When I spot him at the other end of the grocery aisle, I freeze.

It’s not that I don’t want to see him. In fact, all summer I’ve been hoping to run into him. Looking at him now—in his same old khakis and a pale-blue button-down, his flips-flops worn thin at the heels, and his hair a bit longer than it was when I’d last spent an entire period of Spanish class staring at it—it’s hard to believe it’s been only six weeks.

It feels like it’s been forever.

Lately, I’ve been daydreaming about running into him, imagining elaborate scenarios where he walks by while I’m at the beach with friends, and we decide to go for a stroll by the lake to catch up, or where he’ll wander into the sandwich shop in town just as I’m telling a particularly great joke, and everyone at the table will be laughing at my dazzling wit as he casually drops by the table to say hello.

But now I’ve just finished work, which means I’m a total mess. There’s a big purple splotch near the bottom of my white camp T-shirt, from someone’s Popsicle, and a grass stain on my shoulder from where Andrew Mitchell knocked me over during an unusually aggressive game of red rover this afternoon. I have dirt on my knees, and duct tape on my sandals where the strap broke while I was chasing Henry Ascher during duck, duck, goose. I’m sweaty and sunburned and exhausted, not to mention that I’m still wearing the name tag I made in arts and crafts, which says “Annie” in such uneven, blocky lettering that it looks like it belongs to one of the kids.

But still, when I see Griffin Reilly at the end of the aisle, I can’t quite bring myself to walk away.

He’s examining a bag of candy, and while I watch, he turns it over in his hands, gripping it like a basketball, then pivots and sends it arcing toward his cart, which is a good six feet away. It clangs off the side, rattling the metal caging before falling to the floor with a thwack.

“Nice shot,” I say, walking over, and he grins a little as he leans to grab it. I hold out my hands. “Let me try.”

Without saying anything, he scoops up the bag and then, in one fluid motion, tosses it in my direction. I manage to catch it, but just barely. Without hesitating, I lift my arms, poised to shoot, but he shakes his head.

“Too close.”

I take a few steps back, feeling nervous beneath his steady, gray-eyed gaze. This time, the bag goes sailing through the air, landing square in the center of the cart, and I turn back to him with a triumphant look.

He nods. “Not bad.”

“I’m better with an actual basketball.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Actually, no,” I admit. “I’m kind of terrible. But I’m great with those mini ones.”

“Pop-A-Shot?”

“Exactly,” I say. “I’m insanely good at Pop-A-Shot.”

“And not very modest,” he points out, entirely straight-faced.

“Well,” I say with a shrug, “it’s hard to be modest when you’re as good as I am.”

He stretches out an arm, leaning against a shelf full of brightly packaged cookies. “Sounds like something to see,” he says, not quite looking at me. He has this way of ducking his head when he’s talking to you so that it’s hard to tell what he’s thinking. It’s maddening and intriguing and confusing all at once. In Spanish, I used to ask him questions just to watch him turn around, his pale eyes skipping from my forehead to my desk, never exactly meeting my gaze, and I would try to guess whether he liked me or was afraid of me or something else entirely.

For months and months, that’s all there was between us: questions about verb conjugations and past perfect tenses, holas and muchas graciases and adioses. We didn’t have any friends in common; it was hard to know if we had anything in common at all. It was a big school, and this was the first time I’d come across him, sitting there in Señor Mandelbaum’s third-period Spanish class. But right away I wanted more of him.

He didn’t make it easy. There was something oddly cagey and way too direct about him all at the same time. He was mostly quiet and overly polite, but then he could also be honest to a startling degree. I’d once asked him if there was something in my eye, and he turned around, looked at me carefully, and then shrugged.

“Yeah,” he said. “Eye goop.”

But the thing about Griffin was that he was also sort of jaw-droppingly beautiful. He had messy brown hair and a square jaw and those gorgeous gray-blue eyes, and with his ridiculous height—he was a good foot taller than me, his legs always jammed against the bottom of his desk in class—he could’ve passed for a surfer or a skier, some kind of impossibly rugged and dashing figure from a movie.

Except, for some reason, he managed to ruin it by wearing the same outfit pretty much every single day: khaki pants and a light-blue button-down shirt, a strange uniform of sorts that made him look like a Boy Scout or a Bible salesman or someone who worked in the world’s most boring office.

Still, it wasn’t enough to keep the girls from staring at him during lunch, which was the only other time I ever saw him. He generally kept to himself, eating with his headphones in, his eyes focused on his phone, which made it hard to tell whether he was just really good at ignoring the attention or he simply never noticed it.

There was something magnetic about him. Whenever I saw him, I had the completely unfamiliar urge to take him by the shoulders, plunk him down in a chair, and make him open up to me. He was a mystery that—for reasons I didn’t quite understand—I felt desperate to solve. But there was only so much you could learn about someone in stilted Spanish. I was anxious for more time with him. And I wanted it to be in English.

Now, Griffin’s eyes drift past me to the checkout lines, and I can’t tell if he’s running late or getting bored. But something about seeing him here, out of context—away from the familiar backdrop of the high school—makes me momentarily brave.

“Have you ever been to Hal’s?” I ask, before I can think better of it.

“That bar on McKinley?”

“It’s an arcade too. Maybe we should…” I pause for a second, hoping he’ll pick up the thread, but he doesn’t. He only scuffs his flip-flop against the shiny linoleum floor, and the thought hangs there between us, awkward and unfinished.

I’ve never done this before, whatever it is I’m trying to do here. I’ve never attempted to make the first move. And now I can’t help feeling a pang of regret about all the times I’ve been the one to hesitate in this situation: staring too long at a text about hanging out, clearing my throat after the suggestion of a movie, pausing at the more formal invitation to a school dance. I wish now that I could take them back, all those extra seconds. Because this—this horrifying pause, this awful silence—is brutal.

I point to the bag of candy, which is lying flat in the bottom of the cart, and then I try one last time. “Maybe we should see who would win a real game…”

For a second, it seems certain he’s going to say no. His face slips into a kind of blankness, and he looks unaccountably tense, and I steel myself, preparing to get rejected right here in aisle 8. But then something seems to settle in him, and he blinks a few times, his features softening.

“Okay,” he says finally. “How about tomorrow?”

*   *   *

That night as I brush my teeth, my little sister, Meg—eleven years old and my constant shadow—leans against the door of the bathroom we share.

“So,” she says, batting her eyelashes in an overly dreamy sort of way. “Is it a date?”

I consider this for a moment, then spit into the sink.

“I don’t think so,” I tell her.

*   *   *

I’m a million miles away the next morning, thinking about the moment when Griffin will pull into the camp parking lot later, thinking about the dress I stashed in the staff bathroom so that I won’t have to wear my grubby uniform again, thinking about the way my heart lifted when I spotted him yesterday—thinking about pretty much anything except for the game of freeze tag happening around me, where a couple dozen six- and seven-year-olds are running around the soccer field, stumbling and wobbling and tripping over themselves like miniature drunks—when someone lets out a sharp cry.

