Nick says, "I figured you'd call to apologize."

"Oh, my gosh, you're right. Detention! I'm so sorry. If I'd known it was yours, I'd never have gone in her locker."

I can't bring myself to say marijuana marijuana or or Ling Ling Ling Ling, but the girls are doing their best impressions. Octavia's smoking an imaginary roach. Marjorie's made a makeshift bong with a can of her mother's Mississippi-imported Mello Yello. She's got a box of Goo Goo Cl.u.s.ters in her lap in preparation for the munchies. Mags has rolled her pajama bottoms up to her thighs, emptied a yellow shower caddy, and donned it upside down on her head. She's prancing around the same way our arch-nemesis did her laps in gym.

Nick says to me, "Yes, you would too have gone after it. You couldn't help yourself."

"What do you mean? I've never smoked in my life."

"You didn't find what you think you found."

"What do you mean? I saw it. Why would your grandparents say what they said? How could you let yourself get detention for nothing? Was it really just oregano?"

Octavia's lips freeze, pressed together; her thumb and first two fingers still pinch the figment of her imagination. Marjorie's make-believe lighter remains lit in front of the toxic green can. Mags removes the shower caddy, flips it, and holds it upright as if to collect information.

"It's not oregano," says Nick. "Or what my grandparents call oregano. But it is herbal. From Greece. My grandparents were covering for me with Princ.i.p.al Sheldon. If the government finds out about what it really is, they'll make it illegal."

"What is it?"

"Tell me first, how did it make you feel?"

"I didn't feel anything."

"You wouldn't have gone after it if it didn't make you feel good."

It's true. Before I knew what it was or where it was coming from, I knew I'd do anything for it. I'd imagined spreading it on the floor and rolling around on it like people in movies do on $100 bills. But who does that in real life? Money is filthy. To throw yourself at wrinkled, dirty paper, think of the kind of addict you'd have to be. Me. I don't want to admit this in front of the girls. I don't want to tell Nick he's right. Whatever is wrong with me can't be good.

I ask him, "How does it make Ling Ling feel?"

"Ling Ling never feels anything."

"So, why did you give it to her?"

"Honestly," his voice softens as if Ling Ling is listening in, "to get to you. To find out if you are what I think you are."

The girls' lips form Os. They bring their hands to their cheeks, and their fingers flutter as if they had a three-way tie for Miss Teen USA. They don't care if Nick is a drug pusher or another girl's boyfriend. He is talking on the phone with me, and he is saying what boys in our cla.s.s never say.

I whisper, "What's so special about me all of a sudden?"

Nick says, "The turning."

The girls look confused.

He says confidential-like, "I know what you're going through."

Could Nick be talking about what's under my socks? Should I show the girls the fur? I can't. They'll shun me. Who wants to split Hot Pockets and share a comforter cover with someone who's turning? Turning must mean spoiling like milk does when it curdles. Milk gets fuzzy when it's old. Have I reached some sort of expiration date? Am I going bad? Is it written in my closed adoption papers that I have some rare Mediterranean genetic disorder? Does Nick mean to tell me that he's had encounters with cats that have left him with patches of fur that snap razors? But he did fall asleep under the parachute. Maybe he does know. Maybe he has the cure.

He says, "Tell me where you are. I'll help you."

"You want to help me right now in the middle of the night?"

No response. Not a further word out of him. I hear him breathing. I imagine being close enough to see that breath come out of his lips on a cold night like tonight. I wish we were together, but I'm deluding myself that he's got my same problems.

Nick asks, "Is it orange?"

I say, "I'm at Marjorie and Mags's apartment."

"Shush!" says Mags. Hold up, did she not hear what he said about me being orange? Has she also forgotten we're trying to hide that he's on speaker phone? She screams, "Nick, don't come!" Nope. She wants him to hear. "Nick, it's too late at night!"

"Our mom will kill us!" Marjorie joins in. "The doorman will call when you get here, and the phone will wake her up! She'll go ballistic!"

Octavia shouts, "Nick, listen to us, we're screaming! Come on over! Their mom's comatose!"

"But what if tomorrow, the doorman tells Mom that Nick was here?"

"Oh, my G.o.d, Mags, he'll totally tell her! Nick, you can't come. Don't!"

"Nick, don't you dare!"

"Nick? Nick?"

"Nick? Say something!"

The phone is dead. He's coming. He lives on 93rd and Fifth. At a fast clip, he'll be here in five minutes.

Mags flings her comforter back on her bed and plops two pillows at the headboard. She tosses the box of Goo Goo Cl.u.s.ters on her nightstand and tucks the water gun in the drawer.

