“Wow. That’s a pretty huge opportunity for a fifteen-year-old,” I say, stepping away from the window. I stop just shy of the bench, and when Henry slides to his left, I cross my ankles to signal that I plan on standing for a little while longer—until he’s no longer on the bench.

  Henry smirks as his eyes scan down to the place where my knee bends, then he breathes out a short laugh, blinking his way back up to my gaze.

  “I guess. Though you’re no judge really. I mean, you’re probably going to spend this entire summer practicing runs and positioning and some sonata by…” Henry picks up a thin music book Elena must have left out for me on the piano ledger. “Shubert.”

  He tosses the music book to the floor. I itch to pick it up, and I can tell my discomfort amuses him. That comfort we cultivated last summer is gone. I did that.

  To be fair, though…he made me.

  “Do you think we can turn the temperature up while she’s gone?” I shift my feet and glance around the room for a thermostat, wandering a few steps and stopping to pick up the book. Henry chuckles when I do, but I ignore him. He’s pushing me, and I won’t indulge him.

  “Probably. I wouldn’t know where to begin to do that, though.”

  Henry stands and I continue my path around the room, laughing a little until I realize he isn’t joking. I stop and let my arms drop to my sides, the music book clutched at my hip. My mouth gapes open.

  “You don’t know how to work a thermostat?” I’m incredulous. I wait a few seconds for him to begin laughing, to tell me he’s joking, but that move never comes. He’s serious.

  “No reason to ever learn.” He shrugs one shoulder then drops his hands into the pockets of his khaki shorts.

  “You would die in the real world,” I say with an eye roll. I move out into the hallway and run into Alice, who’s turned on more lights. She knows where the breakers are.

  “Henry here?” She mouths the question, but it isn’t discreet enough.

  “Henry’s here,” he says behind me, not as close as he usually gets. That distance is there, and it’s become permanent.

  “He said we can turn the air up,” I say, scanning down the hallway walls. Before I can pass, though, Alice leans to the side and stretches her arm out, pressing her palm on the opposite wall.

  “Oh no. Elena told me specifically to keep this place at sixty-four until she gets home in the evening. She wants it cool all night.”

  “She wants me to leave the house and take the six train to Havisham,” Henry says.

  “That too,” Alice says, pointing at Henry but putting her arm right back in my way.

  “If Henry leaves, can we turn the air up?” I ask. He coughs behind me and I glance at him briefly but hold up my palm, not interested if he’s protesting.

  Alice squirms at the question. There’s something about this job that has her beaten down. She’s afraid of Elena, which I understand, but she must be getting paid enough to make it worth enduring. I can tell when she begins to chew at the inside of her cheek that there’s no way this place is getting warmer today, so I decide to negotiate with Henry instead.

  “We’re going to Havisham,” I say.

  He laughs, leaning back with his hands still in his pockets.

  “Oh, not just no. Hell no,” he says, his shoulders shaking a few times while his laughter subsides.

  I step closer, as close as he would step if I’d never made things weird. His eyes peer down at me and his mouth ticks up on one side. It’s been a while, but the same flutters still rush my chest being close to him. I’m smarter about it now, though. I know that it’s just infatuation. And I know Henry isn’t like me, and we’re never going to be anything. He told me so. Elena confirmed it. That gives me power to use his weaknesses on him. He likes being tested and playing mental games like this. I’ve watched him do it with other girls all semester, when he quit doing it with me.

  “Well, I’m going to Havisham,” I begin, my mouth curling in deep with the dare I’m about to roll out. “And if I show up without you, I’m going to find Elena’s secretary, and then I’ll tell her that you abandoned me to be mean and left me in the city alone.”

  The black of his eyes widens for a second, and his nostrils flare. He’s trying to read how serious I am, and I’m trying to bluff like a mad woman. I lower my eyes on his and let my smirk grow into a checkmate. My only fear is that Elena wouldn’t care that I’d been abandoned. It’s a real possibility.

