He smiled, scar stretching in the most beautiful way. “I’m told I am. Even though I have no idea what you mean. Did you want to know the rest of it? How Mom found me. How we met India and China. How beautiful they were. How wonderful my childhood was. Will that make it better?”

“No.” She shook her head violently enough that he stood and took a step back. “Stop telling me things.” She swiped a hand across her eyes. “I think you should leave.”

“Okay.” It was his favorite word. He did things with it that were entire conversations. She knew that now. She just didn’t know why she knew. How she knew. “Is that really what you want?”

She was shaking, the trembling coming from deep inside her chest. “Of course that’s not what I want. But if you don’t leave you’ll end up with no secrets from me, and I know you like to have secrets.” She knew that too.

Was it the way she usually knew things? Or was it this new needing to guess? God, she was so tired. Other people’s feelings always exhausted her. These were her own feelings and she was still exhausted. Even more than she’d been before. “I mean, I think you like keeping things to yourself. I didn’t see that . . . I just meant that I get the feeling . . . I swear that’s the only reason I know. Or at least that’s what I think. You believe me, right?”

“Esha?” He was next to her again, voice gentle. “Are you saying you think you might have influenced me somehow into telling you all that?”

The tears were flowing too hard now. Esha didn’t remember the last time she’d cried like this. She cried all the time because of emotions that were not her own. But these were and she couldn’t understand them. She felt like she was in a blazing plane. She felt the scratch of branches against her limbs. She was hanging in a tree. It was the last time she had felt her own sadness, and it swept through her in a rush that made everything spin and go dark.

He was leaning over her on her bed when she opened her eyes again. She jumped up and ran to the door that connected her room to Aji’s and made sure it was shut. Her grandmother was on her walk, but Esha had to make sure.

He was in her room. “You’re in my room!”

“I’m sorry. You fainted, I was about to get someone.”

“No! Don’t do that. No one can know you’re here.” He was in her room! Wonder filled her. “You’re in my room,” she repeated.