Every night on the phone, we’d read each other the funny parts from our books, or talk about the TV shows we’d watched as kids, or what we would do if we were really there in each other’s beds, except mostly joking. We said absurd things, like how I’d suck the back of his knee, or he’d run his toes through my hair, and pretended they sounded amazing.

The warm weather was gone by Friday, and that evening was foggy and cold. I had to abandon the cute dress I was going to wear in favor of jeans and my green parka. When Lane picked me up, he was wearing this black fleece jacket zipped up to his chin, and I joked that he looked like a Dracula.

“A Dracula?” he asked. “Like, one of the many Draculas?”

“Shut up.”

“I vont to suck your . . . type A blood. The other Dracula, over there, he is interested in type B,” Lane went on, in this ridiculous Count Chocula voice.

“Oh my God, I’m gonna kill you!” I said, laughing.

We set off into the woods. I was in charge of navigating us down to Whitley, and at one point Lane looked around, confused.

“I remembered it being that way,” he said, pointing.

We’d veered a little farther west than I’d thought and were almost at the place where I usually met Michael. He was pointing even more west, which wasn’t right.

“It’s this way,” I said, and explained where we were.

“So, you just picked a random point in the woods to meet some strange dude?”

“I didn’t pick it,” I said, and I explained about how Phillip had run the black market before Nick. I inherited it, and anyway, he and Michael were like half cousins or something.

We were almost there, and I took out my bag of cough drops and passed one to Lane.

“Do these actually work?” he asked.

“Yes, and you’re cured now,” I teased. “You’re welcome.”

“How can I ever thank you?”

Lane got this mischievous grin on his face and pulled me toward him for a kiss that tasted like cherry medicine. And then his hands were in my hair, and his tongue was against mine, and I accidentally swallowed my cough drop.

It wasn’t much farther into town, and when we got there, the main street looked so festive with lights in the trees and all the shop windows decorated for fall. The street was blocked off to traffic, and crowded with booths, and a jazz band of old dudes was playing in the old gazebo.

There were rides, too, a miniature Ferris wheel, and a giant slide, and a chair swing. It reminded me of the county fair, and how I used to go with my mom and sister, enviously watching as other girls my age roamed around in friend groups.

“Reminds me of my school carnival,” Lane said with a lopsided grin.

“Fancy school,” I teased.

He shrugged.

“I never went to the thing, anyway. They always had teachers in the dunking booth.”

I didn’t know what he meant at first, but then I remembered how he’d said his dad taught at his school.

“Then we have to make up for all the carnivals you missed,” I said, dragging him toward the line for ride tickets.

Everything was pretty expensive, so we just got tickets for the swing ride.

“You have to try and grab my hand while we’re in the air,” I said. “That’s the rule.”

“What do I win if I do?” Lane asked.

“A wish,” I promised.

It was exhilarating going on the ride and lifting into the air, my feet dangling beneath me. You could see a lot from up there, the road that led to Latham, the bell tower through the trees, and the neat yards of the houses in town. It was strange seeing both worlds at once: mine, and the real one.

The swings were pretty far apart, but Lane still tried, twisting around in his seat and looking back at me with his hand outstretched. I leaned forward, too, as far as I could. But we could never quite reach.

“Guess I didn’t get my wish,” Lane teased as we staggered off the ride.

“Don’t worry, it wasn’t a very big wish,” I assured him. “It was like a medium soda of a wish.”

“Well, now you’ve ruined it, and I know I’m missing out on a medium soda.”

“Or possibly half a plain funnel cake,” I said.

“Or possibly half a plain funnel cake,” he repeated in mock despair.

Lane held my hand as we wandered through the booths, and then he bought us apple ciders. They were too hot to drink, so we sat on the hay bales outside the pumpkin patch, waiting for them to cool off.

It felt strange being in town, but it always did. I hadn’t lived in this world for so long that it was weird to see that people were still drinking green juice and taking out their phones whenever they had to stand in line.

“This is so nice,” I said, and then I sipped the cider and made a face. “Ow. Hot.”

“Still?”

“Why don’t you try it and find out?”

“I’m not falling for that one,” Lane said, laughing.

Nearby, little kids ran through the pumpkin patch, hyper from sugar and covered in face paint. I leaned my head against Lane’s shoulder, thinking about my sister, who was twelve. Too old to be enthusiastic about this stuff, but still young enough to dress up and get free candy.

“What was your worst Halloween costume?” Lane asked me.

“I was Hermione Granger, like, five years in a row,” I said. “By the time that was over, I’d gone through my embarrassing years.”

“I was a gorilla once,” he told me.

“You were not!” I laughed.

“I was,” he insisted. “I think I was five. I saw the costume in one of those Halloween Castles, you know, those stores that pop up for a few months and then disappear?”

I nodded.

“Anyway. That was it. Gorilla. So my mom took me trick-or-treating, and she made me go really early, just to the houses on our block. And that year it was, like, eighty degrees out.” He glanced over at me with this lopsided grin. “Which means it was at least a hundred degrees in that thick, hairy gorilla suit. The mask was off by the third house, and then the feet, and then the gloves. And after ten minutes I was standing there covered in sweat and crying in this hairy black jumpsuit, wanting to go home.”

We both laughed. I tried to picture five-year-old Lane in a hairy gorilla suit, and it was surprisingly easy. I’d known him when we were thirteen, after all.

“I want to see a picture,” I insisted.

“Fine, then I want to see you in that Hogwarts uniform.” He raised his eyebrows.

“Oh my God, I was ten!”

“Hey, you were pretty cute at thirteen,” he teased.

It wasn’t true, though. I’d been skinny and frizzy-haired at thirteen, with weird-shaped boobs, like cones. But it was still nice of him to say.

Our ciders had cooled down enough, so we sipped them, watching the sunset and listening to the terrible music that drifted from the bandstand.

“I bet they sell kettle corn,” I said.

“I bet you’re right,” Lane said.

“I’ll go get us some.”

Lane asked if I wanted him to come with me, but I shook my head. I didn’t want it to seem like I was forcing him to buy me kettle corn, too.

“I’ll be right back,” I promised.

And then I did something I hadn’t had the pleasure of doing in a long time. I disappeared into the crowd. I felt so free, even with the med sensor around my wrist, like I wasn’t making the best of Latham, but was actually doing something seventeen-year-olds did, for real.

I was on a date with a cute boy, and he’d bought me apple cider and told me an embarrassing story about when he was five, and afterward, maybe we’d make a detour in the woods so I could show off my seriously uncomfortable blue lace bra, and then we’d smooth down our hair and he’d walk me to my front porch and kiss me good night.

I found the kettle-corn lady and bought a bag. I couldn’t resist eating some on the way back. The kernels scratched at my throat, and I ducked into a little alleyway between two shops, trying not to cough on anyone.

I was just catching my breath when a side door opened and these three preppy-looking bros in ball caps and boat shoes staggered outside. It was the back door to a bar, I guessed, since it was dark inside, and I could hear a sports game playing on some television.