  “Just go do what you’re supposed to, Henry. Quit being a child. Do what your mom wants, and maybe she will stop taking this out on us.” Alice thinks she’s being stern, and this tough-talk lecturing would probably work on me just fine. But Henry is nothing like me. He’s broken in a different way, and he doesn’t feel things like pressure or guilt. That much I know. He barely feels at all.

  His gaze lifts above my head to Alice behind me.

  “Elena.”

  Jaw set and eyes cold, Henry holds Alice hostage with a heated glare. I heard it, too. That word: mom. I’m sure Alice said it on purpose, thinking it would maybe spark an emotion or make Henry soft. This is where he and I are the same, though—neither of us has a real mom anymore. I have Alice. He has Elena.

  Maybe it’s just me wanting to cut through the tension, or to avoid what could easily blow up into a screaming match that might just end up getting Alice fired.

  Or maybe…I just wanted to.

  Whatever the internal push is that makes me do it, I unfurl my arms from one another and wrap my hand around Henry’s forearm, my fingers collapsing against his skin one at a time. My hold is gentle, but firm—my attempt to convey that I’m still Lily, the girl he took up on a roof and who he can trust with his secrets, even if I told him to stop sharing them.

  Henry swallows, but his eyes remain set on Alice, so I tug on his limb, urging his attention to me.

  “Take me with you…to Havisham,” I whisper. His eyes draw away from Alice to my mouth in a steady movement without blinking. I part my lips knowing he’s looking at them and let out a tiny breath. We’re so close that if we were alone, he might wrap me up in his arms.

  If we were alone…I might let him.

  My lashes blink drowsily. It’s not that I’m sleepy, though I am, but rather that I’m drunk on giving into the game. Being like this with Henry isn’t good for me, and it’s going to be hard to draw the line again now that I’ve erased parts of it. But I’ve been Henry. And I’ve been weak and given in when Alice or Collin or the world have told me that this is just the way things are. I’ve accepted, and I’ve hurt, and I’ve buried the suffering deep inside so I can forge ahead. If I can be here for him and help him find a way to please people, but also be himself, then maybe I can mold a little more of the new me, too.

  “Let’s go.” I don’t ask, because he’d say no. I don’t dare him again because I already have, and I knew the moment I tried it that it was dangerous. It might have worked, but the avalanche of push-pull it would have spawned would have drowned me.

  There’s only one way to the real Henry—I have to be close. I have to put the guards down and be honest. I have to ask him innocently because the one thing I’ve just realized is every single time I’ve asked Henry to do something, really asked because I genuinely wanted or needed him to, he’s done it. Even when that thing was to leave me alone.

  “I can’t spend a summer in another house full of people who don’t like each other.” I blink. He blinks back. I can hear the sharp breath Alice draws behind me, and she excuses herself a second later.

  “Do whatever. Just don’t piss off my boss,” she says, retreating down the hallway toward Elena’s office.

  Henry studies me for a moment. He doesn’t ask me to explain. I never have to share stories about the bickering that’s happened every morning since I’ve gotten home for the summer. Home—I don’t have to launch into all the reasons that Alice and Collin’s house isn’t home. I just had to ask. Henry understands without the rest.

  “We’ll get a car,” he says, backing away a few steps before turning toward the front door.

  I follow him, pausing by the music room since I still have the book in my other hand. He holds the door open wide, sunshine glowing brightly as it forces its way inside the cavernous hallways of the Alderman home. Dust speckles the rays, swirling with Henry’s breath. I toss the music book inside the room, on the floor, and Henry smiles.

  He lets me walk out first, pulling the door closed behind me but leaving it unlocked. I’m sure Alice will rush to it and lock it—just like Elena wants—the second we’re out of her view. There’s no way we’re leaving without her eyes watching us from inside. She won’t tell Elena we’re coming, though, because she can’t be sure. She wouldn’t want to be wrong.

  Henry punches in our address on his phone, calling up the closest car that slides up next to the curb in under a minute. He gets in first, moving all the way across the back seat of the white sedan. Our driver is an older man, maybe sixty, and he keeps eying us in the rearview mirror. I can tell he wants to talk, and I know Henry isn’t going to, so I strike up a conversation.

