“Sorry,” I said.

Her lips glistened and she bit the lower one and wiped her mouth with her knuckles.

“I didn’t know you’d—” Her expression shaded suddenly.

And then, there, blinking at me, was not Anita at all, but Shruti, whose small eyes were considering me quizzically as I asked her if her chain was gold. I shuddered, visibly, audibly. Shruti’s breath on my neck; her voice in precalc: Neil, you can solve by substitution.

“Neil?”

I looked up. “Oh, I mean, I haven’t,” I said, too late.

Anita’s spaghetti strap and bra strap had slid down her right shoulder, and she tugged both back into place. I scooted a few inches away, though it required all my might. As Anita turned her head to assess me, there were Shruti’s frizzy locks, catching the light.

“How many girls have you done stuff with?” she asked.

“Three.” I closed my eyes. Shruti in my ear: No, you’re supposed to be taking the compound probability of two independent events, see? “Two.”

If I kept my eyes on the carpet, Shruti’s voice faded. Two possibilities, equally likely—

“I’ve only kissed two guys,” she said. “Never, um. Never even second base.”

“Who?” I said it instinctively—I had to know… Which adds up to all possible events, see. Shruti’s mouth—the smacking of her lips before the second kiss…

“Oren, from drama camp, remember?” I’d forgotten—a ginger, in seventh grade. “And Sam.” Say it’s tails, heads, heads, tails… “At this end-of-year tennis party.”

“Really?” No, what you’ve done here, it’s very common, you’re thinking about those two things as connected, but they’re entirely independent events. It was all I could do to stop Shruti from rising wholesale out of Anita. If I kept everything even—my voice, my expression—she remained on the right side of reality. Anita’s eyes stayed Anita’s eyes: wide, lively, their darkness illuminated by her bedroom lights. There. No Shruti. No hard, calculating pupils.

“It’s only ’cause I’m leaving. He’d never date me in public. Who are yours?”

“You don’t know them.”

“I told you all mine.” Anita was hugging her knees to her chest and chewing on the ends of her hair. For her, the world was easing; this terrain—our old terrain of small secrets, minor confessions—made her feel safe. “There was that girl from your computer camp. Let me guess the others.” She bit her lip. She seemed to be trying to prove that she knew all material truths about me even when I had not explicitly shared them. “Wendi, right?”

“Not that much happened.”

She laughed; she looked unthreatened, having some sense that she preceded, or superseded, all others. “And the third…” She tapped her chin with a finger.