“It takes a while for a new place to feel like home,” Nate had told me not two nights before, over Portobello burgers at Kerbey Lane. Oh—and I'd also been spending some time with Nate. “I remember my freshman year. It took a month for me to find my people.”

“Oh, the Star Trek Fan Club was that hard to track down?” I'd grinned. He'd rolled his eyes. It was easy to talk to Nate. He and I were so similar. Ever since the wedding reception (where Dempsey had offered to foot half the dinner bill, attempted to dance with me, and ended the night with a sweet, chaste kiss), we'd been casually kicking it. I got to hear all about his incoming crop of freshman hell-raisers, and he got to give me sage advice about the “formative years.” Everything was peachy-keen.

In fact, there was a lot to like about Nate Dempsey. He was only twenty-three (“completely respectable,” in Carson's estimate), he was soft-spoken and sarcastic, and we could talk easily about books and music. On our third date, he'd introduced me to Nirvana, and I hadn't been able to take In Utero off shuffle since that day. He was as kind and considerate as step-brother Landon was cagey and erratic.

And last night, we'd finally had The Conversation. Nate had walked me up to my dorm room doors and taken off his glasses, so I could catch streaks of moonlight bouncing around his blue eyes.

“I had a really nice time tonight,” he'd murmured, bending low. I'd smiled and presented my face for our usual good-night kiss, with minimal tongue action. I’d thought we'd both been in the business of taking things slow. But then, he'd leaned just the slightest bit further, breaking some invisible barrier we'd spent the past two weeks ignoring. I'd felt something thick and hard and insistent through his jeans.

“I would really like to come up,” Mr. Dempsey had whispered, so close to my ear that his stubble scraped my cheek. His hands, meanwhile, had found purchase on my bare arms. He'd begun stroking me, in the slow, soothing way one strokes a pet. I'd waited to feel the pull. But it hadn't come.

“Lotte's cramming for her first Econ test tonight,” I'd said, instead of something sexy and invitational. I don't know why I made the decision so fast, nor why I was so...un-turned on. Dempsey was cute, he was smart, he was older. Easily the best guy who'd ever wanted to date me, in any city, at any school. I'd kicked myself as he walked off towards his bus stop. Luckily, he hadn't seemed too disappointed when I ended the evening with a few vague bumps against his nether regions and a soft, long make-out sesh. At the end, he'd wiggled his eyebrows in a way that telegraphed: next time, you're not getting out of it.

Now, I regarded my mother from the dorm window. She meandered in the direction of the parking lot, seeming to take her sweet time. It occurred to me that as Anya had never attended college, maybe the place itself contained mystery and excitement for her. Maybe that was why she visiting so often. Or maybe she was finally trying to repair our fraught relationship, and play the part of the mother who'd always been around to give a damn. But something else told me that she'd been lying before, by the curtains. Maybe her and the Pastor's honeymoon phase had reached its inevitable conclusion.

The idea of a 'honeymoon phase' prompted a freaky flash of an image in my mind's eye—there was me and Mr. Dempsey as doddering old folks, sharing the newspaper over a breakfast table. I tried to imagine kicking it with the AV teacher for any kind of long haul. Didn't they say half the world found their soul mates in college? Was this all how love worked, perhaps? A kind-enough guy met a kind-enough woman and they began a good-enough life together?

“You're not going to pass any test if you keep staring off into space like that,” Lotte said, rattling her water glass to secure my attention. I listened to the cubes clinking against the glass, and thought about the man who hadn't kissed me two nights ago.

It had been so many days since I'd seen my step-brother.

There'd been a moment.

At the wedding reception, as the bride and groom slurped spiced shrimp from the tines of one another's forks. Landon had clinked his own utensil against his girlfriend's wineglass, because he himself was drinking Johnnie Walker in a low tumbler. Everyone at the table had stopped their chewing and guffawing, like it was some insane surprise that the Best Man would make a speech.

His face was red from the whiskey, and the first two buttons of his dress shirt had popped open. He swayed when he stood. But the words that tumbled out of his mouth surprised me in their eloquence.

“I think we all know love is rare,” Landon started. “It's a scary thing, to even ask someone you like those first questions: do you want to see me? Do you want to see me for a few more hours? Do you want to put your mouth on my mouth? Do you want to wake up next to me?” The small crowd tittered, but I felt my cheeks start glowing red again. I suddenly couldn't look at him. I looked at my napkin, instead.

“Pop, I remember how you called me at football camp—just a few short weeks ago—to sing Anya's praises, 'I've found the one son!' you told me.” Landon had started gesturing with his tumbler. Its contents seemed perilously close to sloshing over the sides. I watched Zora's grin tighten. “And here's the thing—it's magic, isn't it? There is an element of the divine to this thing called love, and it's that urgency, that total inability to explain yourself, that makes it right.”

Anya was crying gently into her napkin, and Carson, beside me, was rolling her eyes. I should have figured she wouldn't buy into any of this lovey-dovey hooey. My sis was too cool.

“Sometimes, it's this simple: you meet a girl, and you know. It's right. And you think to yourself: hey. We fit, me and her. There's a feeling, a magical, freaky feeling that you share before you even exchange names.” I knew his eyes were on me before I looked up. Shockingly, awfully, it was then that Mr. Dempsey chose to slide his palm across my back. His gesture felt somehow protective.

People were still applauding when our eyes finally connected. Landon looked like he was trying to smile for a second, but couldn't muster.

Chapter Seventeen

Ash

September 13^th

One lazy Friday, after a botched orgo pop quiz, I rode out to visit Anya. I figured she'd been putting in more than enough time at the dorm.

I knew something was wrong before my cab-driver had given me the change. Though I didn't subscribe to a lot of the superstitious astrology BS that, say, Carson liked to blab about, I was shocked when conviction tiptoed over my skin, leaving gooseflesh in its wake. I knew something was wrong, I just knew it. At that point, my imagination shut down. I shut out the specific possibilities, and felt my body go on autopilot as I made my way up to the house.

The driver was still trying to give me my change when I found my feet had carried me to the open doorway of Anya's condo. The house was silent. I couldn't even hear the dull murmur of the TV, or the rasping of the wall clock. Walking slowly into the kitchen, I found my first explanation—the kitchen clock had been prodded off the wall with some blunt instrument, and lay in punctured, shiny ruins on the floor. Broken glass covered the linoleum, so it almost looked like rushing water. My breath caught in my chest.

“Mom?” I asked the silent house. Then I made my body rigid, just in case her reply was small and faint. No dice. I left the kitchen and turned down our long hallway, which seemed unbearably long today. “Mom?” I repeated. My footsteps fell lightly on the carpet. In retrospect, it might've occurred to me that we'd been robbed, that the first sensible thing to do might be “call the police”—but I didn't hear reason. I was just about to call her name again when the house made its first gesture toward me. When I reached the bathroom door, I heard the unmistakable sound of water running from a slow tap.