A shakes his head. “No. I’m taking you to my favorite place, remember?”

He looks through the cupboards until he finds two trays. The food we’ve made barely manages to fit on them. Then A finds a bunch of candles and takes them along, too.

“Here,” he says, handing me one of the trays. Then he leads me out the back door.

“Where are we going?” I ask. I don’t even have my jacket. I hope we’re not going far.

“Look up,” he says.

At first, all I see is the tree. Then I look closer and see the tree house.

“Nice,” I say, finding the ladder.

“There’s a pulley system for the trays. I’ll go up and drop it down.”

These parents have thought of everything.

As I balance the trays, A heads up the ladder and sends a platform down. I’m not sure how balanced it’s going to be, but I put one of the trays on, and A manages to pull it up without anything falling off. We repeat this for the second tray, and then it’s my turn to go up the ladder.

It’s like something I’ve read about in a book. It never occurred to me that kids could actually have tree houses in their backyards.

There’s an open door at the top, and I climb right through. A has lit some of the candles, so the air flickers as I pull myself inside. I look around and see what’s basically a log cabin stuck in the air. There isn’t much furniture, but there’s a guitar and some notebooks, a small bookshelf with an old encyclopedia on it. A has put the trays in the middle of the floor, since there isn’t any table and there aren’t any chairs.

“Pretty cool, isn’t it?” A says.

“Yeah.”

“It’s all his. His parents don’t come up here.”

“I love it.”

I take the plates, napkins, and silverware from one of the trays and set the table that isn’t a table. When I’m done, A serves—some of everything for each of us. As we sit across from each other, we comment on the food—it’s all turned out better than it has any reason to be. The sauce on the pasta primavera tastes like a spice I can’t quite identify—I ask A what it is, and he doesn’t remember. He thinks I might have put it in. I don’t remember, either. It was all just part of the improvisation.

There’s a carafe of water on one of the trays, and that’s all we need. We could have wine. We could have vodka. We could have Cherry Cokes. It would all be the same. We’re drunk on candlelight, intoxicated by air. The food is our music. The walls are our warmth.

As the first candles diminish, A lights more. There isn’t brightness, but there’s a glow. I’ve just taken my first bite of a lemon square, its tartness still on my tongue. I catch A watching me and assume I have some powdered sugar on my face. I move to wipe it off. He smiles, still looking.

“What?” I ask.

He leans over and kisses me.

“That,” he says.

“Oh,” I say. “That.”

“Yes, that.”

We hang there, waiting for the kiss to leave the room, to float off into the night.

I have no idea what I want.

No. Not true. I know exactly what I want. I’m just not sure if I should want it.

“Dessert,” I say. “You need to try a lemon square.”

He smiles. It’s okay to let the kiss leave the room.

Already, I feel others knocking on the door.

I look at his lips. The powdered sugar on his lips.

I remind myself they’re not really his lips.

I’m not sure I care.

When we’re done, I gather up the dishes. I put everything on the trays, and then I push the trays aside. We’ve been sitting too far from each other. I want us so much closer.

I move right next to him. He puts his arm around me, and I take the pad of sticky notes out of my pocket, along with the pen. Without saying a word, I draw a heart on the top sticky note, then put it on Alexander’s heart.

“There,” I say to A.

He looks down at it. Then back up at me.

“I have to tell you something,” he says.

For a moment, I think this will be the I love you that’s even greater than the others. If he says it, I will respond.

But instead he says, “I have to tell you what’s been going on.”

Instead of leaning in to him, I move so I can see his eyes.

“What?” I ask. Irrationally, I wonder if he’s met someone else.

“Do you remember Nathan Daldry? The boy I was at Steve’s party?”

“Of course.”

“I left him on the side of the road that night. And when he woke up—he knew something was wrong. He suspected something wasn’t right. So he told a lot of people. And one of the people who found out—he calls himself Reverend Poole. But he’s not Reverend Poole. He’s someone in Reverend Poole’s body.”

“This is what you were talking about when you emailed and said you thought you weren’t the only one.”

A nods. “Yes. But that’s not all of it. Whoever’s inside Poole is like me, but not entirely like me. He says he can control it. He says there’s a way to stay in a person’s body.”

I try to wrap my mind around what he’s saying. “Who told you this? Did you email him? How do you know he’s real?”

“I saw him. I met him. He used Nathan to set a trap, and he almost got me. He says we’re the same, but we’re not the same. I don’t know how to explain it—I don’t think he uses the same rules as I do. I don’t think he cares about the people he inhabits. I don’t think he respects what we are.”