I look away and quickly swipe my eyes. “Stop it,” I cry out. “You’re horrible. Why would you trick me like that? Why would you do that?”

Even in the dark, I see his face go white. “Because that’s what I do. Because I wanted to,” he says in that horrible, clipped, unemotional way of his. If he’d spoken in more than monosyllables earlier, I’d have known it was him right away. If it hadn’t been so dark. If…

“You’re a creep. You’re an awful, horrible creep, you always have been and you always will be.”

He shrugs, uncaring. “To answer your second question, no, I won’t be coming back for more. I run an international company, I don’t play with children, and I don’t need friends. Unlike some.”

My nails dig into my palm. The jerk. The jerkity jerk.

“From the day I met you, I knew you were awful.”

“Really? When we were eight?” He sounds surprised. It seems like I’ve managed to shock him out of his contempt.

“Yes. Even then you liked to hit me when I was down. You were rotten.”

He gives me a contemptuous look.

I glare back. “Fine. Yes, William, I kissed you tonight. But only because I thought you were Gavin. He’s fun and kind and…and everything you’re not—”

“So they say,” he says dryly.

“So, get out of my tree.” I fling my hand out and gesture for him to leave.

He tilts his head but doesn’t move. “And if I told you that my mom died last week, and I just needed somewhere to go to be quiet?”

I look over at him and feel regret at my words. “Did she really?”

But he must hear the note of skepticism that I can’t keep out of my voice because he lets out a small laugh.

“No. See you later, Jessie.”

He drops from the branch and out of the tree. I don’t watch him walk away, but I can hear him move through the tall grass, back to the dark, old, cavernous house.

I found out later that month that his mom really had died the week before Will came up the tree. But both he and Gavin were already gone by the time I heard. They didn’t come back for almost a year.

“We were friends when we were eight,” says Will, bringing me back to the Sweetheart’s Dance and the here and now.

I shake my head. “What? No.”

He shrugs. “Agree to disagree.”

“We’ll disagree.” Then, “You stole my long stare.” Gavin is across the clearing, buying desserts from the Friends of the Library fundraising table.

“If you think staring at my brother like a cow with a stomach ache is going to catch him, then you’re deluded.”

I cough. “I’m a cow now?”

He holds up his hands as if to say…yes?