbed my arms. When I looked back at him, he was again Joshua, dirty, nasty, bitter Joshua. I had closed the door on the frightening face of affection.

He groped for his crutches and stood up, coming toward me. His face showed the ache of longing. The soft touch of a woman’s hands on his skin would be enough to change his life. I had this power, and had to use it this moment. I stood, knocked the stacks of comic books into red and blue rivers of slick covers, and spread my coat atop them in the display window, smoothing them out and rearranging their sliding mass.

I separated from myself at this point. I felt powerless over what I was doing, not understanding my motives, not understanding what I was about to do, even. I knew only that Joshua needed hope; he had lived too long with fear. I dissuaded him from locking the door with a touch of my hand on his arm. He turned off the lights, and a moment later, I turned them on again, feeling a weird, agitated excitement growing in my stomach.

He sat on my coat, on the edge of the display, stood his crutches against the wall, and as I reached for the ribbon that tied the cape around my neck, my saliva glands began to flow. It was then that I knew my purpose, and the hunger that had been growing in me all these months; the ravenous, starving ache had been for Joshua, not for Her, not for anything else but him. Him.

And there he sat, looking small and fragile. Frail. Anxious. Waiting. Knowing.