The tea didn’t help much. For a few hours, she passed back and forth from sleep to waking, but was afraid that drinking more of it would make her sick. It was Sunday. Sunday dinner at home was impossible; she couldn’t go home. She doubted her father would come to collect her. Just in case he did, Lovisa got up and went to knock on Mari’s door.

Mari’s room was full of boys lounging on the floor and bed, all of them reading or writing, all snacking idly on cakes from an expensive Flag Hill bakery.

Lovisa needed something physical, something to tire her out and distract her. “Anyone want to go to the ambles?” she said. “I’m bored.”

“I’ll go, when I finish this page,” said Kep Gravla, probably the last person in the room Lovisa would’ve chosen, because he was self-centered and insecure and never shut up. His family’s house was next door to Lovisa’s in Flag Hill and she’d spent her childhood avoiding him.

“Mari?” she said, because the most annoying people were more tolerable if Mari was there too. “You want to join us?”

“Which amble are you going to?”

“Any. I want some hot salted caramel. And maybe there’s some good music,” she added, knowing that Mari had a weakness for both of those things.

He gave her a look, and a smirk, because Mari knew what Lovisa thought of Kep Gravla. “I guess I could take a little break,” he said.

“Good. Anyone else?” said Lovisa, not really waiting for a reply. “I’ll get my coat.”

—

It was Lovisa’s second trip to an amble that day, but vastly different from her first. Once Mari agreed to go, most of the others did too, so that an uproar of obnoxious boys descended upon the nearest shopping area. The purveyors of certain shops—sweets, games, books—perked up at the sight of them, while other faces closed. Lovisa saw a man who sold fresh flowers drop a pile of roses with a glare in their direction as a woman who’d been dithering over them left, driven off by the raucous laughter of the boys buying hot drinks at the store next door.

“What’s on your mind, Lovisa?” Mari asked her, peeking over a steaming cup of salted caramel. “You’re standing there with your arms crossed like an angry professor.”

“Does Kep know that his crass mouth drove all the shoppers away from the flower shop?”

“Probably,” said Mari. “He’s probably happy about it.”

“Why are you even his friend, Mari?”

“You’re his friend too.”

“But you actually like him.”

“Doesn’t that make it more excusable that I’m his friend?”

“It makes me question your taste in human beings.”