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to ourselves, how we played “house” for hours in the woods and made TV dinners together.
    â€œIs he the one?”
    â€œExcuse me?”
    Arshan continued as if he was no longer talking to me. “You will give him your youth, your idealism, and your capacity for hope. He will seal or destroy your belief in fate and love. You only get one chance at these things. He will fill your life’s bowl, Samantha. So is he worthy?”
    I reminded myself to breathe. My heart pounded in my throat. How dare he, of all people? “Was Mina’s mother worth it?” Worth becoming so bitter ? I thought.
    Arshan laughed so unexpectedly and so loud that I got goosebumps. “You bet she was.” He slapped the balcony railing and laughed again. I had no idea he could laugh like that.
    Seemingly having surprised himself as well, Arshan cleared his throat and smoothed his slacks. He nodded his head at me, his dark eyes still crinkled from laughing. Then he turned to walk inside.
    â€œMr. Bahrami? Arshan?”
    He turned back. I held out the maple leaf. He took it from my fingers like a long-stemmed rose and studied its colors of campfire embers in the moonlight. His face assumed a softness, like milk spilling over jagged marble. Then he opened the door and the party music flooded the balcony, rinsing away the moment.
    November 10
Samantha
    Okay, Mina, tell me this: What is the difference between matter and non-matter?
    The craziest lesson of quantum physics is that at the most fundamental level, we don’t know what the world and/or us, as human beings, are made of.
    Particles are hard, substantial points in space, like electrons. Waves are spread out and immaterial, like sound. Things have to be one or the other, right?
    Wrong. The most famous experiment in modern physics is The Double Slit Experiment. Electron particles are fired through a screen with two slits onto a particle detector one at a time . You would expect the electron to go through one of the two slits and be detected somewhere directly behind one or the other. But after you’ve fired thousands of electrons, you see not two slits of accumulated particles, but a series of thick and skinnybands—an interference pattern indicative of a wave. But how did each particle know where to end up on the wave interference pattern? The electron somehow interacts and acts both as a wave and a particle at the same time, completely defying classic notions of space, time and matter.
    See, Mina, we really have no clue about “reality.” At what point are we separate from everything around us? How are thoughts different from, say, your collection of maple leaves?
    Scientists aren’t any closer to solving the mind/body debate than the Pope of Rome.
    Which is not to say that there aren’t theories….

CHAPTER
9
    WHILE THE OPENING CEREMONY STRETCHED into the night, Kendra nestled in Michael’s arm, savoring the familiarity. They always lay the same way, on their same respective sides. Kendra loved all things that had that kind of automatic comfort—cutting her banana over her bran cereal, the concierge hailing her daily cab, the TiVo bloop when she sat down on Sunday to watch all her favorite shows Michael wouldn’t watch.
    After the previous night’s fight, Kendra and Michael hadn’t discussed the issue further. Both had said what they had to say for the moment, and neither one was the type to repeat themselves for the sake of drama. Michael came over late with Chinese takeout. They’d watched ESPN and gotten into bed. They hadn’t had sex, but that wasn’t unusual on a weeknight.
    The problem was that Michael thought he had won, and figured Kendra didn’t want to discuss the details of abortion. Kendra figured Michael just needed time to adjust and mighteven propose soon. But this was just a fleeting whisper at the edge of her mind, because really she was happiest ignoring the whole situation.
    Then