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David slid a Tupperware container under my nose, a dark, sugary scent following it.

I looked up into his radiant morning smile. “What’s this?”

“Brownies,” he announced proudly. “As promised.”

I lifted one corner of the lid to take a peek, wondering if he put date-rape drugs in these. He was just creepy enough.

“Ooh, nice one, Dave!” Cal slapped David on the shoulder, pushing past him to slide into the seat next to mine. “Gimme some.”

David knocked Cal’s hand away. “They’re for Ara.”

“Aw, come on.” Cal pouted at me. “You’re not gonna eat them all yourself, are you?”

“I…” I looked at the container; there were an awful lot of brownies in there.

“Just try them first,” David said, closing the lid to shut Cal out. “Once you try them, you might not want to share them.”

“Did you make them?” Cal asked David, slinking down comfortably, his legs extended under the seat of the guy in front of us.

“With my uncle’s recipe.”

I cocked my head as I caught another whiff of them, and a sudden and very sharp memory hit me for a second so split that it escaped me before I could latch on to it. My eyes flickered and my skin went cold, the feeling left behind by that memory filling me up with something awful. I wasn’t sure what emotion this was, or how it was related to the word ‘Mike,’ but I felt as if maybe I missed someone. As if maybe the brownies made me miss him.

“Ara?” David said, his eyes fixed on me with a kind of worry that I usually only saw in Brett.

I wanted to cry. I hadn’t wanted to open any of the packing boxes in my room—filled with personal effects from my old life—but I had a deep urge now to run home and sort through them in the hopes that I could find this connection. Find what, or who, I was missing.

David dropped his bag down beside my desk and knelt there, pulling my chair out a bit to turn me in my seat. He discreetly thumbed the tear from my cheek, hiding it before anyone could see, and as his kind green eyes took me in, I let them. I let him look at me, let him get closer to me than I’d been willing to before. When we first met, he just seemed like an awkward, dorky kind of guy, but I could see something different behind those eyes now, as if maybe he put on as much of an act here as I did. And I wanted to know more. I wanted to understand him on a deeper level than I’d wanted to a minute ago. There was something just so familiar in the way he knelt beside me, as if he held a piece of a home I didn’t know I’d lost. And in this new and strange world full of uncertainty, that was a magical gift.

“What happened, Ara?” he said. “Why are you crying?”

“I think I remember brownies—from my old life.”

His elated smile made him look kind-of cute and a whole lot younger, and just as I started to lose my wits—start imagining him as something more than a friend—the teacher waltzed into the room.

“In your seats, class!”

I snapped back from David and shook off the strange feeling, shoving the container of brownies in my bag as he stood up, but even as he sat down behind me, the new connection remained, and as much as I could feel Cal glancing sideways at me to get my attention, the stare digging into the back of my neck vibrated with a ring ten times more powerful.

It scared me, but it excited me as well, and I think it excited David too. I think he wanted to know more about me as much as I just decided I wanted to know more about him—wanted to be the one he knelt by when something was wrong—have him make me feel like he can fix everything with only a look in his eyes. I’d believed it a moment ago, and I still believed it now, enough that I turned back to see if it was still there.

As our eyes met, his perfectly-shaped dark-pink lips moved up slowly into a warm smile, revealing a lovely set of straight white teeth.

I smiled back, my mouth twitching as it changed from a friendly to an awkward one, then back to friendly again, as his did too.

“Brett?”

“Hm?” He didn’t look up from his newspaper.

I took a deep breath and picked up a cushion to hug, casting my gaze out to the big eucalyptus tree on our front lawn, strangely smelling David in here, even though he’d never been to my house. And the fact that the taste of his brownies were still on my lips meant that almost every one of my senses was thinking about him tonight. But not as much as I was thinking about… “Who’s Mike?”

“What?” His newspaper hit the floor and scattered. I looked back to see him picking up the stray pages. “Why do you ask?”

“So I knew a Mike?” I surmised. “Obviously.”

“Uh… Um…” He busied himself putting the paper back together. “Why do you ask?”

“David made me some brownies and—”

“Ah.” He nodded. “Brownies.”

“Why?” I spun my legs around and put my feet on the carpet. “What’s brownies got to do with a Mike?”

“He was your best friend growing up; he made brownies.”

I got the sense, from the way his shoulders came up toward his ears slowly and the vein in his neck popped out a bit, that there was more to the story, but he didn’t want to say. “Was I in love with him?”

“Uh… why do you ask?”

