The boy stands up. Dear god, he’s moving closer to me and I have yet to introduce myself or vet his respectability as my cousin’s study partner in any way, but I can’t because I HAVE LOST THE CAPACITY FOR SPEECH. It’s possible I’m having a lucid dream. This would explain any and all cognitive malfunctions on my part.

“I’m Ben,” he says when he reaches the bottom of the stairs.

Something very strange is going on in spacetime. As in, I no longer know when I am or how long I have been staring at this Ben person and I should stop but I am becoming increasingly confused.

He looks exactly like Sôta Fukushi, who plays Ichigo in the live-action movie. If I saw him on the street and had no self-respect, I would ask him for an autograph. On my bare chest. I am losing my mind.

Maybe he is Sôta Fukushi, but is incognito and using the alias Ben. So he can study abroad in peace.

IS SÔTA FUKUSHI IN MY LIVING ROOM?

“Tamura’s my roommate,” Nate says. “I’m building a plane, and he’s calculating the probability of it crashing.” He leans toward me. “But he’s a geophysicist, not an astronautics engineer like—ahem—some of us, so his calculus isn’t up to snuff.”

Ben—if that’s even his name—flips off Nate before he takes my hand in his and this causes a medical emergency. I feel all melty and … weird.

“Mae,” I say, but it’s more a croak, so I have to clear my throat and say it again. “Mae. Is my name.”

CODE RED, NASA, CODE RED. I grasp at the first thing that comes to mind—Dad always said, First thought, best thought.

“Nate brought you in on his project because your geophysics can help him determine the relative impact his plane would have if crashing on different topographies, right?”

Ben laughs, and it’s a very nice sound, and something about it makes him real and not Ichigo. It’s not the kind of laugh you give before you use a katana to banish a ghost monster from the world of the living.

“I think your cousin’s just desperate,” Ben says. “Besides, at the speed he’s going, that plane’s a goner whether it hits low-elevation desert or sedimentary rock.”

And just like that, my flat spin is over.

At space camp one year, an air force test pilot came to speak and he said that when your plane’s in a flat spin, the best way to know whether it’s recoverable or not is if the nose is pitching down to Earth. And what’s more down-to-earth than a geophysicist?

“The plane is not crashing!” Nate says. “Now both of you sit down and tell me everything you know about aerodynamics so I don’t fail my midterm.”