“And what do you cook for people who don’t know what makes them happy?”

“That’s my specialty. I make them something so good they realize that’s what they’ve been wanting their whole lives. They just never knew it before.”

“Pretty sure of yourself.”

“Not really,” he says, giving his glasses a nudge and looking embarrassed. “I just love making food.”

“Okay, one more question,” I say. “When you cook for yourself, what do you make?”

He squints and I can feel his eyes evaluating me. “Something different. But I don’t believe in exotic just for the sake of exotic. It has to taste good. Have you ever had Moroccan food?”

I shake my head. “I’ve had Jordanian food a few times.”

“Oh, right. Your friend. Moroccan flavors are warm—lots of cumin and cinnamon and turmeric. And you’ve got to sit on the floor and eat it with your hands for the whole experience to be authentic. I’ll make it for you sometime, if you’ll try it.”

“I’ll try it.”

He smiles, and I feel warm and weak at the same time.

“So, what about you?” he asks.

“What about me?”

“Are you going away to college this fall or staying here?”

I turn my mallet upside down and twist it, digging a hole into the grass. I should’ve already told him I’m still in high school. I know he saw my age on my job application, and I let him assume from there. “I actually have one more year of high school.”

“Oh.”

“But then I’m going to art school in North Carolina.”

I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t, so I just roll the ball back and forth under the arch of my foot. He’s doing it right now, making the assumption people naturally make about a girl who’s a year older than her classmates and headed for art school. Dumb. It is, I think, the same assumption my parents make, though they don’t come right out and say it.

“So, tell me about your mural again,” he says.

I bend down and pick up the ball. It’s surprisingly heavy. “What have I already told you?”

“That it’s an ocean.”

“Oh. Yeah. Or it will be an ocean, but for now it’s just water and some coral. I work slowly. I want it to be exactly how I want it to be.”

“And how’s that?” he asks.

I swallow and stare up at the starlit sky. I’d have an easier time describing how stars are made. Mo suffers through my mural ramblings like they’re physically painful, reminding me regularly that he has no idea what I’m talking about. Maybe that’s why Reed’s curiosity feels so foreign and terrifying. I’m not used to genuine questions about it or having to squeeze my images into words. “Like long sheets of silk parachutes,” I try. I didn’t realize I was talking softly, but I see him lean in so I try to speak louder. My voice falters, though. “Different shades, I mean, but all twisted up together. It’s . . . it’s hard to explain. I’m not good with words.”

There is just enough silence between us to convince me I’ve made no sense, that he’s picturing some grade-school art project that looks like a SpongeBob backdrop. I shouldn’t have said anything. The idea is still too young. Before my art is done it’s just an eggshell in my open palm, so brittle that the weight of the night air could crush it. I squeeze the yellow croquet ball in my hand. It’s solid, no give at all.

“Show me,” he says.

My heartbeat throbs in the tip of each finger. Yes. No. Yes. No. I need just a few seconds to think, but my pulse is pounding reason away and I don’t know what to say. What I should say is no. I haven’t even let Mo see it yet, and the wrong reaction from Reed could make me doubt it, or hate him, or both. But then I imagine Reed in the center with me, feeling the water swirling all around us, and I know what I want. “Now?”

He glances over to where Soup is poised on a ladder, tying a pink diaper-shaped piñata to a tree. Below him Flora’s holding a Louisville Slugger bat, and some guy in a cowboy hat is blindfolding her. “I don’t think they’ll miss us.”

“Okay.”

We don’t bother telling anyone that we’re going. The piñata chaos is loud enough that we don’t have to. I scoop up my sandals, looping my fingers through the straps rather than putting them on, and down the melted piña colada.

“I’m parked over there,” I say, pointing down the street. My knees feel a little weak, but I look down and lead the way. The grass tickles, and when I feel the cool concrete under my bare feet, I stop to put my sandals on. With each step I feel a little more nervous. Why am I doing this? If he sees my mural and says something stupid, I won’t be able to like him anymore. It would be much safer to just go somewhere and make out.

“Wait, where’s your truck?” he asks, looking around.

“Oh. I got a new car.” I point to the Explorer. The car-lot gleam seems suddenly too much, almost garish under the streetlamp light. At least I took off the bow.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“And what happened to your old truck?”