I snap back immediately, scanning the field until I find Noah, who is crouched on the ground, his knees tucked up beneath him, his hands over his ears, his head curled down so that only a mop of reddish hair is showing.

Beside him, a small girl named Sadie Smith is staring with wide eyes. “All I did was tag him,” she says quickly, blinking up at me.

I give her a pat on the shoulder, trying to be reassuring. “It’s fine,” I tell her. “Go tag someone else.”

But she remains there, her eyes fixed on Noah, who is rocking now. I turn around to see that they’re all watching. It’s impossible to tell who’s been frozen and who’s still free, because each and every one of them is standing stock-still.

Over near the school buildings, which the day camp borrows during the summer, I spot Grace, one of the junior counselors, carrying over the midday snack: a giant box of Popsicles, which leave everyone tie-dyed and sugar-happy but are always the highlight of the day.

“Snack time,” I call out, and just like that, they’re off, sprinting across the field to meet Grace, with more energy than they’ve shown during any of the games this morning.

Once we’re alone, I sit down on the grass beside Noah, who lets out a soft moan but doesn’t otherwise acknowledge me. It’s been about a month now, and I’ve learned this is the best tactic. At first, when this kind of thing happened, I would try to talk to him, or reason with him, or soothe him in some way. Once, I even tried to take his hand, which turned out to be the worst possible thing I could’ve done. He wrenched it away from me, then promptly began to wail.

Now I peek under his arms, which are clasped around his knees, to where his face is hidden. His cheeks are pink from the heat, and his mouth is screwed up to one side, and there’s a single tear leaking from his right eye, which breaks my heart a little.

“Hey, Noah,” I say softly, and he stiffens.

I sit back again, picking a few blades of dry grass, then letting them scatter in the breeze from the nearby lake. In the distance, the other campers are running around with their Popsicles, their chins sticky and their shirts already stained. On the blacktop, the older kids are playing basketball, the sound of the ball steady as a drumbeat.

On the first day of camp, Mr. Hamill, the director—a middle-aged man who worked as a gym teacher for most of the year and was never without a whistle around his neck—had asked me to arrive an hour early. It was my third summer as a counselor, and I assumed I was getting a promotion. When I’d started working here a few years earlier, it was mostly just because I needed a way to earn some extra spending money. I’d loved going to camp as a kid, and it seemed a better alternative than bagging groceries or scooping ice cream or any of the other jobs that might consider hiring a fourteen-year-old whose only résumé item was babysitting.

But now, after a couple years of corralling kids and pressing on Band-Aids, leading wildly off-key songs and supervising glitter usage during craft time, I’d come to genuinely enjoy it. Still, everyone knew it was easier to work with the older kids, who tended to be more self-sufficient, less likely to burst into tears or wander off or forget to put on sunscreen. So I hoped that might be where I was headed this summer.

Instead, it turned out Mr. Hamill wanted to tell me about Noah.

“Listen, Annie,” he said in a thick Chicago accent that wasn’t often heard this far out in the suburbs. “We’re gonna try something out this summer. And if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.”

I nodded. “Okay…”

“It’s a new camper,” he continued, looking uncharacteristically nervous. “He’s, uh, on the spectrum. You know. He has autism. So I just wanted to give you a heads up, since it might be a challenge. He’s not all that verbal, for one thing, but I guess they’re working on that. And he’s pretty active. Apparently, they tried a special-needs camp last year, but it didn’t keep him busy enough. It sounds like he has a lot of energy.”

“So he’ll be in my group?”

“Yeah, he’s six, so he’s one of yours. The idea is to be patient, but also get him involved as much as possible, you know? I figure we’ll give it a try, as long as it’s okay with you, and basically just see how it goes.”

“Okay,” I said brightly, because that’s what I do. I smile, and I nod, and I give it my best shot. That’s always how it’s been. If my friends are fighting, I’m the one who tries to smooth it over. If someone is mad at me, I walk around with a pit in my stomach until we’ve managed to sort things out. If somebody asks me a favor, or gives me a challenge, or needs something from me, the answer is always yes.

And if the kids at camp aren’t having fun, it feels like I’m failing.

Which is what makes Noah so tough. I’ve spoken to his mom enough over the last month to know that he just needs time. But sitting here on the warm grass, watching his shoulders shake—it’s almost too much to bear. And worse than that is the feeling that no matter what I try, I just can’t seem to reach him.

The thing is, I’m good with these kids. I know that Emerson is allergic to peanuts and to save a red Popsicle for Connell. I know that Sullivan will always want to play kickball when given the choice, and that Ellis likes to sit on my lap after lunch. Caroline keeps a stuffed rabbit in her backpack, and Will wears his lucky astronaut socks every day. Georgia sings under her breath when she’s nervous, and Elisabeth lights up when you compliment her on her cartwheels.

There’s a key to every lock, a trick that works for every kid.

Every kid except Noah.

We sit there for a long time. The other campers head into the gym for a game of dodgeball, led by one of the junior counselors, and the sun drifts higher in the flat, white sky. But still Noah remains hunched on the ground, curled into himself like a pill bug. Every once in a while I reach over and give his shoulder a pat, which makes him flinch.

Finally, just before pickup—almost as if he’s been keeping track—he lifts his head.

“You okay?” I ask, but he doesn’t say anything. His eyes are focused on the school building, where the other kids are lining up to go home.

When he still doesn’t answer, I say, “I promise we’ll play a different game tomorrow.” I don’t know if it was freeze tag that set him off, or if it was an unexpected hand on his back, or if it was just the sun and the grass and the day all around him. It could have been anything. It feels horrible not to know exactly what.

But still I keep talking, sounding desperate even to myself. “We’ll try capture the flag,” I promise, even though each day we attempt a new game, and each day it ends this same way. “Or red light, green light. Or follow the leader! I think you’d really like follow the leader…”

Noah doesn’t say anything. He simply stands up, his face entirely blank, then brushes the grass off his knees and walks toward the parking lot.

It’s not much, but I take it as a yes. And I follow him.

*   *   *

At the end of every day, there’s the chaos of pickup time: a half hour of attempting to direct traffic and shepherd kids as mothers glare at the cars in front of them and nannies shout for their charges not to forget their lunch boxes and counselors do their best to make sure nobody gets hit by a slow-moving minivan.

Today, I’m in charge of keeping things running on time, which basically means standing in the middle of it all and hoping I don’t get clipped by a side mirror. It’s only 2:07, and already more than half the kids have been whisked away. The rest are sitting cross-legged under the trees in front of the entrance to the school, digging through their backpacks or trading woven bracelets or tossing things at the junior counselors.

We’re right on schedule, but I still can’t help glancing at my watch. Griffin is supposed to be picking me up at 2:30, and though everyone is usually gone by twenty after, that still leaves me only a few minutes to change. I’ve brought my favorite outfit, a pale-yellow sundress that’s probably a bit much for a trip to an arcade. But there’s no way I’ll be wearing my sweaty camp clothes when I see him again. Not this time.

