“Are you sure?”

Scarlett nodded and took the note.

“The woman asked you to call right away,” Lola said. “Do you even have allergies?”

“I’m fine,” Scarlett said, walking quickly toward the elevator. “I’ll call her. Thanks.”

Back in the Orchid Suite, Scarlett dropped the note on her bureau and drew the purple sheers. She could hear her parents yelling about the pigeons (“the flying rats”) from the opened window below. She dropped back on her bed and did nothing. She let the heat fall over her and crush her.

A few hours later, the door creaked open and Spencer looked inside. He was carrying a bag.

“I thought you might be here,” he said. “I bring presents. Soup dumplings from Joe’s Shanghai. Yes, I am actually that good.”

Soup dumplings were, arguably, Scarlett’s favorite food. They were dumplings full of the most delicious soup in the world, plus a little meatball.

“I’m not really hungry,” she said. “You can eat them.”

“Come on,” he said, holding out the bag. “I went all the way down there. And you’re telling me you won’t even eat one?”

Scarlett accepted the bag and pulled out the container of steaming-hot dumplings. She stared at the little globlike forms inside—forms that would usually have made her indescribably hungry. They did nothing now except repulse her slightly. Spencer flopped down next to her.

“How is he?” she asked, unable to even say Eric’s name.

“Bruised,” he said. “But fine. I was kind of hoping that if I screwed up that big I’d at least have given him a black eye, but I guess it’s good that I didn’t. I didn’t hit him that hard. He just wasn’t expecting it. If he’d had a chance to react, things would have ended differently.”

“Are you in trouble?”

Spencer shook his head.

“He obviously wanted to drop it. Someone got him some ice, he made a joke, I made a joke. We waited half an hour and did the fight again. Eat.”

Scarlett tried nibbling at the thin dough for Spencer’s sake, but gave up on the effort and set the soup back down.

“Why did you do it?” she asked.

“I know you like soup,” he replied.

“You know what I mean.”

Spencer took the container for himself and very deliberately avoided her stare.

“All I know,” he said, “is that Amy came by in the afternoon to work with me and was going on and on about how sad you looked. For about an hour.”

Right. The brilliant plan at work again.

“Then you came in with Eric. I’ve never seen that look on your face before. We were on stage, things were going fast, someone was telling me to hit him. My brain just decided to go all literal. I sort of watched myself do it. I saw the spot where my fist was supposed to turn, and it just didn’t turn.”

He shoved a dumpling in his mouth, not taking the time to create the vent on top that was so critical in the eating process. He jerked back when he felt the burn and opened his mouth to let out the steam. Scarlett had the feeling that that was self-punishment.