1 He was not technically Touchstone’s uncle. Henry, as was his name, was technically an ex-cousin by marriage, the particulars of which were so convoluted they might as well have come straight from Power Jam, a British show about the cutthroat world of Roller Derby that Ros and I watched religiously. We could never remember Touchstone’s exact relationship to Henry, just as we could never remember how all the plot points of Power Jam fit together. Had the stalker arrived before or after regionals? Had Blade Mendoza, the villain, cut Kenna’s laces before or after he’d discovered that she’d sold her hair to buy him new wheels? But here’s the thing: Never getting it right was part of the fun with Ros. They remembered some things, I remembered the others, and between us, we cobbled together a story that might not have been right, but it was ours.

FULL CELIA GILBERT,
or the Tragic Fate of My Tennis Racket

Lovesick Falls had been my idea. I’d never been there myself, but I knew about it because Touchstone had been, and because of the theater festival that happened there over the summer, one big enough to attract minor stars and minor enough to discourage a big fuss. The town was a tiny blip beside the Russian River, nestled in a national redwood forest. One especially gray lunch period in February, Touchstone mentioned visiting his uncle-who-was-not-his-uncle at the cabin he owned, and I had an epiphany. If I were the sort of person who believed in visions—in other words, if I were more like my mother, who wrote horoscopes for a living—I would’ve called it just that. The idea just came to me, like a solution to a problem I didn’t know needed solving, one I knew straightaway was the right answer. If my life had been a math test, I would’ve put a box around my Lovesick Falls idea and moved on to the next problem without double-checking.

“We should go there,” I said. “The three of us. To that cabin.”

“Were you listening to any part of my story?” Touchstone said. His endless freckles were paler in the winter—Touchstone was the most freckled person I knew, with freckles on his eyelids and freckles on his lips—and with the lack of sunlight, his reddish hair tended more toward brown. He’d recently been diagnosed with a gluten allergy and was picking at a sad salad. He looked—we all looked—like he needed a little fresh air.

“Touchstone. Do you think we could go there?” I said.

“I can ask about staying a weekend. Maybe when it gets a little warmer.”

“No, like, for the summer. We go, we get jobs, we live. You don’t have summer plans yet, do you?”