And so, the tiny junior clutched her fat red water bottle to her chest and blinked apprehensively at us, her eyes wide and not just a little afraid.

‘Listen up. You need to go and pretend to faint outside Dr Roshan’s offi ce. Give us away and you’re dead, understand?’

The small fry looked terrified enough at the idea to give us hope that she might not even have to fake the faint.

Having sent Small Fry off to take care of business, we settled into the woven cane chairs in a secluded nook at the back of the library. Our black Mary Janes dangled above cold grey stone, and Button listened with tempered excitement, cocking an eyebrow in trepidation as her friend, who generally suffered from verbal tirades and tangents, struggled to answer the basic, scary, inexplicable question—why?

I shook my head, trying to find the words. ‘It was so weird, Button. Like all these random thoughts and memories rushed into my—not even head, no. Like, into my senses or something. The colour of sunlight at three in the afternoon and the smell of unplucked lavender and an image of the house I was born in but don’t even remember. I guess it felt, I don’t know, inevitable?’

I broke off at Button’s expression, somewhere between mirth and nausea. ‘Shut up!’

‘I didn’t say anything!’

‘Shut UP!’

‘Call him tonight.’

‘I’ll slap your ugly face.’

‘He gave you his number! Just send him a message!’

‘No.’

‘Say that again.’

‘No—ow! Don’t punch me!’

‘Send him a message, then.’

‘FINE!’

She snorted, satisfied. ‘How old is he?’

‘No idea. Old.’ I thought about the information at hand, tried to do the math. ‘Maybe twenty-four or something.’

‘Holy shit! That’s almost twenty-five!’

‘He’s a hot fossil.’

‘A dashing dinosaur.’

‘A regal relic!’

‘Sexy uncleji?’

‘Too much. Listen, read this. Wrote it when I got home yesterday.’

‘Instead of doing the psych project. Idiot.’

‘Whatever, I’m topping the class anyway.’

‘Zarine’s catching up, though. She got two marks more than you on the last test.’

‘Shut up and read it.’

Button finished reading the crinkled page torn out from my favourite notebook and nodded. Looking very serious—a rare look on her—she gathered up my holes and buttoned them into place.

‘It’s really nice, Tars. But let’s not tell anyone except Cookie about this.’

‘Wasn’t planning on it, but why?’

She folded up the sheet and slipped it into her pocket. ‘Because we don’t care that you’re a raving loon.’

Button was, as always, just convincing me that it was okay to want what I wanted. She couldn’t have known then how it would go on to change the very fabric of the air around me, flush as it was thereafter, with a million tingling frequencies.