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made this so much better? I started to relax and kissed him again. “Okay, let’s just be nervous, then. Want a tour?”
    He laughed as he let me go and started to look around my room. “Hang on, where is all the crazy? No bumper stickers?” I missed them too. There was no way to replicate the way I’d covered the walls of my room at home. Plus I promised my mom I’d make a little effort at dorm-room chic.
    “It’d take me all year to cover these walls, and I’m trying to ease Tiki into the wackier side of Digit.”
    He walked over to where Adam Ranks’s evergreen hung over Tiki’s bed. “He’s still missing, right? The story’s kind of dying in the news—have you noticed that?”
    Huh.
“I haven’t read anything about him since I’ve been here. It’s like I forgot about the newspaper. This place is its own little world. Weird.”
    “We’ll have to air you out a little. There’s an Italian restaurant in Boston I want to try. I have a cab waiting. And then we can do some college stuff.” He unzipped his bag and pretended to rifle around in it. “I know I put my toga in here somewhere . . .”
    “Very funny. Let’s go.”
    The first person we saw as we stepped into the hallway was Bass, wearing a black T-shirt that said I HAVE REASON TO BELIEVE RACCOONS ARE MOCKING ME and carrying a guitar case. “Hey, Digit.”
    I froze. “Hey. We were . . . um, this is . . .”
    John reached out a hand. “I’m John.”
    “Bass. I’m the RA.” Suddenly everyone was relaxed but me.
    “Yeah, he’s the RA.” I was trying to regain my composure. I mean, was I the first girl to ever walk out of a dorm room with a guy? I felt like
I
was standing there in a towel. “John’s my friend.”
    They both looked at me like I’d said something as dumb as, well, what I’d just said. John said, “Yep, I’m off to get my buddy here some dinner.”
    “Okay, you two have fun.” Amused eyes, little smile. “But come by the coffeehouse later—my band’s playing at ten. Tiki and your Three Stooges said they were coming.”
    When he was out of earshot, I gave John a serious shove. “Stop making fun of me.”
    “It’s just too easy.” He took my hand. “It’s okay to have a boyfriend. You’re all grown-up.” I felt twelve.
    “I know. I just . . . I didn’t know if it was okay that you were staying here. And I didn’t want him to think we were . . . I mean, we are. But I . . .”
    John was beyond amused.
    About four minutes into the cab ride, everything felt normal again. We were laughing about the unidentifiable smell in my dorm, and John said he couldn’t wait to see the bathrooms. I started to tell him the story about meeting Bass half-naked but thought better of it. It’s not even really a story, just an embarrassing moment that I probably wouldn’t want to hear about if things were reversed.
    At dinner he filled me in on everything at the FBI Terror Task Force. All the trainees were working long hours. He and his new friends Spencer and George were pretty much expected to be at the senior agents’ beck and call around the clock. The three of them had joined a gym and regularly snuck out of the office to work out during dead time. He ran through a long list of places he wanted to take me for spring break, if we could ever make it cool with my parents. There was a village near Nepal he wanted me to see and a hotel outside the Brazilian rain forest that was actually built in a tree. We shared a salad and pasta and osso buco (must remember to look up what animal that is). Delicious.
    John showed me photos of his new West Village apartment on his phone. It had a beautiful balcony and a view of the pastry shop across the street. There were a few pictures of the inside, but they were mostly of the old sycamore trees that line the street, taken from the balcony. One was of a sycamore tree perfectly centered between the pastry shop’s two window boxes, orange pansies evenly distributed. These photos