Grace sighed. “Meet me back here once the sun has set.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you want to hang out?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess.”

“So let’s hang out. Tonight. Once the sun has set, meet me back here. Okay?”

“Are we, like, doing something illegal or . . . ? Just the whole after-sunset thing seems very diabolical.”

Grace smiled her tired smile. “I’ll see you tonight, Henry Page.” Then she turned and limped off down the street and disappeared around the corner.

For some reason, I didn’t tell my basement-dwelling friends that Grace was meeting me that night. Whatever was happening between us felt very thin, very fragile, not the type of thing to be discussed and dissected by a group of people. Because, deep down, I think I honestly believed it would go nowhere and I didn’t want to have to deal with the inevitable embarrassment that would come if I told my friends I very nearly almost liked a girl and it turned out she didn’t like me back. So I faked feeling sick, and they begrudgingly went home to their own families to eat their own dinners instead of being freeloading succubuses (succubi?) like they normally were.

After they were gone, all that was left to do was tell my parents.

Now, I know most teenagers are supposed to hate their parents or at the very least think they’re uncool or whatever, but I was always too in awe of my mom and dad for any of that. My parents had one of those creepy, pre-Frozen-Disney-movie-type love-at-first-sight stories. They met at a KFC (okay, so maybe not quite Disney) after school when they were barely tweens. Dad, being the cocky little kid I assume he was, asked for Mom’s hand in marriage on the spot (offering her a piece of fried chicken instead of an engagement ring—definitely, definitely not Disney).

You’ve probably read stories like that before, about old-timey folk proposing marriage on the first date and all. But this is legit. And it worked. They didn’t get married for another eleven years, but they never dated anyone but each other from that day onward. They eloped in India on a Christmas Day when they’d barely finished college, each dressed in swimwear and painted in henna. I had a Polaroid photo of them feeding mangoes to elephants. So theirs was an incredible love. Speaks volumes of Colonel Sanders’ secret recipe.

But it wasn’t their Nicholas Sparks–esque, so-perfect-it-kind-of-makes-you-sick relationship that I loved most about them. It was the way they were. I’d seen hormonally ravaged teenagers who weren’t as giddily in love as my parents, and—instead of making me dry retch, like it was apparently supposed to—I loved their love.

They’d been hippies when Suds was a kid, an artist and a carpenter living in an abandoned warehouse. Maybe the hellish experience of raising Sadie to adulthood had stripped any resistance from their systems, but they’d always been nothing but incredibly cool and open toward me.

So when I said to my mom, Daphne, when she got home from the gallery: “Mother, I’m going out tonight and I’m not sure what time I’ll be home or where I’m going exactly. I’m not a hundred percent certain, but I may possibly be engaging in illegal activities. Is that okay?”

She just said: “An adventure, huh? Excellent. I was starting to worry about you. Sadie had been arrested three times by your age, and look how she turned out.”

“Thanks, Mom. I knew you’d support me.”

“In anything except murder and the use of prohibited substances that require injection.”

“Oh, good, ’cause I’ve been meaning to see if you wanted to invest in this mobile meth lab business I’ve been working on for the past few months.”

“Of course, darling. Do me up a compelling spreadsheet and I’ll take a gander at the figures. Will you require emergency getaway transportation from your possibly illegal activities this evening?”

“I’m not sure yet. Can I keep you posted? I shouldn’t be out too late. I don’t want to keep you and Dad up.”

“If I don’t answer my phone, just get the police to drop you home. We’ll pretend to ground you for a month.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

She kissed my forehead. “For real, though. Don’t break any laws. And call me if you need me, okay?”

“Will do.”

The afternoon passed far too slowly after that and then, in the minutes leading up to sunset, far too quickly. All of a sudden it was dark and I was walking toward the front door, shouting good-bye to my parents, searching my thoughts for conversation starters, questions I could ask Grace to keep the small talk going. I always got stage fright in front of her, my brain turning into a cavernously empty pothole that couldn’t scrounge up useful thoughts to save itself.

Outside, Grace’s car had disappeared, as it had the two afternoons she’d driven me home last week. I waited by the mailbox, shuddering against the surprisingly chilly evening breeze. Five minutes passed before I caught a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye. A small, dark figure stood at the end of my street, beckoning me into the blackness. From that distance I couldn’t see their face, only the outline of their strangely wide shoulders. It wasn’t the silhouette of something I wanted to follow into the dark. When I didn’t move, Grace exaggerated her summoning motion so that she was using her whole arm and her cane to call me to her. I jogged over, zipping up my jacket against the cool. As I drew closer, I could see she was still dressed in her typical boyish attire, topped with a football jacket that was so large on her, she could’ve worn it as a dress. Had she driven home to get it and then walked all the way back here?

“Do you have a bus pass?” she called when I was within earshot. Not hello. Never hello.

“Not on me, no, sorry.”

“That’s okay. I’ll be your sugar mama and pay your fare.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”