By 2:18, there are three kids left: a pair of eight-year-old identical twins who match right down to their orange sneakers, and Noah, who is sitting with his back to the parking lot, tapping intently on the trunk of a tree.

Most of the other counselors have taken off. There’s only me and Alex Sanchez, a soon-to-be senior who likes to tease me about my freckles, which have been multiplying by the day, and who is generally a lot nicer than he needs to be, considering the fact that he’s a whole year older than me and the star of the football team.

But that’s the thing about summer: The regular hierarchies collapse like sand castles at this time of year. Everything shifts and settles and takes new shape.

It’s a great equalizer, this season.

Soon, the twins’ mother pulls up—full of apologies—and Alex heads off, with a sympathetic glance in my direction.

“See you tomorrow, Freckles,” he says, trotting over to his car.

It’s 2:22 and the parking lot is quiet. Noah is hunched over, still facing the tree, and through the thin cotton of his camp T-shirt I can see the knobs of his spine. The wind ruffles his red hair as he examines the fraying end of his shoelace.

Behind us, the door to the school opens and Mr. Hamill walks out with a pink Post-it note stuck to his finger. He hands it to me with a sheepish look, and I see that there’s a phone number scrawled across it.

“So I tried his mom a few times,” he says. “But there’s no answer, and I have to leave for a dentist appointment.” He points at his mouth and winces. “Broken crown.”

My eyes travel over to the entrance to the parking lot, where Griffin’s car will soon appear.

“I feel terrible about this,” Mr. Hamill says with a sigh. “But his mom’s not usually late, so I can’t imagine she’ll be long. Do you mind waiting with him?”

Noah shifts on the grass, swiveling to face us. When I glance down at him, our eyes meet briefly, and he holds my gaze for a split second before looking away again.

It’s now 2:28.

“Of course,” I say, because that’s the kind of thing I always say. “I’m happy to.”

*   *   *

By the time Griffin’s car—something old and loud and blue—turns into the drive at 2:30 on the dot, I’m midway through dialing Noah’s mother for the second time. I lower the phone and hang up, feeling panicked. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. Noah is now walking in circles around the trunk of the tree, dragging his fingers across the rough bark as he spins, and I think again of the small duffel bag I tucked away, full of not just a change of clothes but also deodorant and perfume and a brush, all of which I could desperately use right about now.

But there’s no time for any of that: Griffin is already walking toward me, a hand lifted awkwardly, his eyes pinging between me and Noah, who has stopped circling and is now simply staring.

“Hi,” I say, and Griffin smiles. He’s wearing the usual blue shirt and khakis, but his hair is freshly combed and still a little damp, and though it’s approximately a thousand degrees out—the air so humid it has a weight to it—he still somehow manages to look improbably cool.

Which only makes me feel like more of a mess.

“Hi,” he says.

“I’m really sorry,” I begin, even before he’s all the way across the parking lot. I gesture at Noah, then shrug helplessly. “His mom isn’t here yet, so I have to wait with him, which means I can’t—”

“That’s okay,” Griffin says. “I’ll wait with you.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I say automatically, and he raises his eyebrows.

“I know,” he says stiffly. “But I want to. Otherwise I wouldn’t have offered.”

His words linger between us for a beat too long, until I finally say, “Okay then.”

“Okay then,” he says with a nod, already walking past me to where Noah stands underneath the tree. The two of them look at each other for a second, then both immediately avert their eyes. Griffin takes a step forward, and Noah takes a step back, like two dancers practicing a choreographed routine. There’s a long pause, and I watch them, curious to see what will happen next. Finally, Griffin lifts his hand in a kind of half-wave.

“Hi,” he says. “I’m Griffin.”

Noah squints up at him, tilting his head. And then, to my surprise, he says it back: “Hi.”

It’s not that Noah doesn’t ever talk. It’s just that he rarely does so on cue. If you ask him a question, he tends to look away. If you say hello, he ignores you. If you try to include him in a game that requires singing or chanting or talking, he usually shuts down. When he does speak, it’s mostly to himself.

So now, hearing him respond to a greeting like it’s something that happens every day, my throat goes thick with unexpected emotion.

“What should we do while we wait?” Griffin asks, his eyes trained on the small, startled boy in front of him.

I hold my breath, waiting, as the silence seems to stretch on forever.

But just as I’m about to interrupt—to come to his rescue, to cut through the quiet, to help out by suggesting a game—Noah hops to his feet and says, “Basketball.”

*   *   *

Griffin, it turns out, is better with a basketball than he was with a bag of candy. I stand at the edge of the blacktop with the phone pressed to my ear, listening to it ring for what feels like the thousandth time, as he sinks another effortless shot from the free throw line and Noah chases after the rebound.

“I’m feeling less confident about our Pop-A-Shot competition,” I say, giving up on the call. I’ve left several messages now, and there’s not much more to be done except to wait.

“I don’t know,” Griffin says without looking at me. “Someone told me you’re insanely good.”

“Who said that?”

The corners of his mouth turn up in a half-smile. “You.”

“Oh.” I flush. “Right.”

Noah is attempting to dribble, which mostly consists of slapping at the ball with his open palms, and Griffin walks over, bending close to demonstrate how to soften his hand. I fold my arms across my chest, watching with interest. I keep waiting for Griffin to make a wrong move and set Noah off, the way I always manage to do when I touch his shoulder or speak too loudly or get too close. But he doesn’t. He seems to know instinctively what not to do, and because of it, Noah has said more to him in the last twenty minutes than he’s said to me all summer.

I’m admittedly a little jealous.

“Hey, Noah.” I clap my hands, which makes him wince. “Pass it here.”

He stops trying to dribble and glances over at me, his face impassive. Then he turns back to Griffin, handing him the ball.

“Thanks, dude.” Griffin quicksteps around him and darts for the basket. There’s something so fluid about him when he has the ball in his hands. He’s long and lean, and all of his stiffness, all of his usual guardedness, seems to fall away.

“My turn,” Noah says, and Griffin bounces it to him gently.

“You’re good with him,” I say, when he jogs over to stand with me. Around us, the schoolyard is quiet except for the sound of a distant lawn mower, and the afternoon sun is caught in the trees at the edge of the soccer field. “Do you have younger brothers or sisters?”

He shakes his head. “Only child.”

“Well, that explains it.”

“What?”

“Why you never talked to anyone in Spanish.”

He glances sideways at me. “I talked.”

“Yeah, when Señor Mandelbaum asked you a question.”

On the court, Noah flings the ball up toward the basket, but it only makes it a couple feet in the air before falling to the asphalt with a heavy thud.

“You never talked, either,” Griffin points out.

“Did too.”

“Puedo ir al baño? Doesn’t count.”

“Hey,” I say, laughing. “Is it my fault if I had to ir al baño?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Twice every class?”

“Señor Mandelbaum was seriously, seriously boring,” I admit. “Most of the time I just ended up reading out in the hallway.”

