“Things are good. As you may have heard, I am kind of an orphan, but I am well. How are you?”

“Who looks after you these days?” she asked.

“Well, everybody and nobody, I guess,” he said. “I mean, we have a house manager, and there’s a lawyer guy who does the money stuff.”

“You’re a junior at Aspen Hall, yes?” I closed my eyes and tried to telepathically beg my mother not to attack him.

“Yes.”

“Aza is not some girl from the other side of the river.”

“Mom,” I said.

“And I know you can have anything the moment you want it, and that can make a person think the world belongs to them, that people belong to them. But I hope you understand you are not entitled to—”

“Mom,” I said again.

I shot Davis an apologetic look, but he didn’t see, because he was looking at my mom. He started to say something, but then had to stop, because his eyes were welling up with tears.

“Davis, are you all right?” my mom asked. He tried to speak again but it devolved into a choked sob.

“Davis, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize . . .”

Blushing, he said, “I’m sorry.”

Mom started to reach a hand across the table, but then stopped herself. “I just want you to be good to my daughter,” she said. “There’s only one of her.”

“We have to get going,” I announced.

Mom and Davis continued their staring contest, but Mom finally said, “Back by eleven,” and I grabbed Davis by the forearm and pulled him out the front door, shooting Mom a look as I went.

—

“Are you okay?” I asked as soon as we were safely inside his Escalade.

“Yeah,” he said quietly.

“She’s just really overprotective.”

“I get it,” he said.

“You don’t need to be embarrassed.”

“I’m not embarrassed.”

“Then what are you?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’ve got time,” I told him.

“She’s wrong that I can have anything I want whenever I want it.”

“What do you want that you don’t have?” I asked.

“A mother, for starters.” He put the car into reverse and backed out of the driveway.

I wasn’t sure what to say, so eventually I just said, “Sorry.”

“You know that part of Yeats’s ‘The Second Coming’ where it’s, like, ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity’?”

“Yeah, we read it in AP.”

“I think it’s actually worse to lack all conviction. Because then you just go along, you know? You’re just a bubble on the tide of empire.”

“That’s a good line.”

“Stole it from Robert Penn Warren,” he said. “My good lines are always stolen. I lack all conviction.” We drove across the river. Looking down, I could see Pirates Island.

“Your mom gives a shit, you know? Most adults are just hollowed out. You watch them try to fill themselves up with booze or money or God or fame or whatever they worship, and it all rots them from the inside until nothing is left but the money or booze or God they thought would save them. That’s what my dad is like—he really disappeared a long time ago, which is maybe why it didn’t bother me much. I wish he were here, but I’ve wished that for a long time. Adults think they’re wielding power, but really power is wielding them.”

“The parasite believes itself to be the host,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”

—

As we walked up to the Pickett house, I could see two place settings at one corner of Davis’s huge dining room table. A candle flickered between the settings, and the first floor of the house was lit a soft gold. My stomach was all turned around, and I had no desire to eat, but I followed him in. “I guess Rosa made us dinner,” he said to me. “So we should at least have a few bites to be polite.”

“Hi, Rosa,” he said. “Thanks for staying late.”

She pulled him into a big bear hug. “I made spaghetti. Vegetarian.”

“You didn’t need to do this,” he said.

“My children are grown-ups, so you and Noah are the only little boys I have left. And when you tell me you have a date with your new girlfriend—”

“Not girlfriend,” Davis said. “Old friend.”

“Old friends make the best girlfriends. You eat. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She pulled him down into another hug and kissed him on the cheek. “Take something up to Noah so he doesn’t starve,” Rosa added, “and do your dishes. It’s not too hard to wipe dishes clean and put them in a dishwasher, Davis.”

“Got it,” he said.

“Your life is so weird,” I said as we sat down to eat at the table set for two, with a Dr Pepper in front of my spot and a Mountain Dew in front of his.

“I guess,” he said. He raised his can of soda. “To weird,” he said.

“To weird.” We clinked cans and sipped.

“She acts like a parent,” I said.

“Yeah, well, she’s known me since I was a baby. And she cares about us. But she also gets paid to care about us, you know? And if she didn’t . . . I mean, she’d have to find a different job.”

“Yeah,” I said. It seemed to me that one of the defining features of parents is that they don’t get paid to love you.