“You must think I’m a mess,” Misha says. I’m not sure whether she’s speaking to me or to Brent, but he gives her knee another squeeze.

Then Brent turns back to me. “I told her not to marry Peter,” he says. He keeps a hand on her knee. “She never listens.”

Misha inhales a laugh. But when I look again, she’s swiping a tear with the back of her hand. “Lies,” she says, half laughing, half crying. “I always listen to you.”

Suddenly I know what’s bothering me about their pose: I’ve seen it before. Senior year, I stumbled on Misha and Brent sitting together in a knot of woods behind the administration building where I went to eat my lunch sometimes, rather than brave the cafeteria. The Dell, people called it—the smokers went there to get high between classes, and someone had even set up an old table and chair between the felled logs to serve as furniture. But at noon it was usually deserted.

Not that day, though. As I crashed through the underbrush I remember seeing Brent and Misha just that way. He had his hand on her knee. She looked as if she was about to cry. But when she spotted me, her expression transformed in an instant into one of slick hatred.

Are you spying on us, pervert? she spat out.

Leave her alone, Misha, Brent said. And then: She didn’t hear anything.

Only now does it occur to me it was a funny thing to say.

“Sorry,” Misha says. Once again, something has changed—an invisible current, a communication between them I haven’t heard. “God, I can’t imagine what you think of us. You must be dying to go back to Chicago.”

“I’m just glad everyone’s okay. Last night, I thought—” I break off. I can’t understand why I was so scared. Then I realize Brent and Misha are watching me, waiting for me to continue. “I just—I don’t usually get that drunk. It’s not like me. When I woke up and realized I had taken your shoes…”

This, finally, gets a smile out of her. “Oh, thank goodness,” she says. “We must have swapped. I thought I lost them when I went in after Annie.”

“Are you okay?” Brent squints at me. “You want a water or something?”

“No. I’m fine.” But I stand up too quickly and a head rush darkens my vision.

“Actually, I will take the water. Don’t get up,” I say, when he starts to stand. “I can get it.”

In the kitchen, I wash my hands, using up the last of Brent’s hand soap. I count my breaths, listening to the murmur of conversation from the other room. But their words are too muted to make out.

Here, too, everything is clean, pristine, almost unused. Brent has installed a water purifier to the tap, but his sink is perfectly dry and I wonder whether he’s ever run it. Curious, I ease open the refrigerator: the upper two shelves are crammed with pallets of bottled water.