“En inglés?” Griffin asks, and I laugh.

“Si,” I tell him. “En inglés.”

We stand there in silence, watching Noah heave the ball at the basket again and again. As his arms get tired, each shot falls shorter, until he’s basically throwing it straight up in the air, then dodging it as it comes back down again.

When the ball rolls my way, I scoop it up and take a shot myself, but it doesn’t go much farther than Noah’s attempts, barely grazing the bottom of the net.

“See?” I say, frowning. “This is why Pop-A-Shot is better.”

I glance over at Griffin, who looks amused, and it occurs to me that whatever this is—this maybe-date, which was questionable even before it took such an odd detour—it should be going horribly wrong. With an empty playground for a backdrop and a six-year-old sidekick, how could it be anything else? This certainly wasn’t how I’d imagined it, all those times I stared at the back of his head in Spanish class.

But for whatever reason, Griffin looks almost happy right now.

And I realize I am too.

“Let’s play a game of caballo,” he suggests, and Noah lets out a burst of unexpected laughter.

“Caballo,” he shouts, pumping an arm in the air. “Caballo, caballo!”

“What’s caballo?” I ask Griffin, who’s already walking over to the basket, and when he turns around, he can’t help laughing.

“It’s horse,” he says with a grin. “En español.”

*   *   *

It’s nearly four o’clock by the time I start worrying that this is more than just lateness and that something might be seriously wrong with Noah’s mother.

The good news is that he doesn’t seem to have noticed. Having finally grown tired of basketball, he’s lying on his back in the grass, an arm shielding his eyes from the sun, his foot moving in time to some unknown rhythm.

“It’s been two hours,” I say to Griffin, who is sitting beside me in the shade, our backs against the brick wall of the school. Our shoulders are only a few inches apart, our knees almost touching, and I keep hoping that he’ll scoot closer. But he doesn’t.

“That’s a long time,” he says, gazing off in the direction of the empty soccer fields in the distance. “A lot can happen in two hours.”

I tip my head back and close my eyes. That’s exactly the thought I’ve been trying to avoid. Beside me, I can feel Griffin studying me in profile, and it’s hard not to turn and face him. But I know that if I do, he’ll look away again, those pale eyes of his like tropical fish, so quick to dart away.

“Maybe something happened to her,” he says, and I look over at him sharply.

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” I say, before trailing off.

“Because it might be true,” he finishes, and there’s something too matter-of-fact in his tone, a bluntness that’s unsettling. I can’t decide if that’s because what he’s saying is true or because I’m rarely so honest myself.

I clear my throat. “I’m sure everything’s fine.”

“Based on what?” he asks, but there’s no challenge to his words. There’s not even any emotion behind them. He’s simply asking.

“Because,” I say, fumbling a little. “Because it has to be.”

Griffin considers this. “That’s not very logical.”

“Who said anything about logic?” I say, just as my phone rings, jittering roughly across the pavement. I grab it, relieved to see the number I’ve been dialing all afternoon, and angle myself slightly away from Griffin.

As soon as I pick up, there’s a flood of words, rushed and frantic and apologetic. “His sister broke her arm on the swings,” Noah’s mother says. “One minute she was pumping her legs and the next she was jumping off, and everything was so chaotic with the ambulance and the hospital and getting the cast, and I didn’t have the number for the camp with me, and my husband is out of town on business, and—”

“It’s fine,” I say for what feels like the millionth time this afternoon. “We have him. He’s totally fine.”

“I’ll be there in three minutes,” she says, and then the call ends, and I let out a long, relieved breath.

“See?” I turn to Griffin, who I can tell has been listening. “Everything’s fine.”

“Well,” he says with a shrug, “there were only ever two options. Either it was going to be fine or it wasn’t.”

*   *   *

A few minutes later, as we head over to the parking lot, I’m astonished to see Noah reach up and take Griffin’s hand.

Without meaning to, I come to an abrupt halt.

I’ve never once seen Noah initiate contact with anyone before. And for that matter, I’ve never really seen Griffin do it, either.

But now he folds the younger boy’s hand in his own as if they’ve known each other forever, as if this happens every day, as if it’s not the most extraordinary thing in the world.

*   *   *

That night, my sister pokes her head into my room.

“So,” she says, her eyes very bright, “was it a date?”

I think of Griffin in his blue button-down, the flicker of surprise on his face when Noah reached for his hand, the nearness of him as we sat against the brick wall of the school, the way the clouds passed overhead and the world had been quiet around us.

I think of the way we’d left things in the parking lot. By then, it was too late to head out to the arcade, and we decided to try again another day. As he walked back toward his car, though, I felt a rise of panic at the open-endedness of it all, and without thinking, I called out, “Tomorrow?”

He stopped.

“Mañana,” he agreed with a smile that made me dizzy.

“Annie.” Meg’s voice is full of impatience, and I realize she’s still waiting for an answer.

“Yeah?”

“Was it?” she asks, and I shake my head.

“No,” I say. “It was better.”

*   *   *

In the morning, once everyone is assembled in the gymnasium, where we start our day, I ask the kids what they’d like to play first.

“Kickball!” says Nadim Sourgen.

“Red rover!” says Gigi Gabriele.

“Nothing!” says Tommy King.

There’s some conferring—heads put together, hushed whispers, peals of laughter. Then, out of nowhere, Noah pipes up. “Caballo!”

This is followed by a surprised silence. The other kids look over at him as if they’d forgotten he was there.

“What’s caballo?” asks Jake Down.

“It’s Spanish,” I say. “For horse.”

“Like in riding?” asks Lucy Etherington.

“Like in basketball,” I say, smiling at Noah, who has already hopped to his feet, his hands on his hips, ready to play. “Caballo it is.”

*   *   *

This time, I’m not leaving it to chance. At the end of the day, even before we’ve trooped out to the parking lot for pickup, I leave Grace and another junior counselor to look after the kids and I hurry to the bathroom to change into my dress.

When I emerge from the cool of the building into the afternoon heat, all the campers turn to stare at me. They’ve only ever seen me in a messy ponytail and the same white T-shirt and green shorts. They’ve only ever seen me looking tired and sweaty and harried.

But now I’m wearing a yellow sundress that swishes when I walk, and I’ve let out my ponytail so that my dark hair falls to my shoulders. I’ve got on perfume and deodorant and even bit of makeup. And from the expressions on their faces, it’s clear I look like an entirely different person.

“You smell good,” says Tommy O’Callaghan, with a note of surprise.

“Like flowers,” confirms Wells von Stroh.

“Thanks,” I say, hoping Griffin might have a similar reaction.

All the parents are on time today, even Noah’s mother, who arrives with a rueful wave. His sister is in the back, and she lifts an arm to show off her bright pink cast. As I walk him over to the car, Noah keeps his usual distance, but when his mom rolls down the window to ask how his day was, he looks up at her.

“We played caballo,” he says, climbing into the back seat.

“What’s caballo?” I hear her ask as they pull away, and I’m still smiling at the disappearing car when I see Griffin across the parking lot.

