“I don’t. I promise.”

“Colossus thought this was weird. We came here a couple of times. All he’d do is sit in the corner and read Sports Illustrated.”

This . . . was an opening I couldn’t have planned better if I wanted to. “Come here,” I said. “Let me show you something.”

I walked her to a wall display marked “Graphic Novels and Trades.” Plucked some familiar covers from the rack. The Walking Dead, Black Science, Miles Morales: Spider-Man. “These are great, too. I really like Black Science because—” Her scowl stopped me. “What?”

“Zombies and stuff?”

“The Walking Dead’s about zombies. Not Black Science. That’s more like interdimensional travel. You see this family . . .”

Her eyes were sort of glassy. “I’m sorry. It’s not my thing. I never really got all that stuff. I like reading about real people and places.”

“Oh. Right.” I put the slim volumes back in the display rack.

Over the PA, the tattooed librarian’s voice droned, “Please make your final selections now. The library will be closing in twenty minutes.”

My feet shuffled, and my brain scrambled. Why was there suddenly nothing to talk about? “Umm, you gonna check out that book you were looking at?”

“No way. My dad dropped me off at a restaurant. I can’t come home with a library book.”

“Hide it in your bag.” She’d had a big-enough purse slung over her shoulder, and bouncing on her hip, since she left her dad’s car. It would do. Also, I really wanted her to take home something she liked, a good reminder of our night.

But she was on her phone, texting. “Jameer’s going to meet behind our houses. We better get going then. If me and him get in and convince our parents nothing dumb happened, then we can salvage this jacked-up night.”

That stung more than her basically calling my taste in books silly. Up until then, I thought we’d both had a good time.

We walked the two miles from the library to her and Jameer’s neighborhood, and had a really good conversation about college, and everything else after high school. Good enough that I thought the evening might end the way I wanted. With a kiss.

Both of us wanted to go to schools far away from Green Creek. She talked about Columbia University in New York City. I hadn’t thought about going that far, sort of thought I might stay in state, but hearing her talk about the city made me want to look at New York schools now.

“I’ve got an aunt in New York so we go every summer,” she said, during that last quarter mile, my bike gears clicking between us. “That energy. The smell. If there’s a total opposite to Green Creek it’s that, you know.”

I didn’t. I’d never actually been to New York. Still, I said, “Sure. I do.”

“My mom thinks I’m crazy for wanting to be around all those people, crammed up together. Her words.”