“Honeysuckle wine helps you see in the dark,” Claire said stiffly. “Have it or don’t have it. Walk into a tree when it gets dark. Fall over a curb. I don’t care.”

Tyler picked up a paper cup and smiled at her. “This means I’ll be able to see you in the dark.”

“I haven’t worked out all the glitches in the recipe yet.”

Tyler drank the wine, not taking his eyes off her as he did so. Sydney just sat back and smiled. It was like watching a dance when only one of the dancers knew the steps.

When Tyler walked away, Claire rounded on her sister. “You told him?”

“Why are you so surprised? You should have known. I’m predictable like that.”

“You are not.”

“I am so.”

“Oh, go socialize and stop feeling your Waverley oats,” Claire said, shaking her head. But there it was, a hint of a smile, the beginning of something new and close between them.

It felt good.

Henry Hopkins could still remember the day he and Sydney Waverley became friends. Sydney was sitting alone inside the dome of the monkey bars during recess. He’d never understood why other kids didn’t want to play with her, but he went along because that’s what everyone else did. But that day there was something about her, she seemed so sad, so he went over to her and started climbing the bars above her. He wasn’t actually going to talk to her, but he thought she might feel better having someone around. She watched him awhile before she asked him, “Henry, do you remember your mother?”

He’d laughed at her. “Of course I do. I saw her this morning. Don’t you remember yours?”

“She left last year. I’m starting to forget her. When I grow up, I’m never leaving my kids. I’m going to see them every day and not let them forget me.”

Henry remembered feeling ashamed, a feeling so intense he actually fell off the monkey bars. And from that day forward, he stuck like glue to Sydney at school. For four years, they played and ate lunch together and compared homework answers and buddied up on class projects.

He had no reason to expect that, on their first day of middle school after summer break, things would be any different. But then he walked into their homeroom and there she was. She’d grown in ways that made his pubescent head spin. She looked like autumn, when leaves turned and fruit ripened. She smiled at him and he immediately turned around and left the room. He spent the rest of homeroom in the bathroom. Every time she tried to speak to him that day, he felt like fainting and he ran away. After a while, she stopped trying.

It was so unexpected, that attraction, and it made him miserable. He wanted things back the way they were. Sydney was fun and bright and could tell things about people just by the way they wore their hair, which he thought was absolutely amazing. He told his grandfather about it, about how there was this girl who was just a friend but suddenly things changed and he didn’t know what to do. His grandfather said that things happened the way they were supposed to, and it was no use trying to predict what was going to come next. People liked to think otherwise, but what you thought had no practical influence on what eventually happened. You can’t think yourself well. You can’t make yourself fall out of love.