That afternoon, as I worked beside Luke in the garden, still exhausted from the hike, I kept thinking of those forbidden lovers. I could easily imagine Luke waiting in the forest, hands in his pockets; in my fantasy the girl for whom he waited was both me and not me. Today, a blue vein was visible in that creamy elbow skin, as though his wiring were showing. He wore a thin white t-shirt that read, in peeling iron-on letters, NOTHING HAPPENS. It was slightly yellow under the arms, but there was a small hole in it that I wanted to put my finger through.

“You know,” I said, “everyone talks about you.” Only the day before, Harriet and Nisha had been waxing ecstatic about the angle of his chin. The day before that, a Lion named Svetlana had asked me to slip Luke a note I could smell from where she held it in her hand, and I had told her I would do it, because Svetlana was the kind of girl who becomes instantly violent when refused. Instead, I had taken the note into the shower with me and held it under the water until it disintegrated, and peed down the drain after it for good measure. Even Jamie seemed to grow whiter and thinner whenever his name was mentioned, if such a thing were possible.

He turned, squatting back on his heels. “What do they say?” he asked. He shook a clot of dirt off his glove. He peered at the fence over my head. He was performing disinterest admirably, but he wanted to know—even I could see that, even then.

“They say you can levitate,” I said. “For one thing.”

“Oh, that.” He turned his attention back to the plant he was coaxing into the ground.

“Is it true?”

He squinted at me. I could see a few strands of chest hair through the hole in his shirt. “Is that all they say?” he said.

“They all want to marry you,” I said. I knew I was being childish, but I couldn’t help myself.

He laughed.

“Yes, it’s very silly,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want to marry me, I take it?”

“I don’t believe in marriage,” I said. That, at least, was true. “No offense.”

“You’re a very interesting girl,” he said, in a voice that made me want to take back what I had said. He reached out and encircled my ankle with two of his fingers. He squeezed it tight, then released it, and returned to his work. Afterward, I kept catching him smiling.