“I think my dad sold it. Do you want to drive?” I ask.

“Seriously?”

I shrug. I hold out the keys and he takes them, his fingers brushing over mine. They’re warm and dry, almost rough.

He opens my door for me and I climb in. Everything looks different from the passenger seat. I run my fingers over the console, open and close the glove box, examine the cup holders in the door. Reed gets in and buckles his seat belt. The muscles in his arm tighten as he turns the key. Mo would kill me if he found out I let someone else drive it before him.

It’s a short drive, but I keep forgetting that I need to tell Reed which way to turn.

“Right or left?” he asks as we sit at the stop sign poised to turn onto Ridgewood.

“Oh, sorry. Left.”

I can see from half a block away that the house is pitch-black. I should be relieved. Except if they were home, I could just explain to Reed that my parents are insanely strict and make up something about not being allowed to have guys in my room and how he really doesn’t want to meet my parents anyway. That would be it. We’d go back to the party, and the mural would still be all mine.

But the lights are off, so the dread and the excitement build, filling one cell at a time until I’m brimming with it, about to spill over.

“Which one?” he asks.

“The one with the porch swing.” I hear my voice as if it’s someone else’s, forced and high.

“This is . . . wow.”

I pinch the skin on the back of my arm to keep myself from squirming. It’s big, but not that big. Not a mansion or anything. Except tonight the moon seems to have leached the cream from the towering stucco, and what’s left is bone-gray and lifeless. It looks like a mausoleum.

Reed parks. We walk up the driveway together, his hands in his pockets, mine fidgeting with my dress. It’s the sound of our steps on the pavement—the click of my heels beside the slap of his flip-flops—that makes me realize that for the first time I’m alone with Reed. Not work Reed. Just Reed.

I can still taste the sweetness of piña colada in my mouth, but it doesn’t mask the ache that’s growing in my stomach. How can bliss and nausea both happen at the same time?

“It doesn’t look like much yet,” I say, gripping the key, leaning my hip into the door for support.

“What do you mean?” He’s beside me, closer than he’s been before. So close I’m looking up at the gold stubble along his jaw. And I can smell his neck.

We could still turn around. And what would he say if I told him I wanted to go back to the party? He’d think I was crazy for dragging him out here, but there are worse things than having people think you’re crazy. Losing yourself is worse.

I twist my wrist and jingle my bracelets, but I can’t remember what they’re warning me against now. Not boys. Not sex. Something worse. Getting walked all over.

But this is different. I’m choosing this.

Reed’s staring at me now, like I really am crazy.

“I’ve only done the water,” I say. “And the water is just the background.”

“You already said that. But the way you described it before—it didn’t sound like just background.” He pushes his glasses up, and the glare from the streetlamp disappears. His eyes are warm and serious. If I kissed him, we might be able to call it a day. I look at his lips. I’m pretty sure he would kiss me back.

I slide my key into the door and twist it, and with the clunk of the lock, it’s over. I’m doing it. I push the door open and turn to watch him as we walk in. He glances around the front hall, and I feel how painfully clean it is, how the spaces between things make the house even larger than it looked on the outside.

The moonlight follows us in, pouring through the sitting room windows, soaking the tall white walls and making them glow. His face is nearly blank, but I see it in the slight widening of his eyes as he looks from chandelier to French doors, from vases to china cabinet. Too much glass. Too much crystal.

“No offense,” he whispers, “but why are you working for minimum wage?”

I take off my sandals for the second time this evening to stall. I don’t have an answer that won’t embarrass us both, based on his reaction. “I really love custard?”

It works. He laughs, and the tension lifts just enough for me to keep going. “My room is upstairs,” I say. I lead him without turning on the foyer lights. He doesn’t need to know that it turns from tomb to morgue when illuminated.

Up. I’m taking him up. My heart beats a little faster with each step.

I reach my room at the end of the hall, put my hand on the doorknob, and turn to him. He looks too big in this hallway, his shoulders filling up the space between the silver-framed photographs that line the walls. I’ve never noticed his shoulders before. Maybe it was the apron. He comes to a stop close enough that I could reach out and put my palm on his chest. I want to do it so I can both touch him and push him away.