“Uh-huh.” She’s definitely still messing with me. But I’m determined to go along with it. “Yes, it’s terrible that he couldn’t make it this year,” I say fake-mournfully. “He might have been just what the doctor prescribed.”

We peruse the other tables. There are, quite simply, no eligible males our own age.

I sigh. “This is pathetic. You’d think there’d be a hot guy on the waitstaff, but no.”

“Poor, poor Ada,” Afton says, patting my shoulder. Then she spots a familiar face a few tables back. “Oh, wait. Look, there’s Nick Kelly. But isn’t he, like, twelve?”

“He’s the same age as me—well, a little younger,” I correct her. “He always has his birthday at the conference, remember? He’ll be sixteen this week.”

She smirks. “Do you remember when Nick got lost in Rio?”

“Yeah.” I was ten that year, and Nick going missing in the middle of this enormous city in a country where none of us spoke the language and the adults all losing their shit over it had been a welcome piece of drama in my life at the time.

“Where is he?” I look around.

“Two tables over, one down,” Afton directs, staring at him over my shoulder. Then she seems to come to some kind of decision. “No,” she concludes. “He’s not fuckable.”

“Hey, that’s not nice,” I protest, although I’m not surprised by this verdict. When Nick was thirteen, he smelled funny and was so thin I worried that he was starving to death—“a beanpole” is how Marjorie Pearson labeled him, as in “Where’s the beanpole? Better keep an eye on that kid”—but Nick’s not so bad. “When did you become a mean girl?” I ask Afton.

She actually looks mildly ashamed now that I’ve called her out. “You’re right. I guess we shouldn’t judge the book by its cover.”

I sneak a peek at Nick Kelly. He’s staring at his phone below the table, probably playing a game, though, instead of texting. Nick and I are the same age, but ironically I don’t know him as well as I know Jerry or Marjorie or any of the other grown-ups. I consider myself a shy person, an introvert, but Nick is worse—or maybe not shy so much as too preoccupied by his own thing to bother getting to know anyone else. No matter where we go in the world, Paris or New Orleans or Shanghai, Nick mostly stays in the hotel room playing video games.