I just . . . I don’t know how I feel about you anymore . . .

Harry Potter’s the deal breaker?

We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy, Grace. Reading Harry Potter is what is right.

That’s some kind of quote, right? Who said that? The Dumbledude?

HOW DARE YOU STAND WHERE HE STOOD.

Yeah, I have no idea what you’re talking about anymore.

I’m home in record time!

That’s good. I’m gonna crash. I was going to send you a very romantic GIF from Anchorman 2 but you have to earn that kind of thing and you’ve really lost a lot of brownie points with this whole Harry Potter sacrilege.

Awesome. Thanks for the invite! Catch you tomorrow.

Night night.

THE FIRST THING I did when I woke up in the morning was message her.

HENRY PAGE:

Wanna come over for dinner tonight, Town? I’mma woo you with my culinary expertise.

GRACE TOWN:

Yo, Page, I’mma let you cook for me, but my momma has the best culinary skills of all time.

(That was a yes by the way.)

(Also, my mother can’t cook.)

Grand. See you in drama.

I considered tacking an x onto the end of the message, but I didn’t quite know if we were at that level yet, and the thought of the x not being reciprocated was enough to discourage me from typing the x, so I didn’t. I stayed in bed, slipping in and out of sleep, until Mom yelled, “Henry, are you alive?” down the stairs and I had to drag myself away from my comfortable tangle of sheets and begrudgingly dress for the day.

Upstairs, my parents were performing their usual morning routine: Mom was already dressed in a light blue suit, her pale hair pinned up in curls, ready for a day at the gallery. Dad was swaddled in an absurdly fluffy white bathrobe, black-rimmed glasses balancing on the end of his nose. They sat at opposite ends of the table, as far away from each other as possible, reading the morning news on their separate iPads.

“Mother. Father. I have news,” I announced.

Dad looked up from an article about one of the Kardashians. “You’ve been conscripted to the war? What decade are you speaking from?”

“Ugh, fine: Home-Daddy, Mama P., I got a live tweet coming at you. Better?”

“Oh God, go back to World War Two, please,” said Mom.

“What’s up, kid?” Dad said.

“Can I cook dinner tonight?”

“Darling, the only thing you know how to make is mini pizzas,” said Mom.

“I know. I’m going to cook mini pizzas for everyone, if you don’t mind buying the ingredients. Also.” I cleared my throat. “There’s a girl coming over.”

“Do you have a group assignment at school?” Mom asked.

“Is she tutoring you?” Dad said.

“Are you selling her something?”

“Did you lure her here under false pretenses?”

“Does she think you come from old money?”

“Are you blackmailing her?”

“Is she a heavy drug user?”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, ha-ha, you’re both very funny.”

“We think so,” said Mom as Dad air-high-fived her. (Okay, so I take back what I said about them being cool.)

“Well, who is she?” Dad asked.

“Her name is Grace. We’re, um, editing the newspaper together.”

“Oh, Henry. Have you never heard the saying ‘don’t shit where you eat’?”

“Justin, that’s disgusting,” Mom said.

“I’m not shitting anywhere,” I said.

“Well,” Dad said, “I suppose this would be the point when we’d normally say, ‘No sex, drugs, or rock ’n’ roll under our roof,’ but we raised your sister here, so I’m ninety-nine percent certain all of that’s already happened.”

“I did find a baggie of white powder in the elk’s mouth the other day,” I said, stroking my chin.

“My point exactly,” Dad said.

Mom stood and cleared her plate and kissed the side of my head as she made her way to the sink. “We’ll buy the ingredients. You cook. And I am going to say, ‘No sex, drugs, or rock ’n’ roll under our roof,’ even if your father won’t.”

I patted her on the back. “That’s not going to stop me from doing lines of coke off a hooker while listening to Led Zeppelin, but hey, at least you tried.”

She shook her head. “God, sometimes I don’t know where we went so, so wrong with you two.”

• • •

Mom and Dad were in the kitchen unpacking the dinner ingredients when Grace and I arrived, both of them dressed in full Star Trek uniforms, Vulcan ears and all.

“No,” I said when I saw them. “Dear God, no.”

It’d already been an odd sort of afternoon. We’d performed our usual routine of walking to Grace’s, but as we’d turned onto her street, Grace had let out a long, thin breath and pushed her palm into my chest. We were still a far way off from her house, but Grace had sensed a disturbance in the Force—a small car with paneling in three different colors was parked in her driveway next to her Hyundai.

“Stay here,” she’d whispered.

“Who is that?” I’d said.