The party is in a walled beach villa forty-five minutes up the coast. The pink marble entryway is littered with shoes. Abayahs and scarves fill two coatracks. Loud disco-like music beckons from the second floor. Derobed, they climb the spiral stairs to a sitting room with no furniture. Big windows face the sea, a dark gleaming in the distance. A kidney-shaped pool, empty of swimmers, fills most of the courtyard beneath them. After she has taken in the landscape outside, Hannah looks around the room. Summer deciphers the crowd, pointing out factions. There are a few young Saudis, gel-haired boys in baggy jeans and Guess T-shirts who smell like cologne and cigarettes. A couple Kuwaitis whose families fled the invasion—“You can tell by their accents,” Summer says. Some girls from the international school, a few of them wearing cat-ear headbands.

Hannah had forgotten it was Halloween.

And there is the guy from the tape shop, leaning against a wall sipping nonalcoholic beer. At first she doesn’t recognize him without his sunglasses and fatigues. He salutes her.

“I’ve seen you before. Remember me?”

“Who?”

“It’s Zee. How’s that Fine Young Cannibals album?”

“Where are your friends?”

“Water pipes.” He points toward the yard and the pool. “They’re out there smoking bananas.”

“It’s apple tobacco,” Summer says.

“I thought Saudi girls weren’t allowed to socialize with men.”

“I’m not a Saudi girl,” Hannah says. “I’m visiting my dad.”

Summer points to red punch in a big crystal bowl. “That’s the booze.”

“Isn’t that against the rules?” Zee says.

“Ever gotten a speeding ticket?” Summer ladles punch into three plastic cups.

“Nah, I’m a total rule follower.” Zee pulls out his sunglasses and puts them on the back of his head.

Hannah gulps too much punch; it’s like drinking a cherry lollipop. “This is terrible.”

“Nice red mustache.” Zee winks. She wipes her mouth with her arm, and he winks again and says, “Still there.”

“He’s joshing,” Summer says.

What a dumb joke, Hannah thinks. Doesn’t matter. She wants to stay close to him. She tells him she’s dying to see the beach, and they retrieve their shoes from the entryway and stroll down through the night, leaving Summer with the shisha-smoking Americans. They remove their shoes again to walk on the sand. They’re holding the shoes in their opposite hands, as though they’d planned it this way, to let the backs of their hands brush. Ahead of them, the water is darker than the sky. They sit at the border between wet and dry sand, at the edge of the foamy waves. Zee rests his chin on Hannah’s shoulder. She smells the punch on his breath.

“I’m buzzed,” he says.

She touches his fingers, not quite holding hands. A shock of heat zips up her arms and through her ribs.