When we reached the lobby, Brad started squirming, and when I set him down, he lunged for the glass door with more force than I would have expected from such a tiny dog. “No,” I said, pulling him toward the basement unit. Clearly the dog, no fool, saw the front door and assumed that meant a walk was in the cards. “Sorry, bud.” I knocked twice on the superintendent’s door. A second later, it swung open.

I had been led to believe, by movies and TV, that building superintendents were guys in their fifties who often had mustaches, sometimes wore undershirts with overalls, and usually walked around carrying a wrench or a plunger. So I was very surprised to see, standing on the other side of the door, a guy who looked around my age, with nary a wrench in sight. He was almost my same height—I got to look straight at him, which was honestly a little jarring, because his eyes were a light brownish-green, a true hazel, with lashes that seemed almost criminally unfair for a boy to have. He had tan skin and thick dark hair, cut short and pushed back from his forehead so that it stood up slightly. He was, in short, very cute.

“Hi,” he said, looking from me to Stevie with a quick smile that flashed bright, slightly crooked teeth. “Can I help you?”

“Hi there,” I said, giving him a smile of my own. Stevie cleared her throat, and it brought me back to the moment, and the situation we were dealing with. “Right. Hello. Are you… the super?”

“That’s my uncle,” he said. He took a step closer and I could see that he was wearing an NYU sweatshirt with a checked collared shirt under it, skinny jeans, and Converse. “But he got called away suddenly and I’m holding down the fort. You’re not…” He looked from me to Stevie, his brow creasing slightly. “You’re not residents, right?”

“We’re not,” Stevie said, coming to stand next to me. Brad also seemed to take this as his cue to come forward as well, launching himself at the guy, dancing back and forth, his curved tail wagging furiously.

“Brad!” the guy said with a smile as he picked him up. Brad’s front paws flew up and down as he tried to get close enough to lick this guy’s face. “Hey, buddy. How’s tricks?”

“You know the dog?” Stevie asked.

“Sure,” he said, settling Brad in the crook of his arm and scratching underneath his neck. “I help my uncle out a lot, and sometimes will do walks if people are working late, that kind of thing. Are you guys friends with Mallory and Flora?”

“Mallory’s my stepsister,” Stevie said. “And she gave us her key to drop something back at the apartment for her, but when we were in there, Brad ran for the door, we ran after him, and—”