“You’re overthinking.”

“I’ve seen every single romance film in existence, so I know how boyfriends and girlfriends interact.” His cheeks are scribbles of pink, color seeping up his neck. “So, I was wondering, do you need me to kiss you in front of them?”

“God, no! You don’t have to do anything like that. We’re too repressed to show affection in front of other people.”

Oh dear, I’ve broken his heart. It happens so easily with Hall.

“You don’t show affection in front of your family?” he repeats softly. “Bettie, that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” He drapes a hand over his chest, and the fiber-optic fireplace on his sweater begins to smoke between his fingers.

“I show affection to Grandpa Lawrence. Really nice guy, just the loveliest person on earth. Used to be a set designer. Now he works on a miniature version of Teller City in his basement and collects wooden mallard ducks.”

“And your grandmother?” He motions for me to join him in the truck. “Just think of the place, and we’ll be there.”

“My grandmother,” I tell him, “destroyed my future by giving me her genes. She’s had a long, successful career, a long, successful marriage. There are documentaries about her. Foundations in her name. A scholarship program. The future will remember Bettie Watson. Me, on the other hand? It’s a compare-and-contrast Venn diagram that I’ll never look good in. When you’re unfavorably compared to someone who’s the best at everything, when you fall short of expectations, you fall very, very far.”

*

Hall’s teleportation has a few bugs. We arrive up on the mountain without the red pickup or any of the presents inside it. Our shoes were also left behind, and my hair’s in a ponytail now for some reason.

Teleporting, thankfully, isn’t as violent as time traveling. One second, we’re right outside the town house, the next we’re regaining our balance in a copse of trees. The property is situated on the edge of a steep hill, and if the copse weren’t there acting as a guardrail we could easily roll off and die. Or I would die, at least. Notable side effects of teleportation are: (1) Your sinuses temporarily fill with ice-cold eggnog that drains down the back of your throat within seconds of landing. (2) The song “Video Killed the Radio Star” becomes stuck in your head.

“It’s breathtaking,” Hall declares in quiet rapture, staring at a Coca-Cola bottling plant that’s been abandoned since the 1980s. “Precisely where I would imagine the great Bettie Watson to reside.”

I grab his shoulders and wheel him around in the opposite direction, toward Grandma and Grandpa’s small gothic castle. It’s like 1313 Mockingbird Lane up here, thanks to Grandma’s deep flair for the dramatic and free license to design whatever kind of house she wanted, in her and Grandpa’s negotiations to retire here, in his hometown. “That is where the great Bettie Watson resides.”

He lets out a startled “Egad.”

“Don’t worry, it’s more normal on the inside. Grandpa makes her keep the worst stuff on the outside of the house so that he won’t have to look at it.”