“Never mind,” Immy says. She kisses his shoulder, hugs him a little tighter. It’s a little weird, how Mint doesn’t smell like anything. It’s a good thing, probably. If you kept a real boy in a storage locker, you’d need to figure out how he could take showers. Plus you’d have to feed him. Although maybe Mint is starting to smell a little like the storage space, a little bit like mildew. Maybe Immy should buy him some cologne.

He’s still wearing the black funeral suit he came in. Maybe she could buy him some T-shirts and jeans at the thrift store. She can’t picture Mint in a T-shirt.

Ainslie comes home in two days, and Immy isn’t sure what happens after that. It’s not as if Ainslie is going to think Immy took Mint, why would she think that? But it’s still going to be complicated. And then there’s the storage space, which isn’t going to work forever. And anyway, when spring break is over, it’s not like Immy can just come over and hang out in the storage space all day.

When she tells Mint all of this, he says nothing. He trusts her to figure something out.

He says, “Stay with me. Never leave me.”

He says, “I’ll never leave you.”

That night she decides she might as well go and see Mint. They’ve never spent the night together. Anyway she can’t fall asleep. Maybe the time is right. They can lie on the couch together, and then she can fall asleep with her head on his shoulder. She can wake up in his arms.

It’s bitterly cold. Immy, on her bike, coasts down empty streets. No one sees her go by. She could sneak into a house. Cut off a lock of someone’s hair while they’re asleep. Pour drain cleaner in a fish tank or put salt in a sugar jar. What couldn’t she do? She could go places. Have adventures. Cause all kinds of trouble.

The You-Store-It after midnight is a palace. A mausoleum. Gothic, satiny black, full of other people’s secrets. But her secret is the best.

When she gets to the storage locker, she hears voices. A voice. Someone is talking. Mint is talking. Mint is talking to someone. She recognizes everything that he’s saying.

“I love you. Only you.”

“I love only you.”

“Stay with me. Don’t ever leave me.”

“We’re together now. I’ll never leave you.”

“I love you.”

It’s peculiar, because Immy set Mint to Spectral Mode. And who is he talking to, anyway? Everything that he’s saying, it’s everything he says to Immy. All of this is wrong. Something is wrong.