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My guess is that the Lily Pad will be empty the morning The Trojan Women opens. The idea is a quick in-and-out: a surgical strike for things I need. Fresh clothes. A new book. A toothbrush. I’ve been brushing my teeth with my finger this whole time, and my teeth are furry and unhappy, crying out for bristles and mint. I bring a tote bag, and when I get there (mercifully the premises are vacant), I pack everything as quickly as I can and get ready to go.

But the plants are howling for a drink. Who’s been taking care of them? Just a quick splash of water. And that’s when I notice that on the counter, there’s a lumpy cake, just begging to be eaten.

No sooner have I grabbed a fork and moved it into the cake, do I hear, “Well, well, well.”

Touchstone descends the spiral staircase, his hair mussed from sleep. With my fork in the cake, I feel caught, like I’ve fallen into the trap of a pitcher plant.

“The prodigal son returns,” he says.

“What are you doing here?” I say. “And what does prodigal even mean?”

“I don’t know about prodigal , but I’m here because I overslept,” says Touch. “We’ll have to ask Celia. Don’t worry; she’s not here.”

Touchstone grabs a fork and joins me in the cake, assures me his stomach will be fine. We eat in silence, standing by the counter, carving off bites. The pitcher-plant feeling starts to ebb, and it feels almost comfortable, to be eating this way with Touchstone. We always bonded over sugar: sour straws that burned a hole through our tongues, cookies that left the corners of our mouths sandy with crumbs.

“This cake is wet,” says Touchstone finally.

“‘Wet Cake’ could be the title of my next poem,” I say.

“I’d read it,” says Touch. He moves his fork to a drier portion of the cake. “So are you coming back ever, or are you spending the rest of the summer shacked up with the Fightin’ Flower Child?”

“I thought you liked Jess.” At Lovers’ Lagoon, Jess had shown Touchstone the basics of how to fight: how to stay light and steady on his feet, how to throw a quick jab. Touchstone and Jess had both laughed their way through it, giggling giddily as Touchstone made fists.

“I do like Jess ,” says Touchstone. “I also like you.”

I snort.

“Celia misses you,” says Touch.

“Yeah, well, maybe she should have said that instead of just marooning us at the lagoon.”

“We got home okay.”

“It was the principle of the thing,” I say.

“ I miss you, too,” says Touch. “You realize you’ve ditched both of us, right?”

The cake hardens in my mouth like cement.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, brushing me off.

“No—Touchstone. I mean it. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks,” he says. “I know you’re sorry.”

“Besides,” I say, trying to lighten the mood, “I thought you’d be happy I was gone. Just you and Celia out here, all by yourselves. Isn’t that, like, your wildest dream?”

Touchstone blushes deeply, and I feel guilty, naming the thing that neither of them likes to name, those old feelings that Touchstone carries around with him like a sack of stones.

“She’s busy with Oliver Teller,” he says, and his voice grows disdainful. “They went on a date.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” says Touch.

“Does she like him?”

“I mean, he’s Oliver Teller,” says Touchstone. “Aren’t you obligated to like him?”

“Sorry, dude,” I say. “That’s a tough one.”

“C’est la vie,” says Touchstone, but I can see the hurt in him, how it drags him down like an anchor.

“You know what I wish?” says Touch. “I wish the spring were real.”

“Same,” I say, and in the silence, I think not of Celia or Oliver Teller or even Jess but my father, far away on the East Coast, who was now nothing more than a series of missed calls on my phone. If I drank from the spring, maybe I’d forget all about him.

Touchstone and I eat for another minute—we’ve done considerable damage to the cake—and then I shoulder my tote bag and leave for what seems like a better place, the exact same way my dad did.