Mainly, the thing was that I didn’t know how to answer his question. So I was glad he cut me off before I was finished. Or I might have said something I regretted.

I drop my head off the edge of the trampoline and vaguely wonder why whoever it belongs to never put up one of those safety nets. The tips of my hair brush the ground as I grab one of my shoes, and swing back up, cradling it in my lap, to admire it.

I run my finger over the white rubber toe, careful not to smudge the blue ballpoint pen, already fading to match the baby blue canvas of my worn-out Converse. He pulls me onto his lap. “We going somewhere?”

I shake my head.

The lights are beginning to flicker on in the house behind us. I wonder if anyone will come outside. If they’ll find us. If they’ll demand to know what we’re doing here, lying on the trampoline, in the yard of a house that is very much not ours.

I hope not.

I look down at the words etched there on my shoe:

hey i like you.

He looks down too. “Who wrote that?”