“Because I felt…” I pushed on the center of my chest where I’d had that feeling earlier today. “When I felt this… when I smelled those brownies, I felt the most unbelievable sense of missing someone, as if my heart had been ripped out by them and never really given back.”

Brett’s shoulders dropped. He laid the paper on the footstool and sat forward on his chair—the way he would when he had bad news or needed to think carefully about what he was going to say. “If I tell you about Mike, I… it’s very closely mixed with other stories about your past—ones you didn’t want to know about last time we spoke.”

I thought about the empty feeling Mike had left in my heart and then looked out the window again. “Is he still around—the Mike guy?”

“Yes.”

“Is he… were we ever…?”

“He’s married,” he said softly.

I nodded, my eyes filling with tears. “Was I heartbroken when he got married?”

“No.”

“Then why am I now?”

He appeared at my side, lifting me slightly to sit behind me. His big warm arms came down around my waist, holding my body to his like I might float away. I felt relieved and safe, as if I’d needed his arms all day and just hadn’t realized. “Because you don’t have any memories to make you want to forget him, kiddo,” he said in a deep, calm voice. “But you and Mike… it didn’t work.”

“Why?”

“Because… you…” He paused. “You were in love with someone else.”

“Who?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Is that person still around; is he one of the people that still love me?”

Brett kissed my head, his breath falling along the side of my face. “I love you, Ara. I want you to have a life, a better one than you had before. And if you go back to that world—to the people you loved before… I don’t think you’ll stay for very long.”

“Stay?”

“I think it’ll be too consuming for you. You don’t know who you are yet, or what you stand for, and if I tell you about it—about them, you will go back. And it’ll destroy you.”

“What makes you so sure, when just the other day you felt sick about the idea of not telling me?”

“I’ve watched you, seen you live this normal life—friends, boys, homework. That’s all you should have to worry about right now, Ara.” He held me a bit tighter. “I love seeing you happy, and I don’t want to see you fall apart right now, not just when you’re truly starting to get in touch with who you are.”

“So Mike doesn’t matter—I should just forget him?”

“He matters, but not in the way your heart is tricking you into thinking. Not anymore.”

I nodded, deciding then to leave those boxes packed upstairs for just a little bit longer.

Cal blast the speaker into the courtyard, the pumping beat attracting people like flies to cake. They gathered around and watched on with big smiles and folded arms as, at first, people hesitated to hug the three idiots with signs around their necks, and then, one by one, slowly formed a line.

As I suspected, the girls used this as an opportunity to hug David and Cal, making those hugs last just a little bit longer than any of the guys would have. I noted halfway through that Cal and David seemed to be counting the numbers and shouting them at each other in some sort of competition to see who was hotter.

All in all, mostly girls hugged the guys while mostly guys hugged me. The only guys that really hugged Cal and David had done so by force, when one of them would step in front of me to steal the hugger. It was funny the first five times, but it seemed they made a competition out of that too: to see how many hugs they could steal from Ara.

It was pretty obvious that both boys liked me as maybe more than a friend, which is why I decided, by the middle of lunch period, that I would take a big step back from both of them. I wasn’t ready for this yet, and I’d let myself get caught up in Cal at his house the other day and with David when he knelt in front of me in class. It was easy to do—to follow those emotions in that single moment—but I’d learned that, when you get home and you cool off a bit, the absence of those emotions that made you act all silly could suddenly make you feel very silly.

While Cal and David were wrapped in the arms of one girl who insisted on hugging them at the same time, my eye moved across the yard to a tall guy with broad shoulders, who’d been sitting in the same spot all of lunch, just watching on with a big cheesy smile on his face. He had the kind of smile that Brett did—warm and with such kind eyes above it that you’d expect him to be the guy that played Santa at his grandkid’s Christmas party one day—and with his sandy hair and confident demeanor, he was everything my body said it liked. He made my cheeks hot every time he looked at me, and I’d been wishing for this entire hour that he would muster up enough guts to come and hug me. I wanted to know if he was all muscle or just had very well-defined fat.

“Hey.” David tapped me with the back of his hand. “What you staring at?”

I realized then that I was staring. “Oh, um… nothing.”

But David followed my gaze then, and his eyes rolled as he saw what was at the end of it. “I’m guessing that’s your type.”

“How’d you guess?”

“Let’s just call it instinct.” He opened his arms as my ‘type’ came over to us, but the guy just laughed and playfully pushed David aside, leaning down just before he reached me and then threw his arms around my waist, lifting me off the ground and spinning me like we’d been friends all our lives.

