I needed to wake Dash. And believe that this hadn’t all been a dream.

I looked down at the red notebook, sit ing on Dash’s lap. He must have woken up in the night while I was asleep and writ en in it. The pen was still in his hand and the notebook was open to a new page filled with his scrawl.

He’d writ en out the word and meaning for anticipate, next to which, in big block let ers, he’d writ en: DERIVATIVE: ANTICIPATOR.

Below that, he’d drawn two gures who looked like action heroes in a cartoon. The sketch pictured two caped crusader teens, a fedora-wearing boy and a girl with black glasses and wearing majoret e boots, passing a red notebook between them. The Anticipators, he’d labeled the drawing.

I smiled, and kept the smile on my face as I prepared to wake him. I wanted the rst thing he saw when he opened his eyes to be the welcoming face of someone who liked him so much, someone who on this new morning, in this new year, was going to do her best to cherish this new person, whose name she finally knew.

I nudged his arm.

I said:

“Wake up, Dash.”