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be playing games like that, it was a boy with emotional issues. But what did I know?
    In the kitchen, I opened my textbook and pulled out my notebook. I made myself a cup of tea and sat at the table, and tried to focus on my reading. I wasn’t going to touch anything else unbidden. It was just before four in the afternoon.

    The sun had nearly set, and the kitchen was dark except for the light I had on over the table, when I heard the door upstairs open, then Luke on the stairs. He appeared in the doorway with his empty plate and spent bottle of water. I looked up at him and he paused for a minute, then went to the sink and washed his plate. He tossed his bottle into the recycle bin under the sink, put the dish in the rack.
    I watched him for a minute and then went back to my reading. I felt him come over and stand behind me; the hairs went up on the back of my neck.
    “You’ll probably find my picture in there,” he said.
    I was reading my abnormal psychology text.
    “Do you consider yourself abnormal?” I asked him. He walked around and sat across from me. He offered a shrug. In the light, he looked like exactly what he was—a boy, troubled maybe, but just a kid. I felt an unwanted tug of empathy.
    “Everyone else does,” he said. He pulled a sad face, which didn’t seem quite sincere.
    “Through no fault of your own, I’m sure.” Was he old enough to detect sarcasm?
    A bright smile crossed his face, and his eyes glittered. He was truly beautiful, and I found myself mesmerized by the almond-shaped pools of his eyes, the milk of his skin, his perfect Cupid’s bow mouth, even the spate of freckles across his nose.
    “Maybe,” he said, drawing out the word, “we got off on the wrong foot.”
    “Maybe we did,” I said. I closed my reading and notes and put them in my bag. “I’m sorry I touched your books. I was just trying to help.”
    He gave me a princely nod. “You did a pretty good job, actually.”
    “Oh,” I said. “Thanks so much.”
    “You’re not like other grown-ups,” he said. He was tracing a finger on the wood of the table, back and forth slowly. “There’s something really different about you.”
    I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him that I didn’t feel quite grown up, yet. That a big part of me still felt like a kid most of the time, which was why it was so easy for me to sink to his level when he called me a tattletale. Or had he already intuited that, and now he was sinking to mine? It was something I wouldn’t consider until much later.
    “You didn’t lock the door,” he said. He leveled that challenging gaze, which I knew I had to hold.
    “Why would I?” I asked. “I’m not afraid of you.”
    Again, he issued that spritely laugh. It managed to sound innocent and vaguely menacing all at once.
    “Want to play chess?” he asked. It sounded like a dare, one I was happy to take.
    “Sure,” I said. “I’m warning you, though. I’m really good at it.I hope you’re not a sore loser.” I strongly suspected that he was a terribly sore loser, and I was already planning to throw the game.
    He bolted upstairs and returned with a chess set in a wooden case, which he unpacked and assembled with unsettling speed and dexterity. He then proceeded to destroy me, game after game, until his mother came home and found us there, heads bent over the board. She let us be as she prepared dinner. And we all shared a lovely meal of grocery-store rotisserie chicken, salad, and macaroni and cheese.
    “Lana’s a terrible chess player,” Luke told his mother. His eyes glittered, watching carefully to see if it bugged me. It did. Could I hide it from him?
    “It’s not that I’m bad,” I said. “It’s just that Luke’s so good. Who taught you to play like that?”
    He was too young and too spoiled to be gracious in accepting the compliment, too arrogant to then make some kind of concession that I wasn’t that bad after all.
    “I