“I wish I didn’t have to go,” Mickey said. She loved going to her family’s New Hampshire house. She looked forward to it all year. But here she was, saying she wished she could stay home and meaning it.

Silas walked past her door and caught her eye.

“Your mom is going to be so happy to see you’re packing,” he said, pausing in the doorway. He had a beer in his hand.

“Go away, Dad.”

“Don’t be rude, Mick,” Ruth said. “Hi, Mr. Harrison!”

He had told her to call him Silas from the beginning, but she never did.

“What are you up to this summer, Ruth? In the market for new parents? We might be looking to adopt,” Silas said, smirking. He leaned against the doorframe and took a sip.

Ruth shrugged. “I’m not doing anything. It’s so cool that you can go back to your childhood home every year! Mickey says it’s beautiful. I’d love to see it sometime.”

“Your family doesn’t go anywhere?”

Mickey blushed. Ruth’s mom didn’t have a second home like the Harrisons, or the families of most of the kids from their school. Mickey wanted to interrupt him; she wanted to do a dance to distract them both. She was embarrassed because she thought Ruth might be. Embarrassment can be contagious like that. But Ruth wasn’t. She just shrugged.

“We don’t have anywhere to go,” she said. Ruth had a way of doing that: saying the truth. Mickey’s family wasn’t used to it. The blunt truth, Mickey noticed, raised the Harrisons’ collective heartbeat. Mickey loved it.

Silas swirled his beer.

“You should come with us! What do you say, Mick? Want to bring a friend this year?”

Mickey’s heart surged with a mix of excitement, terror, and jealousy. She had noticed that happening lately: all of her feelings had at least two other feelings right on top of them. It was, unsurprisingly, confusing. Mickey looked at her father, and then at Ruth.

“That would be great!” Mickey said, mostly telling the truth.

“Are you sure?” Ruth asked her, not looking at Silas. The way Ruth did that, asked Mickey like she alone was the authority, made Mickey want her to come something vicious. She nodded.

“I would love to, Mr. Harrison!” Ruth said. She hopped off Mickey’s bed and threw her arms around Silas’s neck, so fast it spilled a bit of his beer. She let go, and he stepped back, flushed.

“Well, you ask your parents, and we’ll go from there,” he said, smiling and close to breathless.

“It’s just my mom,” Ruth said. “She’ll be fine with it.”

“Okay, well, just ask to be sure. Then Lily and I will give her a call.”