The first thing I notice is that he’s wearing a different button-down. I squint to make sure I’m seeing it right, but it’s true. This one is the exact same style as the others, only it’s checkered blue and white. It takes me a moment to realize he has on jeans, too; they’re a little long, so he’s cuffed them at the bottom, but they still drag on the ground, making soft scraping noises as he walks over.

“Wow,” I say when he reaches me. He’s not even bothering to hide the fact that he’s staring at my dress, and this suddenly feels like an actual date. “You look really nice.”

“Oh.” His eyes snap up, then back down again. “Yeah, my mom—” He stops, then lets out a sheepish laugh. “My mom told me not to say that she helped me pick out this outfit. But I guess I just did.”

I laugh, too. “I guess so.”

“She also told me to tell you that you look nice.”

“Your mom sounds like a smart lady,” I say, watching his face go pink, and it’s all so endearing: this guy who looks like he should be a total player, like he should know exactly what he’s doing when it comes to dating, but is actually getting advice from his mother. His awkwardness is completely charming and entirely unexpected, but instead of putting me at ease, it makes me more nervous, as I realize just how much I like him.

“Ready to go?” I glance behind me at the remaining campers, who are staring at us, and the other counselors, who are grinning and wolf whistling. I know they’ll have questions for me tomorrow. I only hope I’ll know how to answer them by then.

At the car, Griffin opens my door, and I think date! But then he seems to go out of his way to make sure our arms don’t accidentally touch as I climb in, and once again, I’m not so sure. When we’re both buckled in, he fumbles with the keys for a second, and as we pull out of the parking lot he turns on the radio. I’m surprised to hear the measured voice of an NPR reporter giving a rundown of the day’s news.

“I would’ve pegged you for classic rock,” I tell him, and he automatically reaches for the knob, turning down the volume. “Or maybe just classical.”

“I like the news,” he admits after a long pause, so long that it’s hard to tell if this is a response to my earlier comment or just an idle thought. “I like to know what’s going on in the world.”

“Smarty pants,” I say, and he shrugs.

“I like facts. And statistics. There’s something kind of soothing about them.”

“About statistics? There’s something kind of headachy about them for me.”

“That’s how I first got into basketball.” He drums his fingers on the wheel, his eyes square to the road. I’ve spent so much time staring at the back of his head, or else trying to get him to meet my eye, that I’ve never had a chance to study him in profile—the gentle slope of his nose, the scar just below his right eye, the perfect cheekbones, and the way his hair falls over his ear. “The numbers.”

“Definitely the most exciting part of the game,” I say with mock enthusiasm, and I see him start to bob his head before he catches himself.

“You’re joking,” he says, and I nod.

“I am.”

“Seriously, though,” he goes on, “there’s something really cool about all the stats, but it’s more than that. It’s a game of angles. I mean, think about it. If you’re able to stand in one place and shoot the ball in the exact right way once, you should be able to stand there every single time and do the same thing, right? Technically speaking, you should be able to make the ball go in again every single time.”

“Yeah, but that’s not how it works,” I say. “Because you’re not a robot. You twitch, and it goes to the left. Or you raise your hand a little higher than the last time without realizing it. There are always a thousand different ways it could go wrong.”

“Exactly,” he said. “But here’s the cool part: You can also adjust a bunch of various factors and still have it go in from the same spot, even while shooting it in a completely different way. So there are about a thousand different ways it could go right, too.”

I look at him sideways. “Is this your way of talking a big game?”

“For Pop-A-Shot?” He shakes his head. “No, I’m sure you’re gonna beat me.”

“I have to admit, we used to have one in our basement, so I’ve had a lot of practice. But it’s been a while.”

“How come?”

“Oh,” I say, blinking a few times as he eases the car onto another road. Ahead of us, the sun is slipping lower in the sky, and the buildings on either side of us have been replaced by a blur of trees. “We had to—we moved a few years ago. Out of a house and into an apartment. So … no more room for anything like that.”

We’re both quiet for a moment, and Griffin repositions his hands on the wheel. “It’s not as good as real basketball anyway. The balls are too small.”

“Maybe it’s that your hands are too big.”

“That too,” he says. “But it messes up all the angles.”

“So you’re gonna blame your upcoming defeat on math?”

“Pretty much.”

Just ahead, an ancient-looking wooden sign advertises Hal’s Bar & Restaurant, and Griffin pulls into the gravel drive. There are only a couple other cars in the lot, and we park and walk over to the entrance together.

Inside, it’s dark enough that it takes our eyes a few seconds to adjust. The bartender glances up, then away again. Nobody else even bothers. Hal’s is a strange hybrid, part family restaurant and arcade, part hole-in-the-wall bar. On the weekends it’s crawling with kids eager to redeem their tickets for dinky prizes. But during the week it has a seedier feel to it, dotted with regulars who sit silently hunched at the bar, drinking slowly and watching baseball on the boxy old TV in the corner.

We scoot past the bar and into the back room, which is filled with huge, blocky games like Pac-Man and skee ball and pinball, plus one of those giant tanks filled with stuffed animals and a useless metal claw. The place is quiet and dusty and entirely empty, which isn’t particularly surprising for a Wednesday afternoon in the middle of the summer. Nobody would choose to spend a beautiful day inside a dimly lit arcade. Except, apparently, for us.

“Quarters,” I say, marching over to the machine, and Griffin trails after me. I feed a few dollar bills into the slot, and the coins clink loudly as they fall into the metal drawer. Behind me, I can feel him waiting as I scoop them out, and my heart picks up speed. Something about the quietness of this place—which is meant to be full of people and lights and noise—makes it feel like we’ve stepped out of the real world.

“Hey,” he says softly, and I spin around, my hands filled with coins.

“Yeah?”

In the dusty light from the window, his eyes look very, very blue, and the small scar below his right one is more pronounced.

“I just—” he begins, then stops.

I wait for him to continue. There’s a Cubs game on in the next room, and the tinny sound of distant cheering rises and falls in the stillness. Griffin lifts an arm, and for a second I think he’s reaching for my hand. But then we both look down, and I realize I’m still holding a pile of quarters. Instead, he takes a single coin, flipping it once with his thumb so that it lands perfectly in his palm.

“Tails,” he says absently.

“What are the odds?” I joke, my voice a little wobbly, and Griffin gives me a funny look.

“Fifty-fifty,” he says, as he walks over to the Pop-A-Shot machine, the moment slipping away all at once. This is how it always is with Griffin, like any progress you think you’re making has a tendency to evaporate immediately afterward. Like no matter how much you think you’re connecting, no matter how hard you try, it doesn’t ever add up to anything. You’re always stuck starting over again the next time.

I follow him over to the game, where two small hoops are arranged side by side, with a net that runs down toward the two players, so that each time you shoot, the balls come rolling back in your direction, an endless supply that only runs out when the timer ticks down and the buzzer sounds.

