When Paul came down, we worked on math—and I got it, because Paul was a much better teacher than my actual teacher. Or maybe it was just that everything he said always made sense, regardless of the subject. Afterwards we hung out watching a game with his dad. Whenever we watched a game together, we did this thing where we bumped hands in the chip bowl. First time it was an accident, but now it was like the fist bump. Something we shared that no one could come between.

Later, when his parents went out for dinner, we got closer on the sofa, leaning into each other. And that was it. Just quiet closeness—because between Paul and me, it wasn’t just about the obvious stuff you might be thinking in your dirty little mind. More than any of that, it was about connection. It was about being close to someone you wanted to be with.

The straight me didn’t have a real handle on the concept of “connection” yet. In my original world, I had dated a lot of girls. Last year I had been with Amy Anders for most of the school year, before she bailed on me and went for the captain of the goddamn debate team. I figured he had won her over with a persuasive argument. But now, I’m thinking maybe it was because I had never really let her in. I never forged that connection. If I ever got back to my old world and returned to my old self, I wanted to take that feeling of connection with me—and maybe I would find it there. Maybe with Katie.

But if that happened, I’d lose what I had with Paul—and even though I never asked for this, the thought of losing it was like an open wound.

Maybe Paul could tell my mind was in troubled places, or maybe my eyes had gotten a little moist, because he shifted to get a better look at me and said, “What are you thinking about?”

The word that came to mind only made sense to me after I said it out loud.

“Home . . . ,” I told him.

“You have to go?”

“No,” I explained. “Here. With you. Feels like home.”

He shifted. Maybe a little uncomfortably. At the time I didn’t know why. “Can’t live here,” he quipped. “Not enough room. Maybe under my bed, though.”

I grinned. “Wouldn’t fit. Your closet, maybe.” It was an implication you could have driven a bus through, and yet I missed it.

But Paul didn’t. He laughed, and said, “I’m sure yours has a lot more room—what with your mansion and all.”

School on Monday was, like everything else, different and the same. Walking down the hallway at school, I noticed people I had never noticed in my previous incarnations—and found others with whom I’d never had a problem to be vapid and irritating.