“Not really, no.”

“I’m telling you he’s really into you. It was electrifying just watching the two of you together.” He looked at her. “There’s nothing wrong with being foxy, you know.”

She squirmed again and looked down at her hands.

“Well, I guess he is kind of conventionally cute.”

“Finally! An opinion.” He squeezed her arm. “Brava.”

She smiled, turning away so he wouldn’t see her blush. Her cheeks prickled. She gazed out at a short tree brimming with bright orange apricots in somebody’s front yard, set against a storybook cottage painted in robin’s-egg blue. She and Mira had been watching these apricots ripen in slow motion for weeks. She loved this house, always had—it stood out on a street of faux adobe-style boxes painted in various shades of taupe. Three fat crows were working on the fruit that had fallen onto the freshly mown grass. She imagined that anytime now Snow White or Grumpy or Doc would come charging out of the little house with a broom to shoo the birds away.

“What do you think of this cute little house?”

“It’s, like, my favorite. Whoever lives there’s probably really happy. And well-adjusted. When I was little, I used to fantasize about living there.” She saw his smile and instantly felt like a moron for sharing such unguarded enthusiasm.

“Like apricots?” He called them A-pricots, like a country boy.

“Um, I guess they’re okay.”

“Then why don’t you run out there and go grab us a couple?”

“That would totally be stealing.”

“If they’re on the ground, it’s only looting. It’s not as if any of them’ll survive those crows. Better us than them, right?”

She noticed she’d been sitting on her hands and extracted them from under her thighs. They were clammy things. She looked at the house. There wasn’t a car in the wisteria-wrapped carport, nor even a bike.

“Wait. Is this a dare?”

“I don’t care for apricots either way. I was really just thinking of you.” He shifted his eyes to the tree and then back at her. “Go for it.”

She placed her fingers on the door latch. He was about to say something else when she sprang the door open and bolted across the green lawn. One crow squawked a warning to the others, and all three flapped away from the tree, apricots jammed into their beaks. The fruit was all hers now. Stretching out the front of her T-shirt like an apron, she filled it with the fuzzy little things, avoiding the mushy ones that leaked juice, yet they still stained her shirt. She turned to Mr. Z in his car and stuck out her tongue in victory. He gave her a thumbs-up, which pleased her more than she could fathom.