I snort. “You’re kidding, right? He’s a drug dealer. I know you’re feeling bad, but—”

Her eyes snap open, and the first bit of light I’ve seen in them for a while flares. “He’s wonderful.”

I flinch under that stare. Drew called me out on my observational weaknesses, and maybe those don’t only extend to my sister. Maybe I’ve spent so much time with books and telescopes that I don’t see people anymore. Don’t see them right.

“Okay. Then why don’t you want to be with him?” I say.

I am trying to know her. To ask questions. But she makes it so hard.

Nah closes her eyes. Doesn’t answer.

I squeeze her hand. “Listen. I’ve been thinking. After graduation, let’s get an apartment. In Cambridge. Ben said he could get you a job at Castaways, and there’s a really cool yoga studio nearby where I do meditation. They have a teacher training course. You’d love that. We can paint every wall a different color, like Mom always said she wanted to, but Dad said would be like putting the boardwalk in our house. What do you think?”

Her brow furrows. “You’ll be at Plebe Summer. In Annapolis.”

You know what always got me, at the end of The Little Prince? How he went back for her. For the rose. He spent all this time traveling the universe, discovering its secrets, but he wanted to go back to this rose who told him off, lied to him, was never willing to accept his help—so stubborn: Let the tigers come with their claws! Still, he was willing to be bitten by a poisonous snake, which was the only way he could return to Asteroid B-612, to their planet, so that he could be with the rose again.

I don’t know if that’s beautiful or demented. He chains himself to that little asteroid, with that rose who is going to be pricking him with her thorns for the rest of his life. But she’s all he’s got. And he’s all she’s got.

And so he goes back.

But he has to die to get to her. I think. Or at least be really, really hurt. He has to sacrifice himself.

Love is the hardest thing to understand. But also the simplest. It defies all logic.

I swallow. “I’m going to MIT. I mean, if I get in. It’s obviously really hard. I have backups—Harvard. Well, Harvard’s not a backup, but you know what I mean.”

She stares at me. “What the hell are you talking about, Mae? I told you to reschedule the interview. I thought you—are you actually being serious right now?”

I’m not a great liar, but I try anyway. To make her think I am okay with this.