Jack is pressing something into my palm. A MetroCard. “It’s a spare. You can give it back on Monday.”

I’m still shaking my head, half of me here and half of me in the living room, where this imaginary fight is happening with my mom.

“I can’t believe I screwed this up.”

“Pepper, it’s fine. Just take the M4.”

“The what?”

“The bus.”

And then, senseless with the kind of panic only academia can incite, I am blurting for the entire hallway to hear, “I’ve never taken the bus in New York.”

Jack opens his mouth like he’s going to make a remark, but then thinks better of it. “Okay. That’s—well, this one’s easy. The stop’s like two blocks from here, and it’s a straight shot to the main campus, thirty minutes tops.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.

“What?” Jack asks. Not unkindly, not impatiently. Which is why, before I make a conscious decision to, I’m admitting the second, far more embarrassing truth.

“I’ve never left the Upper East Side by myself.”

Jack laughs, the way you laugh at a friend who just rolled off a good one-liner. A beat passes. I can’t even make my face move.

“Oh. You’re serious?”

The word comes out in a croak. “Yeah.”

Jack yanks his sleeve up and checks his watch again, seeming to weigh something he decides on a moment later, when his eyes lift and immediately meet mine.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

He starts walking down the hallway to the front exit of the school, his legs so long, I have to scramble to catch up.

“Wait, you’re—you’re coming?”

“Yeah. But you owe me.”

I’m too relieved to protest.

“No more tweeting on Sundays,” he says. “We both lay down our keyboards for a full twenty-four hours. Those are my terms.”

“Done.”

I wait for him to list off whatever the rest of the terms are, but that seems to be the extent of them. A few moments and some extreme power walking later we’re on Madison Avenue, Jack cutting the corner before I do and yelling, “Run!”

I take off just behind him, my hair whipping out of its perfectly coiffed ponytail, the Oxford shoes my mom bought for the occasion scuffing on the pavement. He barely reaches the bus as the doors shut, banging a hand on the glass with that endearing, sheepish Jack grin, just as I skid to a stop and half stumble into him from behind.

“Sorry, sorry,” I blubber at his back, nearly tripping as I try to pull myself off him.

Either because of Jack’s awkward charm or because the two of us make quite the pathetic pair, the bus driver rolls her eyes and opens the door. We’re still stumbling as we pile on, trying and failing not to crash into each other as the bus starts back up again, until Jack practically falls half into my lap when we finally find two spare seats.

He opens his mouth to apologize, but before he can, I start to laugh.

“Oh, god,” says Jack, leaning back into his seat and taking a quick glance to survey the other passengers on the bus. “Is this it? Did you finally crack under the pressure?”

“I just—oh, man.” I’m so out of breath from running, I’m on the verge of wheezing. “I remember one time—in Nashville—my sister and I were running, and we beat my mom to the bus, and it just … took off. Without her. We were like, five and eight, probably.”

Jack’s eyebrows knit like he’s not sure whether or not he should laugh too. “That sounds … hilarious?”

I’m remembering that day so vividly, it feels like I’ve restored some color to it, like I’m living it more fully now than I even was then.

“She had to chase the bus for like a mile in her sandals. We were such little assholes. We didn’t even look out the window—we were already planning our new lives like we were orphans in a book series or something.”

“Were you going to live in a boxcar?”

“Nah. We were going to bake. Paige was really big on wanting to grow up to be a baker then. Open up her own place right next to Big League Burger. I think it was gonna be called Paige’s Pancakes. Clearly the branding needed some work.”

“Where is your sister?”

I blink, and suddenly I’m back on a bus on a street lined with buildings and traffic and too many people.

“UPenn.”

Jack’s eyes are teasing. “How come she’s not fighting me on Twitter?”

I raise my eyebrows at him. “How come Ethan isn’t fighting me on Twitter?”

The smile falters on his face for just a split second. “Touché.” He leans even farther back in his seat, stretching out his legs once a few people get off at the stop. “And because he kind of sucks at it. That was him on day two, you know. He tweets like he’s out for blood.”

“And you go easy on me, is that it?”

He knocks his shoulder into mine. “Hell no. I just don’t make the company look bad.” He turns his head to look at me, his eyes disarmingly close. “I take it your sister didn’t inherit the Evans family snark?”

“No, no, she did.” My cheeks are hot. I turn my head to the window, toward the cool air of the street. “She and my mom are sort of—well, I don’t know.”