Griffin is already rolling up his sleeves. When he’s ready, he grabs one of the balls, which is about two-thirds the size of a regular basketball, easy enough for him to palm. “These are pretty wimpy,” he says as he studies it.

“You know who these would be great for?” I ask, grabbing another one. “Noah. Did you see how much trouble he was having yesterday? We played again this afternoon, and the regular ones are too heavy for him. But with these, I bet he could almost get it to the basket.”

“And when he dribbles,” Griffin says, bouncing the ball on the wooden floor a couple times, “he’d have a way better grip.”

“Maybe we can win him one.” I point at the glass case in the corner, which is filled with prizes. I usually don’t even bother, since the amount of quarters it takes to win enough tickets to buy anything is about ten times what the thing actually costs. But, even from here, I can see a small green and white basketball half hidden by a stuffed elephant on the lowest shelf. “It’s camp colors and everything.”

Griffin turns back to the baskets. “Well, if you’re as good a player as you are a talker, I’d say it’s a definite possibility.”

“The trick,” I say, turning to face the hoop, “is to line yourself up just right.”

“No,” he says, as he feeds the quarters into the slot. “The trick is to get the ball in the basket.”

The machine comes to life, all blinking lights and blaring jingles, and the timer on the scoreboard starts counting down from ten. I reach for the first ball, then stand poised and ready to shoot. Beside me, Griffin is doing the same, his face focused and ready.

And then the buzzer sounds, and I let the ball fly. It bounces off the rim, but before it’s even landed back in the chute, I’ve launched the second one, which falls into the net with a satisfying swish, though I’m too busy to notice. I’m already shooting again, and then again, falling into a neat rhythm, the quick tempo pattern a kind of muscle memory, a callback to the hours spent playing in our basement, before my dad lost his job and we had to sell the games, before we moved to a smaller house, and then to a tiny apartment, before the fighting started, the late nights and the shouting and the name-calling, and my sister curled up in my bed with me, a pillow over her ears. Before all that—before we learned how to put on happy faces, before we understood that smiles were something you could hide behind, and words could be used as shields, when it was just the four of us in the basement, the concrete walls ringing out with the bright sounds of laughter and cheering.

Now, once again, I’m in constant motion, moving like a machine, steady and unseeing, and when it’s over, even after the clocks have displayed their broken zeroes and the buzzer has long since sounded, I continue to shoot what’s in front of me until all the balls are gone, and then I stand there, empty-handed and blinking.

“Whoa,” Griffin says, staring at the scoreboard.

I haven’t just beat him; I’ve demolished him. The score is 88 to 42.

“Whoa,” he says again. “You were in some kind of crazy zone there.”

“Yeah,” I say, still not entirely sure I’ve come out of it, still not entirely sure I want to. “I guess I was.”

*   *   *

We play all afternoon.

“Rematch,” Griffin keeps calling, each time I beat him, and though my margin of victory gets slimmer each time, it also gets funnier and funnier.

“This is ridiculous,” he says, laughing, after our eleventh round, where I beat him 76 to 62. He leans back on the pool table, shaking his head.

“And you thought I was just talking a big game,” I say with a grin.

“You were,” he points out. “But it turns out you have the skills to back it up.”

I hoist myself onto the pool table beside him, letting my legs dangle. “Well, thanks for being such a good sport.”

He looks surprised. “Yeah … it’s kind of weird. I usually hate to lose.”

“Tell me about it,” I say, but he shakes his head.

“No, I mean it. I really, really hate to lose. I hate doing things I’m not good at, so if I love something, I get really into it, but if not, I can’t be bothered. I’m usually either all in or all out.”

“That doesn’t sound like such a bad thing.”

“It is,” he says, scratching at the back of his neck. “Nobody likes a sore loser.”

“You don’t seem like a very sore loser to me.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the thing,” he says, turning to look at me, really look at me, for the very first time, and there’s something about catching his eye that feels like winning a prize. “With you, I don’t seem to mind it as much.”

*   *   *

The display case holds a ragtag assortment of dubious prizes: On the top shelf are baskets full of bouncy balls and candy, key chains and plastic rings, and below that are the bigger-ticket items, stuffed animals and inflatable bats, miniature footballs and gumball machines—everything wildly overpriced and a little bit dusty.

Griffin and I lean over the glass together, his shoulder brushing against mine in a way that makes my heart beat faster. I want him to notice, to lean into it, to turn and look at me again or to take my hand, to pull me close or kiss me—anything.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he rubs at the smudged glass with the sleeve of his shirt. In the column of light from the window, he looks impossibly handsome and incredibly far away.

We’re both quiet for a long time, for too long, and I start to get edgy, searching for something to fill the silence, because that’s what I always do. But I stop myself, deciding that it’s his turn, which only makes me more anxious. Because suddenly it seems important, whatever he might say next. Suddenly, it feels like it has the power to tip this maybe-possibly-date in one direction or the other.

I stare down at an orange plastic frog as I wait, and it stares back up at me through the filmy glass. Please let it be something meaningful, I think. Please let it be romantic.

But after a moment, he frowns. “This stuff is such a rip-off,” he says, and all the hope goes draining right out of me. He points at the basketball, which is tucked away toward the bottom. “In what world is that worth five hundred tickets?”

We pool our tickets together and I shuffle through the stack. After hours of playing, we still have only about a hundred and fifty between us.

“Maybe we could pay the difference,” I suggest, but Griffin shakes his head.

“They make a lot more money when you have to play for it.”

“Well, it’s still really sweet of you,” I tell him. “To think of Noah.”

“It’s not for Noah,” he says, his eyes still on the case. “It’s for me.”

“Oh,” I say, blinking at him. “Oh. I didn’t—okay.”

“Annie,” he says, turning to face me, and I can see that he’s smiling. “I’m only kidding.”

I let out a laugh, relieved. “Sorry. It’s just that you don’t usually … I mean, you’re always so … I guess I didn’t…”

He tilts his head to one side. “Are you trying to say that I’m not very funny?”

“No,” I say quickly, then pause and reconsider. “Well … yeah.”

Griffin smiles. “It’s okay. I’m really not.”

“Well, you have lots of other good qualities,” I say, watching as he rests both hands on the display case, rocking forward. “You’re different.”

Something flickers on his face, and there’s a slight tensing of his jaw.

“In a good way,” I say, hurrying on. “You’re not like everyone else. You’re nice. Not fake nice—actually nice. And you’re not full of yourself, even though…”

He glances sideways at me, a question on his face.

I shake my head. “Never mind. All I’m trying to say is that it’s refreshing, how you don’t play games the way other guys do. You’re honest. Maybe the most honest person I’ve ever met…”

“Annie.”

“I’m serious,” I continue, feeling oddly light-headed. I’m not prone to speeches like this, and I can’t quite believe I’m saying all of it, but there’s something about Griffin that makes me want to tell him everything I’ve been thinking. And so I do.

“And you were amazing with Noah yesterday. I’ve been trying to connect with him all summer, and I haven’t been able to get through, and then you come along, and—”

“It’s because I have Asperger’s.”

