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Shane had no idea what to do with himself. After chugging her nasty purplish sugar milk, Laney had led him down the hall and pushed open a crooked door hanging slightly off its hinges. There was nothing personal inside, just a mattress on the floor and an old beat-up dresser.

There were some clothes folded up in the drawers – underwear, t-shirts, sweatpants, some jeans. Socks. He practically drooled at the pleasure of pulling on fresh, clean, thick socks. His feet hadn’t felt warm since July.

He sat down awkwardly on the mattress, half-expecting it to smell like cigarettes. But it just smelled like laundry detergent. Clean .

He laid down, his hands behind his head, and stared at the popcorn ceiling. There was some water damage in the corner, and the carpet was threadbare. But this was probably the cleanest room he’d been in for over a year. Cody’s had never been the picture of cleanliness (except the backs of the toilets) and geese weren’t the best roommates. This place was worn out but tidy and had been recently vacuumed. He wondered if Laney did it or Dustin did.

Half an hour later, Laney knocked on the door while simultaneously pushing it open.

“I gotta get to school.”

“What grade you in?” he asked.

“Ninth.”

“The worst.”

“It’s fine,” she said, but he could tell she was lying. “I’ll be back around 3:30. Dustin stays home. He’ll keep to himself, but if you want company just knock. He won’t mind.”

“Which one’s his room?”

She reached out her hand, and without thinking he took it. She heaved him up, though he used most of his own strength since she couldn’t have been more than one hundred pounds and Lord knew she didn’t need to break a bone as well as her face, today. He expected her to drop his hand, but she didn’t. And despite the nuclear alarm bells going off in his head, he didn’t either.

She pointed to the closed door to the left of the bathroom. “Ma’s,” she said. She knocked quietly on the other door and paused, backing away when there was no response. “That’s Dustin’s.”

She led him down the hall and back down the split entry into the basement. The cheap, yellowing linoleum was curling in the corners and at some of the seams, but it was as clean as the rest of the house, kind of shiny, like it had been freshly mopped. For a ten- and fourteen-year-old, they were strangely domestic. They passed through a set of French doors leaning against the wall – unhung – and down a narrow hallway with wood paneling.

“Mine,” she said, nodding her head at the brown wooden door.

She reached for the doorknob, but he circled her wrist with his free hand and shook his head.

Why? He felt her ask.

He hesitated, aware that there was something strange unfolding between them, some kind of unusual connection that was enabling him to hear her, somehow. Feel her. Like they were both hooked up to cables attached to the same car battery and it was giving off little electric warning shocks.

Because, he finally thought back, testing it out.

Her lips parted, and he could feel her shallow breath through his t-shirt, on his sternum, right where she’d kissed him.

Okay, she seemed to say. And then she dropped her hand and stepped away.

“I really gotta get to school. I’m gonna be late,” she said cheerily. Out loud. And then she sauntered back down the hall where he heard her grunt while sliding on her boots, and the rustle of her putting on her coat, followed by the thump of the front door closing.

He stood on the other side of that doorway for five whole minutes before he finally willed himself to go back upstairs.