Deepa crept down the hallway to her parents’ bedroom, slid inside. She scooted toward the tall rosewood chest standing next to the window, pulled open the bottom drawer, rummaged around for a handkerchief, picked one she knew her father wouldn’t miss—tea-stained with loose threads. She wet it with water from a pitcher.

“Deepa?” Bala called. “Are you back inside? Do you want to eat now?”

She hurried to the door, cracked it open. “Not yet. Just, uh, getting a book,” she called. “Going back to the garden to complete my studies.”

She closed the bedroom door, flung open a cabinet, extracted a bottle of alcohol, bandages, and tape. She slipped them underneath her dupatta, walked briskly down the hallway back outside.

Amir’s elbows were propped on his knees. His head hung low between them. His fingers formed a steeple on his neck. She kneeled, set down her supplies, brought her hand to his face. “Turn toward me,” she said.

It was just like at the clinic. She was just taking care of a patient. She could do this without her parents. She’d watched them often enough, had even assisted a few times. Her mother had shown her how to use the stethoscope, the blood pressure cuff, the otoscope (though she didn’t use it often—she worried she’d poke patients’ eardrums). She knew her way around superficial wounds.

It wasn’t her lack of expertise that made her nervous, though. It was the caring of him, being so close to him she could hear his breath, see the slight chip on his tooth.

Touch him.

She raised her hand slowly. Her fingers connected with the cleft of his chin. She slid her thumb underneath, along the stubble, the squiggled lines of a scrape, and angled his face toward the candle’s glow. A thin stream of blood trickled from his nose to the chapped top edge of his lip.

“Judging by your expression, I must look terrible,” he said.

Her neck flushed. He could never look terrible to her. He was handsome. Perhaps the most handsome boy she’d ever known. The way he carried himself—the way he moved through the world, talked with his friends—it was if he was unaware of his own beauty, his perfection. Or perhaps he knew and just didn’t care.

She fumbled with the cap on the bottle. It dropped to the ground.

He handed it to her, smiled, his slightly crooked teeth peeking out of one side of his mouth, his pink gums from the other. With his eyes on her like this, it was as if she was the only person in the entire world.