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you?”
    “Sort of. He’s really bratty. He didn’t know we were, you know, friends of Nate’s.”
    “Oh brother,” Raf says. “Listen to you. Hanging out with your movie star friends. What, are you guys goingto follow him around from movie to movie now, just because he talked to you?”
    “Maybe we are,” I say, taking Raf’s hand. “Now that I’m taking care of his dog—”
    “You’re
what
?”
    “Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that, huh? Nate had his dog with him on the set all day, and he asked me to hold her because she tried to kill Cam while they were filming. And then, at the end of the day, he asked me if I could watch her for a few days. And he’s paying me
fifty
dollars a day.”
    “Humph.”
    He lets go of my hand and changes the subject. “So, do you want pizza or something else?”
    “Oh, come on, Raf—what’s the matter? I’ll stop talking about Nate right now, I promise.” I take his hand again and squeeze. “I feel like tacos instead of pizza. But, um, I do have one teensy-tiny problem.”
    “Now what?”
    “I kind of spent all my money at the bookstore,” I say, waving my bag of new books in his face. “I’ll pay you back, I promise. As soon as I get paid by Nate, er, I mean … as soon as Becca pays me back the ten dollars she owes me.”
    It’s like a minefield, this world of relationships.
    Post-tacos, I’m spending a quiet Saturday night at home with Mom and Tillie, watching a crummy movie on cable, when Becca calls with some interesting news.
    “Guess what? I went back,” she says.
    “Back where?”
    “To that gallery.”
    “Where the guy yelled at us?”
    That gets Mom’s attention. “Who yelled at you?”
    I wave her off with a don’t-worry-it’s-all-cool smile. “It was no big deal.” And it wasn’t, but I move into my bedroom to continue the conversation anyway. I’d rather not have to explain what we were doing in a gallery that wasn’t really open yet.
    “So what happened? You didn’t go back in, did you?”
    “Yeah, I did, but not through the front. I went around back and found the alley and the window—the real one. I had to climb up on top of a Dumpster to see inside, but sure enough, he was still in there, painting away. So I went across the street, bought a cup of tea, and then knocked on the window. I started tapping really gently, ’cause I didn’t want to scare him to death, but I almost did anyway. He ducks down on the floor, but when he sees that it’s me, he smiles and comes over and opens the window.”
    “You’re crazy, you know,” I say.
    “Trust me, this guy wouldn’t hurt a fly. Literally. While I was there, he saw a little spider on the wall and he scooped it up and set it out on the windowsill.”
    “So what is he doing in there?”
    “I didn’t get the whole story yet, but I’m working on it. I’m inside, drinking my soda while he’s having his tea,which he poured into a china cup, and we have a really great conversation about art—the people we really like, the ones we think are phonies, everything. I even tell him about the class I’m taking over at Alessandra’s, and show him my sketchbook.”
    “Which he loved, I’m sure.”
    “He did seem to like the stuff I did in the park—we have to draw a bunch of statues for class and I did that one of Romeo and Juliet over by the theater. And Aragorn, of course. I love that guy.”
    “You mean King Jagiello,” I say.
    “I don’t care who he really is—he looks like Aragorn to me. Oh, and all the painting on the walls—the fake window and everything—he did all that, too. I think he’s
obsessed
. He doesn’t paint because he wants to; it’s like he
has
to. Anyway, we’re yakking away like we’re best friends, and someone knocks on the door—the same door that I opened this morning. It was a girl’s voice, and she kept asking him if everything was okay, because she thought she heard voices. Gus—that’s his name, by the way—tells her he’s fine, but