“You did this?”

“Yep. When I was, like, ten.”

“Grace Town. I don’t know how I feel about you anymore. What’s the D stand for?”

“A boy.”

“Was he your boyfriend?”

“More of a crush, at the time.”

“Forever, huh? You guys still together, then?”

“As it turns out, forever is not as long as I thought it would be.”

Grace traced her fingers over the letters, trancelike, as though she’d forgotten entirely that I was there. “I should probably head home,” she said quietly. “Thanks for hanging out. I used to come here all the time, but it’s not the same when you’re alone.”

“Sure. Anytime. We can come here whenever you want.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You all right?”

“Yeah. Just . . . old memories, you know? My mom lives in the city. I might crash with her tonight. You all right to get the bus on your own?”

“Oh my stars, Grace Town, however will I make it home unaccompanied?”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Grace started to climb, but after taking three steps, she paused and looked back at me. “I’m glad I met you, Henry.”

“I’m glad I met you, Grace.”

Then I stood there and watched her leave, the light from her phone growing dimmer and dimmer as she was swallowed by the drowning dark, until there was nothing left of her at all, not even a sound, and I was alone in the blackness.

My feelings were like a knot inside my gut. Normally I knew exactly what my emotions were. Happy, sad, angry, embarrassed: they were all easy enough to catalog and label. But this was something new. A kind of web of thoughts that had offshoots in all directions, none of which made particular sense. A huge feeling, a feeling as big as a galaxy, a feeling so large and twisted that my poor little mind couldn’t comprehend it. Like when you hear that the Milky Way is made up of 400 billion stars, and you think Oh, shit, that’s pretty big but your puny human brain will never really be able to comprehend how gigantic it is because we were built too small. That’s what it felt like.

I knew when girls liked me. Or, at the very least, I knew when girls were flirting with me. Grace Town wasn’t flirting. Grace Town didn’t like me. Or, if she was and she did, she wasn’t expressing it in any way I was used to.

I also knew when I liked girls. Abigail Turner (from kindergarten) and Sophi Zhou (from elementary school) had been obsessions. Infatuations. Grace didn’t feel like that. I wasn’t even particularly sure I was attracted to her. There was no burning desire there. I didn’t want to tear off her clothes and kiss her. I just felt . . . drawn to her. Like gravity. I wanted to orbit her, be around her, the way the Earth orbits the sun.

“Do not be an idiot, Henry,” I said as I turned on my phone’s flashlight and climbed the rusty spiral staircase toward the night sky, thinking of Icarus and his hubris and how appropriate the metaphor was (I was kind of proud of it, actually). “Do not fall for this girl.”

• • •

When I got home (Mom picked me up, bless her), I opened up the Notes app on my phone and wrote:

Draft Two

Because I have never met anyone that I wanted in my life that way before.

But you.

I could make an exception for you.

“MPDG,” SAID LOLA Tuesday afternoon after school. She was lying upside down on my couch, boots on the headrest, head dangling off the edge, halfheartedly playing FIFA. “That’s some serious MPDG behavior right there.”

“What’s MPDG?” Murray said.

“Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I mean, she takes Henry on an adventure to an abandoned railway station filled with fish and then talks about the universe? Real people don’t do that.”

“Well, she did,” I said, “and it was kind of awesome.”

“No, this is bad. MPDGs are dangerous territory.”

“Wait, so how do the fish live underground?” Murray said. He’d been stroking his peach fuzz with a befuddled look on his face ever since I’d mentioned them. He must have washed his hair the night before (a rare occurrence), because it had reverted to its natural state: a lion’s mane with the consistency of cotton candy. It enveloped much of his shoulders and face, to the point that he’d had to borrow several hair clips from La to keep it out of his eyes. “Is it like an enclosed ecosystem or something? How’d they even get there?”

“Probably connected to some kind of water source nearby,” Lola said. “Birds land in the water with fish eggs stuck to their legs, something like that.”

“Do you think they’re edible? Maybe we should go fishing. What kind of fish were they, Henry? Trout? Bream?”

“Guys, can we focus here? I’m freaking out.”

“Why?” Murray said.

“I think I like her.” It wasn’t easy for me to say. It wasn’t something I’d normally admit to. Maybe, because it was senior year, I wanted some scandal. Not “contracting an STD from my shared love interest and earning the nickname the Trichomoniasis Trio” levels of scandal, but something. I was always on the outskirts of the teenage drama, always listening to Lola’s and Murray’s stories of love found and love lost, but I was never a participant.

For the first time, I wanted in. For the first time, someone might be worth it.

“Oh boy,” Lola said.

Muz wiped a fake tear from his eye. “I’ve waited so long for this auspicious moment. Our little ankle biter finally becomes a man.”

“What do I do?” I said.