AFTER DINNER, I drove over to Toby’s house.
“Hey,” he said, ushering me into his bedroom. He was wearing glasses and pajama pants, and it reminded me of when we were little, the two of us sneaking around the house at night when we were supposed to be asleep.
He passed me an old N64 controller, the see-through one we used to fight over, and put in a game without asking. It was some retro Mario I’d given him for an elementary-school birthday back when it was the cool new thing, and we sat there and played it, like we had a hundred times, secret levels and all, except this time felt different.
“Do you want to see the article?” Toby finally asked.
I told him I did, and he pulled it up on his computer.
Sure enough, Owen Alexander Thorpe. Graduated first in his class from the Barrows School, gone on to Yale, and then Johns Hopkins for medical school. He’d died at twenty-three, unexpectedly, from a sudden cardiac arrest caused by a thromboembolism. I’d picked up enough from my time in the hospital to know what that meant: Owen had died of a broken heart.
There was a picture, too, a cheesy tourist shot, taking up half of the screen. I could see the Eiffel Tower in the background, the ground slick with rain, some strangers still under their umbrellas. Owen was smiling in this embarrassed way, his blond hair flopping into his eyes, Cassidy’s particular shade of blue that evidently ran in their family. A scarf was around his neck, and his arm was slung around someone who had been cropped from the picture. I could see the corner of a trench coat, the edge of a shopping bag.
To his credit, Toby let me sit there staring at his computer screen for a good long while. It was only when his neighbor’s lights came on, splashing through his bedroom window, that I looked up, remembering where I was.
The house across the street had turned on their Christmas lights. Toby and I looked out the window horrorstruck by the pair of twelve-foot-tall glowing inflatable snowmen that had ballooned out of nowhere, bookending a neon nativity. Someone had climbed onto the roof and used dozens of strands of lights to spell out “HAPPY BDAY JESUS” in flashing red and green.
“It’s not even Thanksgiving,” I said.
“They could have at least gone to the effort to spell out ‘birthday,’” Toby observed, shutting the blinds. “So, what are you going to do?”
I sighed and raked a hand through my hair.
“Um,” I said. “Knock on her door with flowers?”
It sounded pathetic even as I said it. Like I was giving her some belated funeral bouquet.
“Yeah?” Toby asked doubtfully.
“Ugh, I don’t know,” I said wretchedly. “Look, I love her. Loved her, whatever. And if I can make things right between us—because I just really, completely miss her and think she misses me, too—then I’m going over there and knocking on her damned door.”
“This is Cassidy we’re talking about.” Toby raised an eyebrow, trying to convey the full gravitas of the situation. “She called you a washed-up, podunk, unoriginal townie.”
“I remember,” I said drily, hoping Toby was going somewhere with this that didn’t contribute solely to his own amusement.
“And you want to show up at her front door with flowers?”
I winced, catching Toby’s point immediately.
“Okay, bad plan,” I muttered.
“What you need is a lawnmower and a boom box,” Toby suggested. “Or a TARDIS. You could build her a TARDIS, invite her to come away with you on an adventure.”
I knew Toby wasn’t serious, but something about that last part got to me. An adventure. Cassidy had given me one once, as an apology for the debate tournament.
“You’re not even listening to me, are you?” Toby complained.
“Nope.” Because a strange idea had started to take shape in my mind, something that certainly couldn’t be considered ordinary. I knew how I was going to win her back.
THE NEXT MORNING, I woke up at dawn. I put on dark clothes and slipped out of the house while the whole world slept. Just as the first lights began to turn on in Terrace Bluffs, I crept back home.
It was too early to take a shower, and I was afraid I’d wake my parents, so I scrubbed off the dirt and paint as best I could with a damp washcloth and changed into something more presentable.
I waited, and I paced, and when the clock hit seven, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I crept downstairs and was tying my shoes when Cooper padded into the foyer. He cocked his head at me and whined.
“Shhh,” I told him.
What’s this about, old sport? his eyes seemed to say.
“I’ll be back. I’m just going to see Cassidy,” I whispered.
At the mention of her name, Cooper perked up and whined louder.
“Stop that! You’ll wake up everyone!”
But it was no use. Cooper followed me to the front door, letting out another insistent whine.
“Do you want to come with me, Cooper?” I asked in exasperation. “Is that it? Either you come, or I don’t go?”
He started turning circles at the word “go,” so I gave up and went to get his leash.
“You have to be good,” I told him, clipping it onto his collar. “I’m serious. I’m not supposed to be walking you. You can’t tug the leash or anything.”
I had the impression that he understood, because when I let him out the front door, he stopped to wait for me, as though sensing that it was a special occasion.
The streets were empty, and gray with fog, which I’d been hoping would burn off, but no such luck. The pavement was damp, and the windshields of the cars we passed were beaded with condensation. Even the gate to Meadowbridge Park was slippery.
Cooper sniffed indignantly when he realized we were headed across the wet grass, but I told him that he was the one who’d insisted on coming along, and he dutifully pranced through it with his nose in the air, making me laugh.
I wasn’t laughing when he shook the water out of his fur at the other side, though.
“Cooper!” I scolded.
You asked for it, old sport, his expression seemed to say.
I sighed and supposed he was right. And the more I thought about it, I was glad I’d brought him along, since Cassidy had always adored him.
When her house came into view, I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d half expected him to have disappeared, but he was still there, adorning her front lawn with magnificent irony: my tumbleweed snowman.
He was about five feet tall, with button eyes and a piece of licorice for a mouth. An old scarf around his neck fluttered in the breeze. He sat there, still slightly wet from the spray paint. A snowman in a town where it didn’t snow, made by a boy who couldn’t wait to leave, and given to a girl who had never belonged.
Toby had been right—now wasn’t the time for flowers. Now was the time for grand gestures. The time to build a snowman out of tumbleweeds.
Cooper stared up at me, wondering why we’d suddenly stopped, and I whispered for him to wait. He cocked his head and then relieved himself on a neighbor’s rosebush.
The fog was thinning, finally. We were across the street from Cassidy’s house, and I pictured her coming out the front door in her pajamas, her hair mussed from sleep, grinning with delight when she caught sight of the snowman.
I took out my phone and dialed her number. Waited three rings. Four.
And then a sleepy, murmured hello.
“Come outside,” I told her.
“Ezra, is that you?” she mumbled.
“If you’re not standing on your front lawn in five minutes, I’m ringing the doorbell until you do.”
“You’re not serious,” she protested.
“Doorbell,” I threatened. “Outside. Five minutes.”
And then I hung up.
“Time to hide,” I told Cooper, but he wouldn’t cooperate with me at all.
He was acting strangely, his ears perked, body rigid, hackles raised.
“Come on, Coop,” I urged, tugging his leash. “You’ll give us away.”