“I don’t know if that’s true. I think you were especially nice to me,” Ros said. “Anyway—obviously, with the barking, I was being disruptive. And reasoning with me didn’t work. So what my parents did, finally, was my dad would give me a fake magic pill every morning that would turn me into a girl the second I left the house. It was a vitamin. But we’d go through this whole ritual. Swallow the pill; now you’re a girl. And, like, he’d have me twirl and call me Lady Rosalind, which was sort of fun, but also, I just wanted to be a wolf.

“And like—later—after the gender stuff—I’d see him in the morning and look at him, and I’d just know, like, he wants to give me that pill.” Ros paused. “But when we met—you were the first one I felt like really saw through that pill and liked me.”

“I still like you,” I said, and what I felt then, intensely, was the friendship we used to have, back when we were kids. I missed the way we would play. I missed the world we’d built together, boarded up in someone’s backyard. “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too,” Ros said. “I sometimes forget it’s good to talk.”

“Okay,” I said. “Well, good.” I paused. “What’s going to happen when we go home? With you and Jess, I mean.”

Our contract for the Lily Pad was for another whole month. Privately, I’d started hoping that somehow we could bow out of it sooner. Three months had seemed like nothing at all when we’d first gotten here, but now, given the way things turned out, I found myself dreaming of home. I missed my parents. I missed my dogs. I missed a house that didn’t smell like mildew; I missed watching Power Jam on the couch with my mom. I even missed my dad’s badgering me to play tennis. At least he wanted to do something with me.

“She and I are talking about it,” Ros said slowly.

There was a cryptic edge to their voice, and I wanted to press Ros on what they meant by this, but there was a hello from inside the house: Touchstone, returned home.

“We’re out here,” I called.

“The gang’s all here,” he said, stepping out onto the porch. “Did another bird die?”

“Not yet,” said Ros.

“Should we make dinner?” I asked hopefully.

“I ate on campus,” Touchstone said.

“I was supposed to go see Jess,” Ros said, but their voice trailed off, as though maybe they could be convinced to stay.

We all stayed still for an awkward moment. I thought of what my mom had said about triangles, and then, in a fit of pique, I threw up my hands.