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Darius put his hands on the sill in answer and boosted himself up.

I moved anything he might land on out of the way in a hurry and he didn’t take anything out with him when he fell in. “Where’d you park?” I asked in a whisper.

“Down the street.”

“Not in front?” Because if my mom came home to a boy’s car outside—he shook his head. “Good.”

By then he’d angled himself up to sitting, a long tangle of limbs, his face sharply framed by the light of my desk lamp, now sitting on the floor. “Now can you tell me?”

The weight of everything I knew pressed on my tongue, but I shook my head, which made it hurt even more.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not my secret.”

His eyes searched my face, looking for some sign I was lying. “Are you ever going to be able to tell me?”

“Not unless they say it’s OK.”

He started back toward the window, and I moved to block his path, placing my hands on both his shoulders to stop him.

“I want to. Please believe me,” I whispered, embarrassed by how earnest I sounded but then it was too late. “I trust you. But until they say I can tell anyone else, I can’t, not and still be a good friend.”

“I sort of thought friends didn’t lie to one another?”

“That was a mistake. I’m sorry. But I had to be there tonight.”

His head tilted. “Did you find it? Whatever you were searching for?”

“No.” I rocked back, taking my hands off of him before it became weird. Probably too late. “And I don’t know if it’s because it wasn’t there—or if I’m just not good at all this yet. Which is why I still need your help tomorrow. Please.”

He considered this for a long moment. “All right.”

“Good.”

And then we were alone in my bedroom in the mostly dark, and maybe I was insane but there was more than electricity in the air.

Then a green firefly blew in toward Darius’s phone.

U coming back?

Amy, gorgeous Amy. Of course.

I scooted back even further and shook my head at myself, my life, anything me-related. “You might need to get that,” I said at the same second his phone buzzed.

Darius glanced at his phone, then looked at me. “You see that?”

“Yeah.”

He inhaled like he was going to tell me something—and then kept it to himself, whatever it was and stood. “Okay. Tomorrow,” he said instead, business-like.

“If my mom asks, we’re studying for history class, okay?”

Darius nodded and put one leg through the window, sending Razor into fits again. I listened for any sounds of Allie waking. When I didn’t hear any I relaxed—until I heard something give in our neighbor’s yard, the crack of a fence board—and saw-felt-feared a red dog-sized charge racing toward Darius in the dark.

“Razor, no!” I shouted. In that moment, I saw Darius not as the image of him that light bounced off of, but the faint traces of his existence, the electromagnetism of his life, heart-pumping, blood surging, neurons firing, as Razor raced rabidly for him.

I threw myself out of the window at the dog and reached him just as he reached Darius. I didn’t know what I was going to do, only that I had to do something and –