  “How long have you been driving?”

  His eyebrows lift as he glances at me in the reflection.

  “Oh, maybe six or seven months.” He’s wearing a visor, like a poker player, the front bill tinted green to shade his eyes. Doesn’t do much to protect his thinning bald head.

  “You like it?” I ask. Henry shifts in the seat, letting out a noticeable sigh. I glare at him briefly and he just lifts his brows and stares back at me as if that’s going to make me stop chatting up my new senior best friend.

  “It’s all right. Pays for my health insurance. That’s really why I do it. And I’ve lived here for sixty-two years, so usually I can get folks places faster than this little map thingy they put on the phone.” He taps the screen where his phone is mounted to the dash of his car. I notice that it continuously reroutes as he ignores where it tells him to turn.

  “Why you two heading somewhere so corporate? Shouldn’t you be going to Navy Pier or Wrigley?”

  “Yes, we should. In fact…” Henry’s trying to make a break for it, change up the plan, so I step in.

  “He has an internship. He’s just a little nervous.” I look at Henry sideways and give him a triumphant grin. He shakes his head and chuckles, giving up…for now.

  “Internship. Wow, ain’t that something! You can’t start planning for your future early enough. Boy, did I learn that.” The man sits up high in his seat to look around his mirrors and check blind spots as he makes a tricky turn at a five-point intersection. We dip under a bridge and the tracks of the L as a train rumbles above us.

  “What did you do for work…before the driving gig?” I ask.

  “I never had a real steady job. Worked in the pickling plant over on the southside, did some work at the shipyards after that, then a little security work for some of the government buildings. Nothing fancy, like I didn’t have a gun or nothin’. I mostly sat in a chair by the front door and took naps.”

  His answer amuses Henry, and he breathes out a short laugh. I catch the smile creep around the side of his face. Staring at it, I continue my conversation.

  “That doesn’t sound so bad. Seems like you planned everything just right,” I say.

  “I guess,” the man sighs. There’s a long pause as he hums for a second or two with thought. I look back to the mirror just in time to look him in the eyes. “My best friend from high school went on to work for the governor. He wore fancy suits and went to all the parties. Drove a real nice car. The funny thing was I was always smarter than him, but he just didn’t get distracted.”

  “And you did?” I lead him and squint one eye.

  “You might say I was a ladies’ man.” The car pulls to a stop and he reaches up to straighten his invisible bowtie. I giggle, more comfortable flirting with him than the boy my age next to me.

  “Any of them win over your heart?” I ask, expecting more lighthearted answers to carry out the rest of our trip. But I’ve hit a nerve suddenly, and our driver sinks deeper into his seat, reaching up to adjust his mirror, putting me out of his view.

  “Just one,” he finally says.

  The more time that passes between our words, the thicker the air feels in my chest until my lungs begin to feel bruised with every intake of air. I know the various ways his story could go. I’m not selfish enough to need him to finish it, either. He loved someone, and at one point it ended, either from life…or death.

  We pull up at the Havisham main entrance, double-parked by a row of cars waiting to turn around the block. I open my door and Henry slips out on my side after me. I hold up my palm to wave thanks to our driver, whose name I didn’t even bother to ask before I crushed his soul. I feel like an asshole.

  “Maybe next time we don’t interview the driver?” Henry teases, opening his phone to leave the man a tip. I glance at his screen to catch the name—Chester. I even like that.

  Henry finishes tipping, then shoves his phone into his pocket. We’re both dressed for summer, though Henry looks more like he’s dressed for a yacht vacation or golf outing. Even his plain, white T-shirt looks like some type of designer brand. His hair is still a little fluffy from his pouting session at the piano, so I reach up on my toes and with my fingers, feather it back. The waves are soft, grown out a little from the shorter cut he got when Crew season began. It’s almost as long as it was last year at this time—when I thought it was perfect.

