He laughs.

“But they learned it’s who I am, and they accepted it. And their support gave me some confidence. And then, that summer, you taught me how to accept it for myself. To not worry about what other people said. And then . . . things weren’t bad at all.”

“I did?”

“Yeah, you. So I’m telling you this now. I will never forget that mechanical bird you made. The one that only sang when you opened its cage door?”

“You remember that?” He’s mystified.

“Or the fifty-step Rube Goldberg machine that sharpened a pencil? Or that insane train of dominoes that took you two weeks to set up, but was over in a minute? It was incredible. Just because something isn’t practical doesn’t mean it’s not worth creating. Sometimes beauty and real-life magic are enough.”

I turn to face him, cross-legged. “It’s like my Marie Antoinette dress. It’s not practical, but . . . for that one moment, arriving at a dance in a beautiful, elaborate dress that no one else is wearing and that everyone will remember? I want that.”

Cricket stares across the city lights toward the bay. “You will. You’ll have it.”

“Not without your help.” I want to give him a friendly shove, but I settle for a verbal jab. “So are you gonna get started on my panniers tomorrow or what?”

“I already started them.” He meets my eyes again. “I stayed in tonight, too. I didn’t just hand out candy.”

I’m touched. “Cricket Bell. You are the nicest guy I know.”

“Yeah.” He snorts. “The nice guy.”

“What?”

“That was what my one-and-only girlfriend said when she broke up with me.”

“Oh.” I’m taken aback. The Girlfriend, at last. “That’s . . . a really, really stupid reason.”

Cricket scooches forward, and his knees almost bump mine. Almost. “It’s not uncommon. Nice guys finish last and all.”

There’s a dig at Max amid his self-deprecation, but I ignore it. “Who was she?”

“One of Calliope’s friends. Last year.”

“A figure skater?”

“My social scene doesn’t extend much further.”

The news makes me unhappy. Skaters are gorgeous. And talented. And, like, athletically gifted. I stand, my heart pounding in my ears. “I need to get home.”

He looks at his wrist, but he’s not wearing his watch. “Yeah, I guess it’s really late. Or really early.”

We descend the eighty stairs to our street corner before Cricket unexpectedly halts. “Oh, no. You wanted to talk about Max. Do you—”

“I think we were supposed to talk tonight,” I interrupt him with a glance toward the moon. She’s a waxing gibbous, almost full. “And I thought it was supposed to be about Max, but I was wrong. We needed to talk about you.” I point at my feet.

I’m standing over the word BELL.

It’s imprinted on the grate for Pacific Bell, the phone company. They’re everywhere, on every street. “See?” I say.

“Every time I see Dolores Street, I think of you.” His words rush out. “Dolores Park. Dolores Mission. You’re everywhere in this neighborhood, you are this neighborhood.”

I close my eyes. He shouldn’t say things like that, but I don’t want him to stop. It’s become impossible to deny he means something to me. I don’t have the courage to name it. Not yet. But it’s there. I open my eyes, and . . . he’s gone.

He’s walking swiftly up the stairs to his home.

Another vanished spirit on Halloween.

Chapter twenty-three

I like to try new things. Like when I went vegan my freshman year. It only lasted three days, because I missed cheddar, but I tried it. And I’m constantly trying on hats in stores. They’re the one item I can’t make work for me, but I keep trying, because I’m positive that someday I’ll find the right one. Maybe it’ll be a vintage cloche dripping with faux peonies, or maybe it’ll be a Stetson laced with a red bandanna.

I’ll find it. I just have to keep trying them on.

So it annoys me when Lindsey suggests I’m not trying hard enough to find something to curl my hair. My fake hair. She’s balancing chemistry equations while I borrow her parents’ handheld steamer to bend my white hair into the appropriately sized curls. Later, I’ll spray-glue them to my Marie Antoinette wig. But first I need to curl the stupid curls.

“Don’t you have anything bigger? Or smaller?” I gesture to the cylindrical shapes—pens, markers, glassware, even a monocular spy scope—spread before me. None of them is the right size.

She flips a textbook page. “Got me. It’s your wig. Try harder.”

I search her room, but I know I won’t find anything. Her bedroom is so well ordered that I would have already seen it if she had it. Lindsey’s walls are painted classic Nancy Drew–spine yellow. Her complete collection of the novels is lined up in neat rows across the top shelves of her bookcase and below them, alphabetical by author, are titles like History’s Greatest Spies, Detecting for Dummies, and The Tao of Crime Fighting. Beside her bed are meticulously organized magazine holders with four years’ worth of back issues of Eye Spy Intelligence Magazine and a dozen Spy Gear catalogs tabbed with sticky notes marking wishlist items.

But her room is devoid of any further cylindrical objects.

“And in the closest race of the night, New York senator Joseph Wasserstein is still fighting to hold on to his seat,” the toupee-d newsman says. It’s Election Day, and since the Lims don’t get cable, every channel is filled with boring coverage. The only reason the television is on is to drown out the sound of Mrs. Lim blasting Neil Diamond. He’s this superold pop singer who wears sequined shirts. Even the sparkles aren’t enough to sway me, though I’d never tell her that. When she’s not cooking killer Korean barbecue at the restaurant, she blogs for his secondlargest fansite.

I point at the newsman. “I bet that guy could help me. Does he seriously think that rug on his head looks real?” It switches to a clip of Senator Wasserstein and his family waiting for the final tallies. His wife has that perfectly coiffed hair and that toothy political smile, but his teenage son looks uncomfortable and out of place. He’s actually kinda cute. I say so, and Lindsey looks up at the screen. “God. You are so predictable.”