I giggled like a pathetic little girl, holding on to him just tight enough to feel that his body was muscle under that school-leaver’s jacket, not fat. He put me down then and wiped a hand along his chin, still smiling big—enough to make me stay put instead of moving on to the next hugger, like I usually did.

“I’m Shaun,” he said.

“Ara.”

“Nice to finally meet you.” He looked behind him at the line forming. “You wanna quit this hug-fest and come to the library with me? I got a study period.”

“I’m in special education,” I said, cringing as that came out so casually. “We don’t get study periods.”

His smile dropped, but only slightly. “Why are you in that class?”

“Hey, Shaun, give the rest of us a go,” someone called from behind him.

He waved a hand at them and turned back to our conversation.

“I had an accident and had to learn how to do everything again,” I said, getting tired of telling the same story over and over.

“So you’re not a retard?”

“Uh…” I wasn’t sure how I should feel about that word, but it felt like he was saying it to be mean. I wasn’t really even sure what it meant.

“Hey, you ever seen the lookout?” he asked.

“Uh… no.”

“It’s where guys take you to make out at night,” Cal butted in, standing protectively at my side.

David appeared on the other.

“Oh,” I said, flushing with heat.

“Wanna come up there on Friday night with me?” Shaun asked boldly, an unapologetic smile flicking between my two bodyguards. And suddenly I felt suffocated by them, so I nodded, stepping away to stand beside Shaun. “I’d love to see the lookout.”

“Great.” Shaun took his phone from his pocket and handed it to me. “Pin your number in and I’ll call you.”

I saved it under ‘Ara’ for him and then handed it back, feeling like I’d made the right decision. Just because we went up to the lookout—where people usually make out—didn’t mean we had to do it. I just wanted to get to know him better and maybe spend some time under the warmth of that cute smile.

“Sweet,” he said, flipping his phone before pocketing it. “I’ll call you after school.”

“Great.” I waved as he walked away, the rest of the line dispersing as the bell sounded.

“You’re not seriously going out with him, are you?” Cal said, taking off his ‘Free Hugs’ sign.

“What’s it to you?” David said. “If she wants to make out with the school mattress, let her.”

“The what?” I said.

“That guy’s been with every girl that would open her legs for him—”

“Or her mouth,” David added. I wondered what he meant by that, but figured it must be rude, because Cal laughed, both guys suddenly on the same side, for once.

“Well… I’m sure it’ll be different with me.”

“Why would it?” Cal scoffed.

I spun around to look at him, and he stopped laughing. “Are you saying I’m not worth anything more than a quick make-out session?”

Beside me, David folded his arms, clearly waiting to see how Cal would dig his way out of that one.

“Not to him, no,” Cal said honestly. “He doesn’t care who you are or what you feel—”

“Look, I’m not telling you what to do, Ara,” David cut in, taking off his sign, “but Cal is right about Shaun.”

“Maybe you just don’t know him,” I offered.

“And maybe you’re just too young in the head still to be making assumptions about boys you don’t know,” David said firmly, tapping my head. “You have no life experience, Ara. What are you gonna do if he really is only after sex?”

I shrugged. “Maybe that’s all I’m after.”

Both boys choked on that one for a moment until David realized I was kidding.

“Look, I’ll keep it in mind,” I said, “but if he really is a jerk, then I guess it’s a lesson learned.”

“And what if he forces himself on you?” David said.

“He wouldn’t do that,” Cal assured him. “He’s not that type of guy. But I just don’t want you to feel worthless, Ara, and that’s how he makes girls feel. Ask Kenna.”

“He’s been with Kenna?”

Cal nodded. “She cried for two weeks because she really believed that he liked her for her.”

“And that’s an experience in her bank of life,” I said, “something I don’t have any of. So I look forward to feeling like nothing, if that’s how it’s going to be. How else will I know what to look for in the right guy?”

“Easy.” David took both of my shoulders and spun me around to face him. “See that?”

“See what?” My eyes narrowed in confusion, taking in the sharp upper curve of his dark-pink lips and the dimple beside them, but not seeing his point.

“This is what the perfect guy looks like.”

Cal made some awful grunting noise of disapproval and a snide remark as he started packing up our things. And though David was only being playful and didn’t actually think he was the right guy for me, when he said that, I did look at him in a new light. He was actually pretty cute, and I loved how safe and cared-for I felt around him. But when I really imagined it, anything more with him would be sort of icky and awkward. No matter how gorgeous it turned out he actually was when I really looked at him.