I took the paper from her and folded it and slipped it into my pocket, half of me horrified that she’d injured a book, the other half of me elated that she’d so willingly given me something that clearly meant a lot to her. I liked people like that. People who could part with material possessions with little or no hesitation. Like Tyler Durden. “The things you own end up owning you” and all that.

Grace’s house was exactly the type of place I expected her to live. The garden was overgrown, gone to seed, the lawn left to grow wild for some time. The curtains on the windows were drawn and the house itself, which was two stories tall and made of gray brick, seemed to be sagging as if depressed by the weight of the world. In the driveway there was a solitary car, a small white Hyundai with a Strokes decal on the back windshield.

“Stay here,” she said. “I’ve got to get my car keys.”

I nodded and stood by myself on the front lawn while I waited for her. The car, like everything else about her, was strange. Why did she walk (or hobble, rather) fifteen minutes to school every day if she had a license and a readily available vehicle? Every other senior I knew was desperate for the privilege of driving to the mall or McDonald’s during lunch, escaping the confines of the school grounds. And then, in the afternoons, bypassing the bus line and rolling right on home to food and PlayStations and sweet, sweet comfortable sweatpants.

“Do you have your license?” Grace said from behind me. I jumped a little, because I hadn’t even heard her come out of the house, but there she was, car keys dangling off her pinkie finger. These, too, had Strokes paraphernalia attached to them. I’d never really listened to their stuff before, but I made a mental note to look them up on Spotify when I got home.

“Uh, yeah, actually. I got it a couple of months ago, but I don’t have a car yet.”

“Good.” She threw me the keys and walked to the passenger side of the car and pulled out her phone. After twenty seconds or so, she looked up from her screen, her eyebrows raised. “Well? Are you going to unlock the car or not?”

“You want me to drive?”

“No, I thought it would be hilarious to hand you the keys and stand here until someone invents teleportation. Yes, Henry Page, I want you to drive.”

“Uh, okay, I guess. I’m a bit rusty, but yeah. Okay.” I unlocked the car and opened the door and sat in the driver’s seat. The inside of the car smelled like her, the musky, masculine scent of a teenage boy. Which was very confusing for me, to say the least. I started the engine—so far, so good—and took a deep breath.

“I’ll try my best not to kill us both,” I said. Grace Town did not reply, so I laughed at my own joke—a single, awkward “ha”—and then I put the car in reverse.

My grandmother would’ve looked cooler driving than I did on the journey home. I hunched over the steering wheel, sweating, hyperaware that I a) was driving someone else’s car, b) hadn’t driven any car at all for months, and c) had only scraped through my driving test because my instructor was my violently hungover second cousin twice removed, and I’d had to stop three times to let him vomit on the side of the road.

“Are you sure you passed your driving test?” Grace said, leaning over to check the speedometer, which revealed I was sitting five miles under the speed limit.

“Hey, I only had to bribe two officials. I earned my license.” I swear I might’ve almost seen her smile. “So you came from East River, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Why’d you change schools in senior year?”

“I’m all about adventure,” she said dryly.

“Well, we are a particularly thrilling institution. I can definitely see the appeal.”

“Hink seems like a riot. I bet he gets into all sorts of shenanigans.”

“Life of the party, that one.”

And then, thank God, it was over. I pulled up in front of my house and relaxed my fingers from the steering wheel, aware for the first time of how tightly I’d been clenching my muscles.

“I don’t think I’ve seen anyone drive that tensely since . . . Do you need a minute to compose yourself?” she said.

“What can I say? I’m a rebel without a cause.”

I expected Grace to slide over to the driver’s side, but she told me to turn the car off. We both got out and I handed her the keys and she locked the door like she meant to come inside. I hesitated. Was I supposed to invite her in? But then she turned to me and said, “Okay. Good-bye. I’ll see you tomorrow. Or maybe not. Who knows where I’ll be,” and she started hobbling down the street in the complete opposite direction from which we’d come.

“There’s not much down there but a storm-water drain and a cemetery a block away.” (The graveyard was close enough that its proximity had resulted in several counseling sessions in elementary school due to a brief yet intense period when I was convinced my great-grandfather Johannes van de Vliert’s ghost was trying to kill me.) Grace didn’t say anything, didn’t look back, just lifted the hand that wasn’t holding her cane as if to say I know and kept on walking.

I watched her, entirely puzzled, until she disappeared around the next street corner.

• • •

“Hola, broseph,” said my sister, Sadie, the moment I closed the front door behind me.

“Jesus, Suds, you scared the crap outta me,” I said, clutching at my chest. Sadie was twelve years older than me, a celebrated neuroscientist, and was generally considered both the golden child and black sheep of the family simultaneously. We looked a lot alike: black hair, slightly buggy eyes, dimples when we smiled. Except Suds was slightly more cutting edge than me with her septum piercing, tattoo sleeve, and intricate dreadlocks, all souvenirs from her rocky teenage years.

“Haven’t seen or heard from you in, like, two days, kid. I was starting to think Mom and Dad had murdered you and buried you in a shallow grave.” This was, of course, a strategic lie. Suds was going through a fairly shitty divorce from her fairly shitty doctor husband, which meant she spent about 90 percent of the time she didn’t spend at the hospital at our house.