“No.” Josh forced a laugh.

“Interested in a boy?”

“No.”

Diane didn’t want to press Josh further, hoping he would enter the conversation on his own.

The silence thickened the air with the hums and thumps of bodies and appliances, the coffeepot, and a distant car honk, and a nearby bird exclaiming, and her blood moving in jerking, lurching steps under the skin of her neck, where she felt a slight tickle, and the faceless old woman that secretly lives in their home taking slow, careful steps on the second-floor hallway above them, and all the other sounds that silence is made of.

“Why do you think I’m interested in a boy?” Josh said.

“Well, you’re fifteen. I assumed all teenagers do is think about other teenagers, don’t they?”

“No, I am, I guess. I mean, not a boy. There was one but he was weird. I think I scared him.”

Diane kept from saying anything, worried that it might stop this unexpected moment of communication. She let Josh tell his own story.

“There’s a girl named Lisa who my friend Matt says likes me, but I think she’s just really nice to everyone. I don’t think being nice to someone means you like them, especially when you’re nice to everybody. I mean Matt just only thinks about getting with girls and hooking his friends up with girls. All these girls are in love with Matt, and he sometimes sets them up on dates with his other friends, like he’s a matchmaker. And they all go out with his friends, just so they can stay close to Matt, but they all eventually find their way back to him. I think that’s his game, setting his friends up to stash future girlfriends. That’s totally it. That’s probably why he’s trying to set me up with Lisa, because he’s still dating Rosita, and if I can hang out with Lisa—”

“Josh.”

“What?” He looked startled, like he thought he was alone.

“Do you like Lisa?”

“I guess. Yeah? I don’t know her.”

“Are you attracted to her at all?”

“I don’t think so? A little bit? Not really?”

“Then don’t feel pressure to go out with her. If you like her, then there’s nothing wrong with it. But don’t do it for Matt. That’s his problem to work out. Not yours.”

“Okay.”

Silence again. Diane used the silence to scold herself for interrupting with didactic parenting. But also, wasn’t it her job to interrupt Josh’s life with parenting?

“I hate to ask you this,” Diane hated to ask, “because I don’t want it to seem like I was snooping.”

Josh lifted his eyestalks until they were definitely, opaque blackness and all, looking directly into her eyes.

“I found a note in my car the other day.”

Josh’s shoulders tightened and his antennae pulled back.