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burned through two community colleges, dropping out once due to boredom and a second time after he got busted at an inopportune moment with an English professor twice his age.
    â€œBy the way,” Mom said, rearranging her knife on her plate, “you never told me when Noah would be free to come over for family dinner.”
    â€œI forgot to ask, sorry. He’s been working, and…”
    And Heath had been sneaking out to drink and see metal shows every other night. I didn’t say this—sibling loyalty is a two-way street—but my mom has some weird sixth sense about these sorts of things, which is probably why I have no confidence when it comes to lying to her. Nurse Katherine the Great always knows.
    She shot him a dark look across the table. “I swear, Heath, if you screw this up with Noah—”
    â€œI’m not going to screw it up.”
    â€œAgain,” I amended under my breath.
    â€œWe were on a break,” Heath said.
    â€œBecause you were fooling around with that cook.”
    â€œChef,” he corrected. “And he was fooling around with me . I didn’t start it.”
    â€œTell me again, why is Noah with you?”
    â€œBecause I’m overflowing with personality and I ooze charm.”
    I snorted. “You’re overflowing and oozing something, all right.”
    â€œPlease, God,” Mom pretend-prayed to the sky. “All I ask is that you swap these children for kittens, and I’ll never sin again.”
    Heath made prayer hands and closed his eyes. “Dear Prince of Darkness, please make sure the kittens piss all over her bed so she’ll regret it and beg for us to come back.”
    I elbowed him in the ribs until he laughed, and then I asked Mom for money. “I’m going back inside for ten-dollar strawberry shortcake,” I explained as I accepted her debit card. “You two keep steering us toward the apocalypse while I’m gone.”
    They continued to joke and laugh as I strolled around tables and a hundred pecking birds, who must’ve thought this place was some kind of avian Shangri-La, what with all the fancy crumbs being tossed their way by museum patrons. I couldn’t blame them. It was really pretty out here, especially beyond the patio; afternoon sun cleared out the fog over Golden Gate Bridge’s famous orangey-vermillion arches stretching across the blue bay. For once, it actually seemed like summer. Though I did feel a little sorry for the tourists who were prancing around in shorts. Come nightfall, they’d be regretting they didn’t book their trip in September or October, when it was sunnier.
    As I opened the cafe door, a riot of sound drew my attention toward the museum hallway. People were jumping up from their seats, craning their necks to see something. I sidled past one of the museum volunteers and wove between patrons crowding the exit of the Flesh and Bone exhibit.
    A couple of guards cleared a space around a spotlighted area in the middle of the room. That’s when I saw it, scrawled in slanting metallic gold on the gray exhibit wall beneath Max Br ö del’s heart diagram:
    C E L E B R A T E
    Was this, could this…? Who the hell else would it be?
    Jack.
    Jack-Jack-Jack! His name bounced around my hollow head like a rubber ball inside an empty gym. Celebrate. This was no coincidence. He went to the Body-O-Rama website. He saw my post about birthday plans—the one in which I’d posted a photo of the Br ö del. Humiliation and excitement raced through me in dizzy spirals.
    Oh, my ever-loving God …
    He did this for me.
    Important-looking people rushed in with a security guard. Museum administration. One of them was a distinguished older woman in a dress suit, who clamped a hand over her mouth when she saw the graffiti.
    Someone was excitedly talking to a couple next to me. “Dressed in black,” he was saying. “I didn’t get a look at his