The next day, I went to Eddie and Kim’s place, a tiny apartment over Reeni’s Salon. There was no actual Reeni, but the owners, two friends, both named Jennifer, thought it sounded more authentic. Kim cut hair there, and the smell of the place permeated the apartment as well, a clean, chlorinated scent. The hallway was full of it. I stood there knocking on the door, inhaling the fragrance of perms.

“Lydia,” Eddie said, when he opened the door.

“Can I come in?”

“Um, yeah,” he said. “Of course. Come on in.”

I’d only been inside the apartment once before and I had the same reaction then that I did now, that while the furniture matched the curtains, and the curtains matched the pictures on the wall, none of it matched Eddie. It wasn’t that Kim had bad taste, it was just a taste all her own. She liked ferns, that much was clear. Eddie and I sat across from each other at a table draped with a fern-print tablecloth. Hanging by the window were both a framed picture of a fern and the actual plant itself. The window looked over Clara Day Street.

“You can see the information booth from here,” I said.

“I know.”

“It looks lonely this time of year.”

We both looked out at the landing, the dark water, the empty booth. Did he watch me from here? I felt that buzz of tension between us, something that skidded back and forth, like the puck on an air hockey table. And even here, Cole was somehow part of the tension.

“I think you were right,” I said. “About Cole. He’s—not right. And I think I just made everything a hundred times worse.”

“Uh-oh,” he said. “What happened?”

“I don’t even know where to start. He—well, he knew my mother. That’s one. They had some sort of relationship, but I can’t get any answers out of him. Oh—and Cole isn’t his real name. But he won’t tell me what his real name is.”

“That’s fucked up,” Eddie said. “It’s fucked up to lie about your name.”

“And now with Lucas off hiding somewhere... What I need is a place to stay. Maybe just for a night or two.”

Eddie scratched the back of his head and looked gloomily out the window. I looked at the empty harbor.

“Do you ever want to be a new person?” Eddie said. He shook his head. “I’m tired of being the same person I always was. I still feel like I’m fifteen. Nothing feels different. Nothing feels better.”

“I think everyone feels that way sometimes. At least I do.”

“It’s just you and me. Other people grow up.”

“We grew up,” I insisted. “Look at us.”

Eddie raised his eyes. “When I look at us, I see children,” he said.

“I have gray hairs.”

“I’m talking about inside.”

“I know.”