Marjorie says, "Stop straightening-you're awful at it! You can't have him in your room. He's not coming into this apartment. Mary, go down to the lobby and wait for him. Act like you're going home."

Octavia says, "At this hour? In those clothes?"

I'm still in my h.e.l.lo Kitty pajamas. I grab my book bag, with my school uniform stashed inside, and head for the bathroom.

Mags says, "What, Mary, you're Octavia-too embarra.s.sed to change in front of us?"

I say, "Close your curtains."

"For what? We're too high up for anyone to see us from the street. n.o.body on the other side of the park has their binoculars out."

Octavia says, "Let Gypsy Rose Lee change where she wants.""It's fine," I say. "I'm fine." The sooner I get changed, the sooner I can go downstairs and meet Nick.

I take out my skirt and pull it over my pajama bottoms. The flannel against flannel has a clingy effect. The plaid pleats bunch up. I have to suck in my stomach to b.u.t.ton the skirt over the pajamas' thick elastic waistband. I notice my reflection in the dark terrace windows. I look like a circus bear wearing a tutu.

Nick looks like the last time I saw him.

In the same athletic shorts and Purser-Lilley T-shirt he wore in the princ.i.p.al's office, Nick is standing barefoot on the terrace in front of Mag's gla.s.s door.

chapter ten.

You'd think we'd scream, and we do.

Nick's arms are crossed to ward off the cold. His head is tucked into his throat. His curly black hair blows toward us. His curls cover his eyes. The winter wind is so fast and so strong that it rattles the gla.s.s terrace door in the frame. When I push the door open, Nick weaves out of the way, but he doesn't come in.

He lifts his head.

His eyes are deepened and darkened by pupils dilated by the night to leave only an outline of brown. His lips are crimsoned but not cracked by the cold. He extends a hand, the palm of which is as dirty as I imagine the soles of his bare feet to be.

Mags says to him, "Are you crazy? n.o.body's coming out there with you!"

Octavia says, "He wants Mary."

"I know, but it's freezing outside. And now it's freezing in here! Nick, get in so we can shut the door."

I ask him, "How did you get up here? The fire escape? Why?"

Nick doesn't answer me, so why ask him about his clothes- or lack thereof? He knows what he's got on: a whole lot of nothing. His bare arm remains stretched toward me. He looks right at me as if my sister and the twins are not here.

The room is flushed with icy air. Marjorie's teeth chatter, and she buzzes to make the chattering more p.r.o.nounced. She wants me to hurry and make a choice. Am I in, or am I going out? I'm too frigid to budge. I'm stunned: at the temperature, at Nick's strange tolerance of it, his unorthodox arrival, his intensity. I'm embarra.s.sed. Even though I'm wearing my pajama bottoms, my skirt is whipping around my hips in the wind.

Nick speaks, and I see the clouds of his warm breath I'd imagined being close to. "Come out. I'll explain everything."

I'll explain everything is what guilty people say in the movies. Usually, they are standing over a dead body or are with someone other than their spouse in their marital bed. You say it to someone you don't want to disappoint. You have a history with that person and you don't want that history to end. But Nick and I have never spoken until today. As Kathryn Ann would say about Nick, I don't know him from Adam. n.o.body else in Mags's room knows Nick that well either. is what guilty people say in the movies. Usually, they are standing over a dead body or are with someone other than their spouse in their marital bed. You say it to someone you don't want to disappoint. You have a history with that person and you don't want that history to end. But Nick and I have never spoken until today. As Kathryn Ann would say about Nick, I don't know him from Adam. n.o.body else in Mags's room knows Nick that well either.

Behind him, the warped pages of the spy novel flap on the lounge chair. A gust of wind swoops the open book up and off the roof like a bird. The Speedo is swept into a neon orange ball in the corner. What if the wind takes me too? The terrace lights aren't lit. What if I step on something sharp, cut my foot wide open, and have to get st.i.tches? What if a pigeon flies into my hair? What if there is a blanket of mice? What if ? What if? What if! What if a boy never again scales the side of a building to see me? I take Nick's dirty hand and follow him into the night.

None of the girls stops me.

Octavia takes hold of the terrace doork.n.o.b to close it. As she struggles with the door's heft against a rush of wind, Mags flicks off her bedroom lights as if she's giving us privacy-but I know it's really so they can spy on us without being seen. Marjorie yanks Mags's comforter off the bed, squeezes past Octavia, and tosses it over my shoulders. As the terrace door shuts, I hear Mags shout at her sister through the gla.s.s.

"Hey! That's my comforter! It's gross out there. It's gonna get stained. What am I going to sleep under?"

