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I’ll be okay. He won’t try anything.”
    “Okay.” Alexei smiled. “You will tell us if you need help?” He picked up the plate she’d put in the rack and wiped it dry.
    “Of course,” Meg said, “but I won’t need help. What about you? Bringing anyone over we should know about?”
    “You do not believe in love,” Alexei said, teasingly.
    “I believe that you believe in it.” She shut the water off, but left her paws in the full sink, moving them back and forth, eyes half-closed as she turned to smile at him. “So I’m trying to respect your beliefs. Not be too biased, you know? So?”
    Alexei shook his head. “No. I do not think so.”
    “Oh well.” Meg looked in at Sol again. “He’s got someone. Did he tell you?”
    The fox raised an eyebrow. “He said he didn’t want to tell you because you do not believe in love.”
    “He didn’t tell me,” Meg said. “He’s just all distracted the way he used to be when he was texting that asshole rapist all the time. Did he really say he didn’t want to tell me?”
    “They have not had a date yet,” Alexei said, turning the plate over. “I am sure he will tell you when he is more sure.”
    “Hm.” Meg nodded. “Well, don’t tell him I know. But I wouldn’t make fun of him for it. I just want to make sure he’s okay. He’s… Well, even though you believe in ghosts, I think you’re more grounded than he is.” She peered at him. “You’ve been through more.”
    Alexei put the plate down and dried his paws on the towel. “Should I say, ‘Thank you’?”
    “Nah.” She sighed and lifted her paws from the sink. Alexei held the towel out to her as he heard the gurgle of the drain. The water level lowered slowly. “I need to get out to the pool,” she said.
    “I will go with you if you like.”
    “Okay.” She dabbed at her paws and then dropped the towel on the counter. “Tomorrow?”
    Alexei shook his head. “Tomorrow is when Sol has his…” He smiled. “He asked me to be there to watch just to make him feel better.”
    “Good. So he’s not entirely off in dreamland.” She looked past Alexei to Sol’s bedroom. “Day after tomorrow, then.”
    Alexei nodded, and picked up the towel to hang it up as Meg went back to her room.
    *
    That night, he lay in bed wondering whether he would meet his special person in Vidalia, if there were a reason he’d ended up at high school with Sol and Meg. It could be Mike, but maybe someone else would join the Vidalia Lesbian and Gay Alliance, or maybe someone would notice him at his job, or maybe while he was sitting at the coffee house watching Sol and his date, someone would sit with him. But the more he thought about it, the more that mysterious person always became a white sheep with gold curving horns and wide brown eyes and a smile that made Alexei feel like a small sun was glowing in his chest.
    And who liked Kendall, of all people. The pine marten smirked through Alexei’s half-dream, with his painted claws and his flouncing manner and his way of speaking that was so quick, so slick. Alexei had known someone like him back in Samorodka—not gay, of course, but that fast-talking manner. At home, he had enjoyed sparring with his classmate, because he was clever enough to match wits even if he wasn’t quick enough to match words, and also because there was much less depending on whether he could prove himself superior. He had played pranks on Tomas, and Tomas had played pranks on him, and sometime around their year 9 in school they had grown bored of it and stopped.
    But Kendall, Kendall was like a Tomas who was living on the way to Alexei’s house, a malicious fairy living in the wood near his home. Alexei fell further into sleep, imagining the pine marten chasing him away from Mike over and over, until a high whine reached his ears and woke him.
    He turned over in bed, facing Sol’s wall, where a light shone from outside. It fell on the portrait of Niki, on the fox’s one visible green