He’s been interpreting this all wrong.

I am stupid.

I am smart, sure, but oh boy, in the romance department, I am a moron.

“Damian . . .” I don’t know how to back out of this.

He lets go of my hand to reach down to unzip his backpack. “I brought you something.”

He pulls out a rose made of paper.

It’s made of red paper, this time. There are words on this one, too, an entire poem I can only read part of:

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show

That the dear She might take some pleasure of my pain

Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know

“It was you,” I breathe.

“Guilty,” he says.

“Last year, too. Valentine’s Day. It was you.”

“I found a pattern for a paper daisy in one of my mom’s old magazines,” he says. “And I thought of you. I’m glad you figured it out. I’ve wanted to tell you for such a long time.”

“Why didn’t you just write your name on it?” I ask, stricken.

“Too chicken, I guess. It was more romantic that way, right? And then you had a boyfriend, and you seemed happy with him, so I didn’t want to—” He puts his hand over mine again. “But then you broke up with your boyfriend, and you and I started to talk more, and I thought . . . Lex?”

I’ve closed my eyes.

Steven didn’t give me the flowers. He didn’t write those words to me.

The disappointment of this revelation is like a knife in my chest—a hard pain, sharp and penetrating.

This is our place, too. This bookstore. Where Steven asked me.

Right over there.

Where I said yes, and part of the reason I said yes was the paper flower.

It’s not fair, I think. On top of everything else that gets taken away.

I want Steven to be the one who made me that flower.

“Lex?” Damian tries to console me for all the wrong reasons. “Hey. It’s okay that you didn’t figure it out earlier. You figured it out now. We can make up for lost time, right?”

I open my eyes just as he’s leaning across the table to touch my cheek. I flinch and pull away, my hand sliding out from under his. “No.”

His smile fades.

“I’m sorry,” I gasp. “This isn’t . . . I didn’t mean to lead you on. . . . I didn’t know.”

He sits back. “You didn’t know I made the flowers.”

I shake my head, horrified at my own stupidity.

“But then why have you been . . . talking to me? You’ve been acting interested. You were acting like you liked me.”

This is a train wreck. “Damian, I do like you,” I begin. “But I don’t feel like—it’s not a romantic kind of thing. That’s not what this is about for me.”

His gray eyes are like cool stone now. Unreachable.

“You were buttering me up,” he says in a low voice. “You were using me.”

“No.”

“Did you even read The Metamorphosis? Or was all of this some kind of bribe? So you could prep for MIT?”

“Yes! I mean, no, it wasn’t a bribe. I did read the book. I liked it. I swear.”

“What is this, then? What do you want?”

He’s talking so loud that people are starting to glance over.

“Nothing,” I say quietly. “I thought you seemed lonely, is all. I thought you could use a friend.”

Wrong answer.

Damian draws himself up. “Oh. How altruistic of you, Lex. Since you’re such a friendly girl yourself.”

“Hey,” I object. “Let’s not forget that you had ulterior motives here, too. You were using the book thing to seduce me, right? You weren’t just helping me out of the goodness of your heart.”

He snorts. “Seduce is a strong word. And I was only doing it because I thought that’s what you were doing. I thought you liked me,” he accuses, spitting out the t on thought. “I really thought you liked me.” For a moment his expression is tragic, like he might cry. Then he hardens himself. “I was wrong.”

He’s so upset that his hands shake as he gathers up his books.

“Damian, please. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t,” he says sharply. “I don’t need your pity. You don’t get to use me as your charity case because you feel bad that your brother died. I’m fine.”

Then he’s gone. The people around me stare for a minute and then go back to their previous conversations. I swallow.

I have to live with the fact that, in spite of my good intentions, I have just made everything worse.

30 March

The last time I saw my brother—in real life, I mean—it was the morning of December 20. The morning of the day he died. It started like any other morning. Mom cooked breakfast. We all sat around the table together, Mom with her cup of coffee and her toast, looking through a nursing scrubs catalog and me daydreaming about MIT, which I had just sent in my application for, and Ty doing what he always did at breakfast time: eating enough food to sustain a small African village.

I probably made some comment about it, the way he always ate like he was never going to get another meal.

He probably made his usual comment that he was a growing boy.

I don’t remember that part. What I do remember is that sometime during that meal, Ty cleared his throat and said, “I was thinking about maybe getting my own car.”