"What do you care, slob? We'll sleep in my room."

Marjorie and Octavia drag Mags through the twins' shared bathroom to Marjorie's side. I don't overhear anything else from them. Mags's bedroom lights remain out.

I can't read Nick's face because my eyes haven't adjusted to the loss of light from the apartment. I'm floating with him again-but this time in blackness. Despite the comforter, pajamas, wool skirt, and socks, the spot where his hand is connected to mine is the warmest part of my body. He lets go. My hand is instantly colder.

The wind shoves me, and I worry I might tip over. I hug the comforter around my chest. I sense Nick move behind me. He lays his hands on my shoulders. He guides me to the lounge chair, where he sits and sinks into the plastic weave. Then, he pulls me into the cavern of his spread arms and legs.

Nick doesn't get under the comforter with me. He holds me like I'm sitting upright in a sleeping bag. There is a fat, fluffy layer of feathers sewn into squares between my back and his chest. I am swaddled to my neck. Nick's arms keep the comforter closed in front of my body. I hold my own hands.

I ask, "How are you not freezing to death?"

Nick presses his palms into the comforter. My belly grows warm under the pressure. He says, "That's part of what I have to explain."

"The turning?"

He rests his chin on my right shoulder. That spot grows warm too, and the warmth radiates up my neck, ending at my earlobe with a gentle pinch. This must be what it's like to have my ear nibbled. Over the edge of the cement-brick wall of the terrace, skeletal treetops stretch from Fifth Avenue across Central Park to the West Side. Snow clings to rickety branches. If I weren't so nervous, I might consider it beautiful.

Nick says, "I want to be with you when it happens. When it happened to me last summer, I was alone in Greece with my grandparents. They were in their garden, getting high with their friends. I was supposed to be taking an afternoon siesta. But I couldn't sleep and then I thought I was dying."

"I'm going to feel like I'm dying?"

"It doesn't feel good."

"What's it ?""I could smell it on you at school-probably before you knew anything was wrong. Well, not wrong. Different? Special? Kala? Yiayia and Papou have words in two languages to avoid saying there's anything wrong with their only grandson. Doctors don't recognize it, so everything we use to deal with it is herbal. My grandparents are cool about sharing their pot, and we go to Naxos every summer to score nip."

"Nip?"

"What you found in her bag. Nip brings the turning out of you. Pot slows it down."

Nip, pot, the turning-I'm not even listening. All I heard was a hole: Nick didn't say Ling Ling's name.

I ask, "Your folks are okay with this?"

"My parents don't know. Yiayia says if Mom found out, she'd send me for all kinds of medical tests. She says I'll outgrow it. It's a phase. She's never heard of it lasting more than five years. It's more common in Greece but still believed to be myth."

"Like Zeus?"

"No, not like Zeus. The turning is real."

"So, I am sick."

He gives me a squeeze, and I am oddly comforted, electrified, and frightened at the same time. He says, "I wouldn't say sick. I mean, you wouldn't think of a gay dude's gayness as sick. It's seasonal. Two weeks in January and then most of the summer. You can't totally suppress it, no matter how much you smoke. You have to let it out if you want to be normal most of the time. I can make it easier for you."

I nod again, having no idea what Nick is talking about.

It's like when my parents talked to Octavia and me about s.e.x when we were kids. They were never specific. They talked of love but not mechanics. If we wanted details, Dad would say, "Ask your mother." Mom would say, "Look it up in the dictionary." That's how I learned that the word Ben Strong called a mean kid in the third grade is slang for the male organ of copulation, which means to engage in intercourse, which means physical contact between individuals that involves the genitalia, physical contact between individuals that involves the genitalia, which brought me back to the first word I looked up. "Round and round," Mom said, "that's pretty much how it goes." which brought me back to the first word I looked up. "Round and round," Mom said, "that's pretty much how it goes."

Nick says, "New York is dangerous for people like us. Very territorial. Very us-against-them. If they find out about you, they'll make you pick sides."

"What sides? Who are they?"

Nick unwraps an arm and points. "That's they."

From the fire escape, a body is lumbering over the terrace wall. The figure's limbs are long and lanky. I can't distinguish thighs from calves or forearms from biceps. Like Nick, the figure is dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. The shorts are cutoffs. Closing in on us, his vintage 1980s iron-on reads: I'm the boss, Applesauce! His toenails are painted black. He's wearing yellow dishwashing gloves. The same pair that supposedly squeaked around under Mags's shirt. He is the deli owner's son. His toenails are painted black. He's wearing yellow dishwashing gloves. The same pair that supposedly squeaked around under Mags's shirt. He is the deli owner's son.