“Ah, l’amour.” Touch sighed. “Young love. Exquisitely, violently painful.”

“Touchstone. I’m going to kill you.”

“They always come looking for the ex-wife first.”

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go up in the tree house.”

“Ooh, spicy,” he said.

We climbed. The tree house had a balcony from which we could observe the party. More people had arrived, though I didn’t understand just how many until we saw it from above: The crowd was a raucous sea of unknown faces. At the edge of the lawn, people were throwing empty bottles against a tree; two boys were wrestling; at some point, someone had started a bonfire, and now kids were taking turns leaping over it while Audrey was screaming at them to stop. And off to the side: Ros and Phoebe, who’d very easily done the thing I could not, which was reveal that she was interested.

“You know what your problem is?” Touchstone said.

“Enlighten me, Andrew.”

“I think sometimes you like moping. That it feels good. That hurt. It feels like work. Like you’re doing something, when you’re not.”

“I’m not moping,” I said.

“You climbed the ladder to the tree house and are looking off plaintively into the distance,” he said. “Maybe moping’s the wrong word. Maybe pining.”

I said nothing. It wasn’t that I was moping. It was just that sometimes I felt weirdly like the ball boy in my own life—I was essential to keeping the game running, but only so long as I remained invisible.

“Come on, man. Pining sucks. It suuuuuuucks. You know that’s, like, this town’s whole thing, right? Like, people came here because there was a spring that made you fall out of love. You can hike up into the woods and see it. We can go. You can even drink from it.”

“Sounds germy,” I said, playing down my desire to drink from the spring. “It would be convenient, though.”

“Celia, why won’t you just tell them?”

“Besides not wanting to destroy my relationship with the only person who’s ever understood me?”

“Thanks a lot,” Touchstone said.

“Only one of two people who’s ever understood me,” I said, correcting myself.

“You and I had a relationship, and we’re fine.”

“Yeah, the kindergarten divorce was really hard to get over.”

“No. I mean, after.”

“Oh,” I said, embarrassed to have temporarily forgotten. Touchstone and I dated for all of eleven days during the winter of ninth grade, during which time he suddenly wanted to talk on the phone all the time even though we’d spent the whole day together and we had literally nothing more to say to each other. We made out a few times, which was fine, but otherwise, the whole relationship was kind of forgettable. We went back to being friends—so easily that I forgot it even happened, evidently.

He frowned at me. “Am I really that forgettable?”