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apart.
    â€œHi,” he said, looking right into my eyes.
    I quickly scooted myself over to the driver’s seat. I swallowed hard, and my heart did that annoying cartwheel thing again. I wondered if . . . if he was making fun of me. Like, if he was aware of how attractive he was and was kind of teasing me by flirtatiously invading my space the way he just had. Maybe he was the kind of boy who felt powerful by making girls blush.
    â€œListen,” I growled, my throat getting hot. “I have a boyfriend.”
    â€œHow nice for you,” he said patronizingly. “And I have a girlfriend.”
    â€œYou do?”
    â€œMmm-hmmm.”
    â€œWell . . . just . . . just . . . don’t do that.”
    â€œI was only switching sides with you. Don’t get your panties in a twist.” He was wiping down the right side of the windshield and had assumed the egotistic hauteur of the day before—only, I thought I caught sight of a tiny, crooked grin on his face.
    It infuriated me.
    Taking quick, seething breaths through my nose, I sat back in the driver’s seat and told myself to calm down. He was just some ridiculous, moody, strange whack-job from Alaska who was trying to get under my skin. Don’t let him.
    â€œLook, can we work together in peace?” I asked quietly. “Is that possible? Do you know how to act like a normal person and not be such an asshole?”
    He laughed. He actually laughed.
    But it didn’t sound mean or patronizing. It sounded apologetic.
    Which also irritated me. It’s harder to hate someone with a conscience.
    â€œLet’s start over, okay?” I said, squeezing my eyes shut and shaking my head as if to erase everything that had gone before. I looked at Silas, and he nodded. “How long did you live in Alaska?”
    â€œAbout three years,” he said. “My mom was an aerospace engineering professor at UAF and did consulting for the Kodiak Launch Complex. My dad taught astronomy.”
    â€œDid you like it there?”
    â€œYes. I loved it. The last thing I wanted to do was move to Minnesota.”
    â€œWhy did you guys move?”
    Silas paused. “Well, Mom got a pretty good offer to teach at the University of Minnesota.” He pursed his lips, obviouslydebating whether to say what came next. Then suddenly his face relaxed and he said, “Yeah.” That was it. I wanted to coax him into telling me more, but I remembered his frown when I’d asked about his sister the day before. We were finally speaking without hostility, so I didn’t press him.
    â€œThat’s cool that your mom’s from here.”
    â€œYeah,” he said again, “I’m still getting used to how everyone here seems to know everyone else.”
    â€œAnd everyone else’s business too,” I added. “You’ll see.”
    He pressed his lips together thoughtfully. When he noticed I was looking, he gave me another one of those forced grins. I picked up the Windex, sprayed the plastic covering the odometer, and cleaned it with a cloth, the ammonia yanking at my sinuses. “So, what’s it like in Alaska? Isn’t it twenty-four hours of sun in the summer and twenty-four hours of darkness in the winter?”
    â€œNot in Fairbanks,” he said. “In Barrow, yeah. That’s as north as you can go. In the winter, the sun doesn’t rise there for over two months.” He shook his head, incredulous. “But still, even in Fairbanks, we would have only about four hours of sunlight in a winter day. Of course, in the summer, there’s only about four hours of darkness, and then after the sun sets, it’s still bright enough to do regular stuff.”
    Silas and I each stepped out of the cab, closed our respective doors, and began to wash the outside of the car. “Start from the top down,” I instructed. No matter what I thoughtabout Silas Hart, it was a treat to watch his lean, strong frame