“My uncle said they’re going to be traveling in Europe and would love someone there full-time to take care of the cabin. I guess they have a lot of plants that need watering.”

It seemed too good to be true. “Ros? What do you think?”

Ros looked it over. My heart was in my throat.

“You’ve gone full Celia Gilbert,” they said, and passed the proposal. “I mean that in the best way possible.”

We gathered our parents on a Saturday afternoon in late February and made the pitch, clicking through slides I’d assembled. Touchstone and I did most of the talking, though Ros piped up a few times. The adults had some questions about safety and jobs and money and supervision and trust, and while I pointed everyone toward the budget and an article from SFGATE titled “How Did Lovesick Falls Become a Safe Haven for the LGBTQ+ Community?” Ros looked our parents dead in the eyes, steely gazed, snowbrowed, and said, “Please. I need a summer with my friends.”

They said yes almost instantly after that. Mr. and Dr. Touchstone gave me big hugs and told me they could tell I was wearing my retainer, and Ros’s mom told me how grateful she was that Ros had a friend like me. Our parents had some suggestions—that we call to check in weekly, that we treat Henry’s house with the utmost respect, that we pick up the phone when they called us—but they were excited for us. Sure, Ros had quit some things in the past few months, but we were, by and large, good kids with decent grades who made heavy use of their planners (me) and had an impeccably organized pencil case (okay, again, also me) and always showed up to class prepared (with the exception of Touchstone, who for a week last year took notes with a grease pencil from the chem lab because I refused to lend him a pen after he lost too many of mine). In three years of high school, there were two detentions between us (the first when Ros had “accidentally” “spilled” acid from our chem lab on known asshole Bennett Vernon’s baseball cap; the second when Touchstone, like a true goober, had been caught making out with Liz Reynolds in the catwalk above the theater. “You know they can see you up there,” I said. “At least I’m getting some action,” he’d said to me. Touché. The most action I got was in my mind, daydreaming about Blade Mendoza (or Ros).

Still: Before we left, my mother couldn’t help but issue me a warning.