Sean rolled his eyes and put his headphones on. He had his phone in one hand and in the other his pocketknife, the one Silas had given him a few years before. It had belonged to Philip. Sean clicked it open and closed against his jeans over and over, and Lily was happy she’d made the “Only in New Hampshire” rule.

She snapped open the fitted sheet and lifted the mattress.

Despite everything that had happened, this was still her favorite room. The walls were dark blue, with faded patches where Silas used to keep posters of football players and a Playboy model in a schoolgirl costume with the words Study Hard. In a corner Silas’s old TV set still hunkered, the bulky kind with the built-in VHS player, to the back of which he would tape twisted sandwich bags of pot. The first time Lily ever got high was in that bedroom, out of a bong Silas made from a honey bottle shaped like a bear. She remembered the way colors got brighter and the katydids got louder, singing in individual tones instead of their usual collective sound. She felt so connected to everything that night, including Silas. He taught her how to put her mouth on the bear and hold the smoke in even when it burned, and how to blow it out the window through a toilet paper roll capped with a dryer sheet. He was always teaching her things, back then. How to hold a tennis racket. How to understand Faulkner. Even how her own body worked, how touch could bring to the surface parts of her she hadn’t known. At sixteen, he was the brightest person she had ever met. Not just smart, but white-hot bright. A star. The whole school knew Silas Harrison. The kid who could throw a football fast enough to blow off your hat the same day he aced a history test. The kid who called other kids’ parents “Mr. and Mrs.,” who remembered things about them and asked after them later. Lily’s mother was over the moon when Silas called to ask her out. Silas Harrison, Lillian! Lucky girl! Better skip dessert tonight, dear.

If he hadn’t been Silas Harrison, Lily wouldn’t have been allowed to go that summer. Anyone else and her mother would’ve said, Absolutely not, sixteen-year-old only daughter of mine. You cannot spend weeks on end with your boyfriend in his summerhouse. But because it was Silas Harrison, Lily’s mother practically packed her bag for her. She looked at Silas and saw Lily’s future. But who could blame her? Lily did the same exact thing.

At sixteen, Silas Harrison had the kind of smile girls could build a future on.

PEYOTE

“AT THE RISK OF sounding moony, I had fun today,” Cal said as she lingered in my cubicle, her jacket over one arm.

I swallowed. “Ditto.”