  “You know I don’t want to be here, right? Like…in the worst way.” He grimaces.

  “What would be the best way?” I ask, challenging him. His eyes dim, unamused. I laugh his broodiness off and weave my arm through his elbow. It’s a bold move that I immediately regret because instead of feeling playful and friendly and cute, it feels awkward and…intimate. Now I’m the one giving mixed signals, doing exactly what I asked him to stop. He drags for a few steps, like I’m forcing a poorly trained dog to walk, but then quickly relaxes and moves his arm around until somehow his hand is holding mine. I try to play it off while we walk through the revolving door, and I even encourage him to swing our hands as we approach the elevator. None of it phases him, though, and when the doors open and we walk in taking a space near the back, he keeps a strong hold of me.

  At least a dozen people file in after us, until the elevator is uncomfortably full. A few people glance at my flip-flops and denim shorts and give me a tight smile. To them, I’m a cute school girl here to see her secretary mom. As we race up several floors at a time, waiting while new people get on and other riders get off, I start to realize how nobody is looking at Henry the way they’re looking at me. He’s a little more put together, sure, but he’s still fifteen. Our birthdays are exactly a month apart—he’s September, and I’m October.

  With about six floors to go until we reach Elena’s, the elevator opens to let out everybody who’s left. When the doors close, the thought that we might get stuck in here races through my mind. It’s a fleeting thought, almost a wish, and then it’s gone. We start to slow one floor away, and when the car halts on forty-seven, a floor below our destination, I wriggle my hand to let go of Henry’s. Elena’s signature white coat hits my periphery first, and then my heartbeat ratchets up like a kid caught stealing from her mom’s purse. Henry’s hold grows firmer, and with nothing more than a blink to realize Henry wants Elena to see us holding hands, she does.

  Positioned exactly between the two halves of the silver doors, her body pauses, rigid, and her gaze dives down to the very place where Henry’s thumb is making a delicate circle along the top of my hand. Parts of me are continuously taking turns going numb. It’s more than panic moving into my body. I want to throw up. In fact, I might.

  “I’m guessing I have you to thank for making Henry show up today, Lily?” Elena enters the car completely, spinning on her heels and facing the closing doors. The long layers of her dress skirt swish against my shins.

  I gulp. It sounds just like the word.

  “You do,” Henry says for me, again holding on with a tight clasp while I squirm my fingers around. I jerk my head in his direction and mouth “Stop,” but rather than smirking as if he’s enjoying teasing me, he simply shakes his head no.

  The doors open again a second later, and Henry and I follow Elena into an impressive lobby, still hand in hand. I feel a little bit dragged around as Henry weaves around a wall-slash-cascading-waterfall, just steps behind Elena. A few people say hello to him as we pass, none of them as much as blinking at the place where our hands are now awkwardly tethered. We finally get to a set of double glass doors, and I shake him loose, quickly putting my thumbs in my pockets and taking long strides to gain a little distance. I feel like Henry is trying to prove a point, almost shoving our touch in Elena’s face, and those are the things I drew the line for in the first place.

  “While I’m glad you made it in today, Henry, I’m a little disappointed that Lily had to push you to come. Your future is something…”

  “—to be taken seriously and requires much focus, yes…I know,” Henry finishes. He falls into a metal and leather seat on one side of Elena’s desk while she moves to the rolling chair on the other. The only place left for me to sit is at a chair near the ornate conference table. I actually think the base is made of soap. Glass is placed atop these waxy, ornate carvings that I’m compelled to touch. When I push my nails into the side, I can feel it soften under the pressure. It’s weird.

  “Well I guess I’m glad you’re listening when I say that.” Elena leans forward to press a button on her phone while twisting her lips into disapproval while she stares at Henry. His body is too big for the chair, and he’s pulled one leg up, nearly draping it over the armrest.

  While Elena taps her slender, long nails on top of her desk, Henry turns to glance my way over his shoulder. His mouth ticks up apologetically. I’m glad he doesn’t say “sorry” though because it’s my fault we’re here.