We turned to Touchstone, holding one shared breath. Touchstone thundered out a drumroll that shook the glasses on the table, sent the liquid sloshing inside. The pheasant—Angelo! I’d just remembered his name—on the wall gazed down at us. No one spoke. Had we done it? Had we gotten all the particulars in the right order?

“Ding, ding, ding,” said Touchstone.

There was an eruption that shook Angelo on his perch. I shrieked with joy. Ros leaped to their feet and bowed theatrically, sweeping nearly to the floor with a flourish of their wrists. We’d done it. We’d done it. We were magicians who had pulled rabbits out of a joint hat. We were trapeze artists in sparkling leotards soaring through the air, making the catch at the last second, our bodies spangled and bejeweled beneath the lights.

“I honestly followed none of that,” said Audrey.

“Same,” said Phoebe.

“Welcome to my world,” said Touchstone.

“Okay, what was that?” said Oliver.

Touchstone sighed heavily. “That,” he said, “was Ros and Celia.”

The conversation continued. Touchstone walked them through the lineage again, everyone getting more confused with each subsequent step. All those little details, all those little particulars—there were so many places to get tripped up. What did it matter, whether the house belonged to Touchstone’s uncle or Touchstone’s tangential relative or the Frog Prince? What were we trying to prove, by remembering all these stupid facts? Because that’s what the question had come to feel like: like a proof on a test. If together, Ros and I could remember them, all the totally arbitrary, nonsensical ways Touchstone was related to the owners of the house, it would mean something.

What mattered was that Ros and I had remembered together, had worked through it together, had paid enough attention to each other and our history that we were able, at that dinner table, to build something shared. What mattered was that we’d seen the vision together: the rabbits and the sparkling crystals on our leotards and the flips on the trapeze. We’d glimpsed our friendship, and it was beautiful.

We did it, Ros mouthed to me, and I knew they meant more than explain about Touchstone’s uncle. They meant the whole summer—we’d done it, we’d made it to Lovesick Falls, this place that had existed only in our dreams, and now we were having the summer we could never have imagined.

We’re stars, I mouthed back.

After that—it felt like we were us.

I drag Celia by the hand and pull her down to the river.

I could keep up with Ros in my overalls. I yelled at Touch to follow us.

The moon is big and full and deserves to be howled at.

“Are you seriously howling?” Touch said, right in step alongside us.

I bark at my friends: Join in, join in, join in.

We howled together, our pack of three.