“—you’re such a natural with him, and you two are bonding over—” I stop midsentence, not sure I’ve heard him correctly. “What?”

Griffin turns to face me, though he keeps his eyes on the floor. “I have Asperger’s. Or … autism, I guess. I mean, that’s what they’re calling it now.”

There’s a long pause, and though I’m desperate to fill it, I’m having trouble figuring out how to respond. I need to choose my words carefully. I don’t want to get this wrong. But, in the end, all I manage is a quiet, “Oh.”

Immediately, I regret it. It hangs there between us, a punctuation mark arriving far too early in a conversation I’m hoping has only just begun.

“Yeah,” he says, his face entirely blank.

“So…”

“So that’s why I act the way I do, I guess.” He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I’m not always great with conversation. And sometimes I can be too honest.” He shrugs. “It’s why school can be hard, and why I don’t have a lot of friends, and why I don’t like to talk about it, and why…”

When he trails off, I bite my lip, waiting for him to continue. This is the most I’ve ever heard him speak at once, and the thought pops into my head swiftly and suddenly, like a puzzle piece snapping into place: That’s why.

That’s why he’s so quiet in school. That’s why he’s so obsessed with numbers and facts. That’s why he can never seem to tell when I’m joking. That’s why he’s always so guarded, so closed off. That’s why it’s so hard for him to look me in the eye.

Griffin takes a deep breath, and when he speaks again, it’s like he’s plucked the words straight from my head. “That’s why,” he says, dragging his eyes up to meet mine, “I don’t really go on a lot of dates.”

“So this is a date?” I ask, before I can think better of it, and Griffin looks doubly embarrassed now.

“No,” he says, then shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

My face goes hot, and I scratch at my forehead. “Oh, yeah, I mean…”

“I didn’t want to assume…”

“No, me neither…”

There’s a brief pause as we both study our feet with great fascination, and then Griffin sighs. “I kind of wanted it to be.”

I glance up at him. “Wanted it to be…?”

“A date,” he says, just as the bartender pokes his head into the room, glancing from Griffin to me and then back again with obvious suspicion.

“Everything okay back here?” he asks, and I’m not sure how to answer that.

Griffin nods. “Fine.”

“We’ve had some issues with theft lately.” He points at the display case, as if it’s full of diamonds instead of jelly bracelets and yo-yos. “So if you want a prize, you need to come talk to me…”

“That’s fine,” I say, at the exact same time Griffin says, “We were just leaving.”

“Okay,” the bartender says, clearly pleased to hear this. “See you next time.”

“Sure,” Griffin says, but he doesn’t sound convinced.

*   *   *

On the way back, the silence in the car is stifling, and I have a feeling there’s an easy cure for it, if only I can find the right words or ask the right question.

But I’m too afraid of asking the wrong one.

One of Griffin’s hands is on the wheel, the other is resting on the gearshift between us, and it’s alarming how much I wish I could take it in mine right now. But I don’t. I simply stare at the veins on the back of his hand, the ragged fingernail on his thumb, the knobs of his knuckles, the curve of his wrist.

This is usually my specialty. Some people are good at math, others are good at sports; I’m good at saying the right thing at the right time. I’m the one you want around when the room is still thick with anger after a fight, or when you need someone to smile sympathetically and listen to what’s wrong. I can smooth over even the most awkward of silences, cheer you up when you’re feeling down, lift the mood by sheer force of will. For better or worse, I’m a top-notch listener, a tireless ally, a relentless supporter.

But right now, I’m at a loss.

I want to say, This doesn’t change anything.

I want to say, It’s not a big deal.

I want to say, It’s going to be okay.

But it does. And it is. And it might not be.

I clear my throat, not quite sure where to begin. “Listen, I’m sorry if I—”

But Griffin lurches forward in his seat and punches the button for the radio, turning the volume up high. The conversation is clearly over, and even though he’s sitting in the exact same place he was earlier, the exact same distance from me, it’s like I can feel him retreating, getting further and further away until it’s almost hard to see him at all.

*   *   *

He drops me off at the school, where my car is the only one still left in the parking lot, sitting alone beneath a yellow cone of light. Griffin pulls up beside it, but he doesn’t turn off his engine, and we sit there in the quiet car, neither of us speaking.

“I had a good time,” I say eventually, and even in the blue light of the early dusk, I can see the corner of his mouth twitch. It’s obvious he doesn’t believe me. “Really,” I say, pushing forward stubbornly. “It was a lot of fun.”

He doesn’t answer, only gives a grudging nod.

With a sigh, I open the door and step out, but once I’ve shut it again, I lean into the open window. “Seriously,” I say. “Thank you.”

This time, he lets out a grunt, as if I’ve said something preposterous, and I realize all at once that I’m not the one doing this wrong. He is.

He shifts the car into gear and starts to pull away, but I jog after him.

“Hey,” I shout, hooking a hand around the open window, and he looks over at me, startled, then slams on the brakes. I bend down again, staring at him hard, and this time he looks back at me. But there’s a challenge in his eyes. He’s daring me to say the wrong thing, and I understand now that it was always going to be like this, no matter how I reacted. It’s like he’s been steeling himself for this moment for so long that it almost doesn’t matter how it actually unfolded. He’d already made up his mind about how it would go. He’d already decided how I’d feel about it, before I even had a chance.

But, for once, I don’t feel like acting the way someone else wants me to. I don’t feel like going along with anything, or being agreeable, or putting on a happy face.

For once, I feel like being honest.

“I thought this was a date, too,” I tell him, my cheeks already burning. “Or at least I wanted it to be.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Griffin,” I say, so sharply that he looks over. His expression is hard to make out in the growing darkness. “I’m not just saying that. I’m not trying to be polite. I really like you, okay?”

It’s true. I’m not saying it to make him feel better. Or because I feel bad for him, or even because he’s so distractingly good looking. I’m saying it because it’s a fact. And if I can spend so much time saying nice things when I don’t really mean them, why shouldn’t I be able to say them when I actually do?

“I’ve liked you since the first day of Spanish,” I continue, in spite of the fact that he’s turned away again, making it hard to tell just how much of an idiot I sound like at the moment. “Te gustar.”

He glances up at me with a frown. “Me gustas.”

“Why, thank you.” I beam at him, but his face remains impenetrable, and my smile slips. “Look, the point is, I had no idea you had Asperger’s then, and I still couldn’t stop thinking about you. So why would anything be different now?”

“It just is,” he says quietly.

I shake my head. “Not for me.”

“How could it not be?”

“Because I like you. You. The same you I’ve liked all year.” I laugh. Something about all this honesty is making me giddy. Or maybe it’s just Griffin. “How many times are you gonna make me say it?”

“It’s not that easy,” he says, but if he’s expecting me to agree with him tonight, he’s picked the wrong girl.

I grin at him, then give the hood of the car a tap, just before turning around to leave. “What if it is?”

*   *   *

As soon as I get into my car, my phone lights up with a text from my sister.

The glowing white letters read Date: yes or no?

