“You need to say ‘dearly beloved,’” I told Chester, the boy we had picked to play minister.

He looked up at me and twisted his face into a scowl.

“You need to at least try raising your hand at them,” Emmanuel Chase called.

I raised my hand half-heartedly, but the boy had already jerked his arm free, and now he ran.

“You showed him your bluff,” Emmanuel Chase said as he came closer. “You’re too kind.”

“You would not call me kind if you knew me.”

“But I do know you, or at least the most important part of you,” he said. “You are my Erzulie. You’re the lover, never the fighter.”

“You are very presumptuous.”

“I know you,” he repeated, still smiling. I wished he would repeat it forever.

I looked away from him, back out to the crowd. My mother still stood with her group of ladies, but she was turned toward us, watching.

“You cannot send notes like you wrote to me this morning,” I said. I knew she couldn’t hear us from where she stood—no one could have—but I dropped my voice anyways.

“I only write the truth.”

“You should understand, I am not as sophisticated as you. I’ve only been from my mother’s garden to her waiting room and back again. The only other place I know is the inside of an anatomy hall. I do not know the world like you do. You won’t find a very satisfying game with me.”

“You think I’m false.”

“I think you are not hearing what I am saying.”

“You’ve mistaken me if you think I only tease you. I wrote it to you, but I’d say it out loud to anyone here who’d ask. I’d say it even without their asking. You wish me to ask your mother now?” he said, and he turned as if to walk toward her.

I knew enough, at least, that in the next beat of the game I was supposed to grab his arm and stop him and laugh. But I stood with my arms at my sides and did nothing.

He turned on his heel and smiled wider. “You called my bluff.”

“I do not understand you,” I said. “You write declarations of love and marriage on the back of a scrap of paper I may not even see, and slip it under my door like an assassin, and then tell me your intentions are pure.”

“So you read it,” he said, “and it’s true. I love and adore you, and wish you would be my wife. And you want to know if my intentions are good. I think that tells me all that I was hoping.”

“I do not like games like this,” I said.

Then I raised my voice to its normal tone. “We are about to begin. Excuse me.”