I stood up. “No, it was just two,” I said. Determine the probability of this exact order, Neil. I paced, stepping loudly to stop Shruti’s high pitch from trailing me around the room.

“Don’t stomp, Neil; my mom will come up.” Anita giggled. Had I been sober or unhaunted I might have seen that she was happy in my company. “And, wait. You said three.”

I was sure I heard someone—not Shruti—calling her name. “Is that your mom?”

“Who was the third, Neil? Oh, my god, was it Juhi? I always thought—” and then she stopped. Her fingernails dug into the bare skin around her knees. Through clenched teeth, she said, “No, you didn’t. At Spring Fling.”

I stared miserably at the carpet. Maybe I’d said three on purpose. Maybe I’d wanted her to know. Maybe I couldn’t picture holding the secret alone for the rest of my life.

“So,” she whispered. “All that… to get what you needed from her.”

“I didn’t mean for it to go that way—”

“Did you get what you needed from me?” she said, still in that tinny, mean voice.

“Anita, it’s not the same thing, like. With you…”

The moment was racing past me, into terrain I had no language for, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to seize the words to explain, or apologize, in time.

These are all independent events, see, so here are all the different possibilities. Shruti was done explaining. I heard the satisfying clunk of a pencil being dropped onto a desk. No, it wasn’t that—someone was knocking on Anita’s door, and calling for her through the wood.

“Ani, Papa wants you to say good-bye to the Shettys, please come down.”

“You know everything,” I tried again urgently. “You’re the only one who can—”

“In a minute, Mama,” Anita said. In her frosty gaze was a new kind of recognition. She was not seeing the boy who needed help to imagine, not coaxing him out of his paralysis and into the world. She was seeing the boy who was such a nothing that he had begged and stolen and finally killed in desperation to become something. For the first time, I wished she wouldn’t see me at all.

The doorknob rotated. “Neil! I didn’t know you were here.” Anjali Auntie was wearing a somber navy salwar kameez flecked with glitter. She looked at the rumpled sheets, and then at Anita’s tank top, which was sliding off her shoulders again. Her eyes bulged.