“Whatever,” she’d say, seeing the little boy with big ears and bone-thin face in that smile, the boy who’d been like a brother to her once, or like a brother was supposed to be, if brothers were allowed to be happy. Sometimes she knelt and kissed his cheek as she left the room, surprised by her rush of fondness, which felt an awful lot like sadness.

She could sleep in his room because Mari was safe. He wasn’t going to turn into a different person with no warning. Sometimes she woke in the confusion of a fading nightmare. The sight of him at his desk lit by a single lamp, the sound of his pen scratching, calmed her panic. Listening to him working, she fell asleep again.

They talked about sex sometimes, but only as a concept. They’d decided together that it wasn’t something they would do, at least not until they’d talked about it more.

“Do you remember that time at that party, when we were little?” he asked her once, grinning. “Listening to the women?”

Yes, she remembered. It had been one of the Varana parties, this one at Minta Varana’s house, maybe Ta’s sixth or seventh birthday. Mari, seeking Lovisa out, had found her in a dark library far away from the other children, where she’d been snooping on the mothers in the next room. They’d been talking about the sex they had with their husbands and wives, “and also not with their husbands and wives,” she’d whispered to Mari in a fascinated voice. “Put your ear to this wall.”

“Okay,” Mari had said, reluctantly interested, as he always was when Lovisa snooped. The acts the women had described had sounded improbable. It had seemed unbelievable, really, that grown-ups would want to do those things to each other. The children had had to run into another room before their gasps and laughter gave them away.

Mari thought the memory was funny, because of how his understanding of sex had changed. But Lovisa was more caught up on the cheating, the lying, and how childish the memory made her feel. She had the unsettled feeling that Mari’s attitudes about sex were normal and hers weren’t. Why didn’t she feel attracted to him, like a normal person would? She wanted to have sex with him as a distraction, to force her body to feel something different from what it always felt. But she knew that when Mari talked about it, he was talking about something tempting, something delicious he thought they should resist. He was talking about pleasure. And everyone on campus talked about how attractive Mari was, his fine face, his height, his popularity.