I text her back: Inconclusive.

But then, a moment later, I change my mind and write, Yes.

*   *   *

The next day, I’m standing in the middle of the blacktop, a whirling blur of kids running circles around me. In the distance, the older campers are playing a well-coordinated game of kickball, and usually I’d be jealous of the order of it all, the calm sense of purpose to their activities. But today I can’t help laughing at the younger kids—my rowdy, frantic, overexcited crew—who are ostensibly making chalk drawings, though only two of them are actually sitting on the pavement with a fat piece of chalk in hand. Elan Dwyer is drawing an elephant with wings, and Bridget DeBerge is tracing her foot. The others have started an impromptu game of tag, and they’re sprinting around with obvious joy, red-faced and giggling and utterly delighted.

All of them except Noah, who has found a basketball.

I bend down beside him so that we’re both surveying the hoop from the same angle. He’s already panting from the heat, which is muggy and thick, and he smells the way all little kids do in the summer: like bug spray and sunscreen and sweat. He’s holding the ball with both hands as he considers his next shot, his arms already sagging.

I think of the miniature basketball from yesterday with a pang.

“How’s it going?” I ask, and he continues to squint at the basket as if he hasn’t heard me. “You know,” I say, pointing at the hoop, “the trick is to line yourself up just right.”

“No it’s not,” comes a voice from behind me. “The trick is to get the ball in the basket.”

I whirl around to find Griffin standing on the grass just beyond the pavement, wearing his usual outfit and holding the green and white basketball from the display case in one large palm.

“Hey,” I say, looking from the ball up to him and then back at the ball again. “What are you doing here?”

He nods at Noah, who is staring at him, too. “I thought this might work better,” he says, holding out the ball. Noah doesn’t move; he just continues to watch Griffin for what feels like a very long time. But then some switch flips inside of him, and his face brightens, and he rushes over to grab the ball.

“What do you say?” I yell after him, as he tucks it under one arm and runs back toward the basket.

“You’re welcome,” Noah calls over his shoulder, and I laugh.

“Close enough.”

Griffin is still standing a few feet away, looking nervous and out of place. Amid the frenzy of high voices and peals of laughter and churning legs, he’s like an oasis: calm and still and focused.

He clears his throat. “Do you think we could talk for a minute?”

“Sure,” I say, looking behind me and catching Grace’s eye. I make a motion toward the corner of the building and mouth, “Be right back.” When she nods, I turn back to Griffin. “Come on,” I say, and he follows me around the side of the brick wall, where it’s shady and cool and the voices are muffled and distant.

We stand facing each other, and he steps forward so that he’s very close to me. This time, I’m the first one to look away, glancing down reflexively, where I notice an apple juice stain on my camp shirt. I lift my chin again, forcing myself to meet his eyes, surprised when he doesn’t waver.

“That was really, really nice of you,” I say, trying to hold onto my thoughts beneath his clear gaze. “To go buy a ball for him.”

There’s a hint of a smile on Griffin’s face. “I didn’t buy it.”

“What do you—” I stop, and my mouth falls open. “No way.”

He nods. “I went back last night after I dropped you off.”

“It must’ve taken so many hours.”

“It did.”

“And so many quarters.”

“It did.”

“Well, thank you,” I say. “I mean, I have no idea how you managed to do that, given your Pop-A-Shot skills, but—”

“I need to tell you something,” Griffin says, cutting me off. He looks instantly apologetic. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to … Well, see? This is what I mean. This is why I don’t have very many friends. I interrupt a lot. And I don’t always notice other people as much as I should. I once left my grandma in a department store because I was so busy reading about mycology on my phone.”

“What’s mycology?”

“The study of fungi.”

I squint at him. “What does that have to do with your grandma?”

“It doesn’t,” he says impatiently. “But I was so wrapped up in it that when I got up to leave, I totally forgot she’d come there with me.”

“Oh.”

“It’s something I’m working on. But there’s a lot that I’m working on, and I have been my whole life. I don’t always listen. And I spend too much time talking about certain things—”

“Like mycology?”

“It’s fascinating,” he says, so emphatically that it’s hard not to smile. “And I can’t always tell if people are upset about something, so if you were, you’d have to tell me. Because I probably wouldn’t ask. And I have trouble looking people in the eye—”

“Yeah,” I say, with an encouraging smile. “But you’re doing it.”

“I know, but it’s hard. It’s like trying to hold in a sneeze or something.” He looks away quickly, widening his eyes and then squeezing them shut before turning back to me again. “Not that I don’t like your eyes, because I do. They’re very pretty.” He takes a short breath, rocking back and forth on his heels before hurrying on. “And I’m way too honest. Even though you said you like that, you don’t realize—”

“Griffin.”

“Yeah?”

“Is this what you wanted to tell me?”

He stares at me blankly.

“You said you needed to tell me something…”

“Oh yeah,” he says, taking a quick step forward. “Just this.”

It happens so fast there’s not even time to be surprised; just like that, Griffin is kissing me, a kiss that’s soft and tentative and much too quick. He pulls away again almost immediately, blinking at me. “I don’t know if that was okay—”

Before he can finish, I grab his shirt and tug him toward me, and this time, I’m the one who kisses him. For a split second I feel him tense up, but just as quickly, he relaxes into it, and then—as if he’s forgotten there’s any reason to be uncertain, as if we’ve done this a million times before—his arms fold around me, and the space between us disappears, and the rest of it falls away. Suddenly, he’s just a boy I really, really like, and I’m just a girl he’s finally worked up the nerve to kiss. There are still about a thousand ways this could all go wrong. But there are a thousand different ways it could go right, too. And for the moment, none of the rest of it matters. It’s just him and me. Me and him. The two of us.

Until it’s not.

At the sound of high-pitched giggling, I force myself to pull away from Griffin. For a second, I stand there completely frozen, afraid to turn around. He blinks down at me a few times with a lazy smile, but then I see it register on his face, too, and he leans around me to look.

“Oops,” he says with a sheepish grin, and I cover my face with my hands.

“Gross,” says Nikko Heyward with obvious glee.

“Eww,” agrees Jack Doyle.

“Disgusting,” says Henry Sorenson.

Behind them, Noah is staring at us, too. The ball that Griffin brought him is tucked under his arm, and he holds it out hopefully.

“Caballo?” he says, and Griffin smiles.

“Vamos!” he says, rocking forward again. Then he claps his hands once and begins to jog back toward the basketball court, Noah and the rest of the kids skipping after him. “Vamos a jugar!”

I stand there, watching him: the way he stoops to give Noah a high five, the way he waits so patiently for the others to catch up, the way he looks back at me and smiles, sending a jolt of electricity right through me.

And I think, That’s why.

Just as they get to the court—just as Noah sends the little ball sailing, and it clangs off the rim, and he jumps up and down as if he’d performed a game-winning dunk—Griffin turns around, again looking vaguely alarmed, then jogs back over to me.

“Almost forgot something,” he says, reaching out a hand, and I take it.