“But, anyway,” she goes on, shifting slightly on the couch, “the first time I met Lucas, I was a freshman in college, as you know, and I was at a friend’s house. Lucas was there, but I had never met him before. He was the only person I didn’t know out of like maybe six or seven of us sitting in the living room that night.”

She stops and looks at me. “Have I ever told you this story?”

I start to shake my head. “Uh-uh, I don’t think so.”

“Okay,” she goes on without missing a beat. “Anyway, Andie, one of my friends, was just about to walk into the room when Lucas all of a sudden whispers ‘sleep.’ And almost by instinct, my head goes down and I close my eyes.”

All my attention darts to Hannah.

“No,” I say. “There can’t possibly be another soul in this world that knows the sleep game!”

“Well, he did,” she says.

“You’re kidding?” I think my jaw is stuck open.

“I know, right?” She laughs. “Everyone else just looked at us like we were crazy afterward. It’s such a stupid, simple game. But he knew it.”

She grabs another handful of popcorn. “I swear I fell in love with him right there.” I watch her shake a finger at me. “There’s always that moment when you just know you love someone.”

Hannah’s attention goes back to the screen then, while my mind travels back to Andrew and to a little dirt baseball field in the pouring rain. I had loved him before that day — even though I hadn’t realized it. But in that moment, in the pouring rain, I knew there was no turning back.

A few minutes pass before the old memory eventually fades and my mind gets stuck on Lucas again. “I still can’t believe he knew the sleep game.”

It looks as if Hannah just barely gets her eyes to leave Leo and to venture back to mine.

“How?” I ask. “And how have you never told me that?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just always forget. Evidently, he made it up too. I think one day he did it to get his little cousins to stop bothering him or something and then he found out it could work as an easy prank, and then, I guess it just kind of stuck.”

“All this time, and I never knew.” I think about it for another second and then cock my head to the side. “Hannah, he’s like one of us.”

“I know!” she squeals. “And we’re such a rare, strange breed.”

“Yeah,” I say, still chewing my mouthful of popcorn. “I know.”

“God,” Hannah says, shaking her head. “We were a mess when we were kids.”

“That. We. Were,” I agree, drawing out every word for emphasis.

Hannah’s quiet then, and so am I. Leo has returned to the screen, and instinctively, our eyes are glued to him again. But it’s not long before Hannah breaks the silence.

“Hey, you remember when we tied James to that chair and left him under that old tree that one time?”

I almost spew my popcorn everywhere.

“He said he was Houdini.” The little details come flooding back to me — as if it all happened just yesterday. “He said he could get out of anything.”

“And he did get out of it,” Hannah says, dramatically nodding her head.

“Yeah, like twelve hours later!” I swallow and start to laugh. “Do you remember that night? James came walking into Grandma’s house right before dinner, and he was with Grandpa.”

“Yeah, and he looked so terrified.”

“Well, we had completely forgotten about him. It was dark, and he was only like seven. Wouldn’t you have been terrified?”

Hannah lowers her eyes, and her shoulders rock forward. It looks as if she’s trying not to laugh. “You know, Grandpa never said anything about it.”

I think back to it for a second.

“You know what? He didn’t,” I remember. “But I do think he made some kind of deal with James though because you and I both know that James didn’t get out of that chair alone.”

“Hell, no, he didn’t get out of it alone. I tied the knots! But what do you think the deal was?” she asks.

“I don’t know, maybe like Grandpa would go along with James’s story of him getting himself out of the chair if James wouldn’t tell Grandma what had happened.”

Hannah’s hand flies to her mouth. “You know, that makes sense because even though James bragged about getting himself free later, neither he nor Grandpa ever said a word about it at dinner.”

She pauses before she continues. “And plus, I guess Grandpa knew what he was doing. Remember when Grandma found out that James was our electric-fence tester?”

“Oh my gosh!” My hand instantly covers my heart. “I thought her eyes were going to pop right out of her head.”

“I know! All I remember is that she was holding that big ball of bread dough. Remember?”

I nod my head in confirmation.

“I know she thought about chucking it right at us.” Hannah grabs another handful of popcorn and stuffs it into her mouth. “But it’s not like we forced James to do it.”

I almost choke on a kernel.

“Hannah, you said if he didn’t do it, you’d tell everyone in the fifth grade that he used to wet his bed.”

Hannah’s eyes snap shut, and her narrow shoulders simultaneously jerk forward. “Oh, yeah.”

I throw a piece of popcorn at her.

“Poor James,” she adds, fishing the popcorn out of her hair.

I stare at her in amusement as she struggles to free the kernel from her long strands before my eyes slowly travel back to Leo on the screen. “Poor James,” I agree.

“Good thing you were nice to him,” Hannah says. I feel several popped kernels hit my head. “Or who knows how he would have turned out.”

I shield myself from the flying corn. “Yeah, I totally claim his normalness.”

We both look at each other then and laugh until our stomachs hurt because I think we both know that, based on our wild childhood, there’s not a good reason in this world as to why any one of us turned out fairly normal.

“So, this is your place? It looks a lot like mine — just with different stuff.”

Jorgen laughs. “Imagine that.”

“I like it, though,” I say, still looking around.

None of the furniture matches, but somehow it all fits together okay. And there’s nothing on the walls really, except for a big, framed photo of the new Busch Stadium in the living room. Even it fits somehow.

“It’s got this inspiring, bachelor pad kind of feel.”

“Inspiring?” he asks.

My eyes continue to wander around the room, until they eventually catch on a tall lamp in the corner.

“Target?” I ask, gesturing toward the lamp.

He follows my stare to the corner.

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

I laugh to myself.

“I must be psychic.”

He looks at me with two suspicious eyes.

“Or I have the same one in my bedroom,” I confess.

He chuckles and hands me an envelope.

“You know, you could have just thrown this away. I’m pretty sure I’m not the millionth customer and the brand new owner of a…” I stop and read the front of the envelope. “A 2014 Lexus IS 350 Sport.”

“Well, your name is on the envelope, and stealing someone’s mail IS a federal offense these days. Plus, then I wouldn’t have had a good excuse to get you over here to hang out with me.”

I’m trying not to smile as I fall into the couch next to him. But when I look up, his eyes are already on me, and I just can’t help it.

“You know,” I say and then stop.

He tilts his head a little to the side.

“You have really pretty eyes. They’re like the brightest blue I’ve ever seen in someone’s eyes, but they’re also kind of familiar in a strange kind of way.”

He lowers his head. “Thanks, I guess.”

I think I notice a little, bashful smile hanging on his lips.

“Does your sister have the same eyes?”

He sends me a questioning look.

“I don’t know,” I say in response to his look, “sometimes siblings share the same features — to where it’s almost eerie, you know?”

“Eerie?”