A stops. Looks again at the tree, at the knots.

“Tell me about him,” I say.

“It was about a year ago. I was working at a movie theater, and he was in town, visiting his cousins, and when he went to get some popcorn, we flirted a little, and it just became this…spark. It was this small one-screen movie theater, and when the movie was running, my job was pretty slow. I think he missed the second half of the movie, because he came back out and started talking to me more. I ended up having to tell him what happened so he could pretend he’d been in there most of the time. At the end, he asked for my email, and I made up an email address.”

“Like you did for me,” I point out. So Nathan knew what he was doing a little more than I’d thought.

“Exactly like I did for you. And he emailed me later that night, and left the next day to go back home to Maine, and that proved to be ideal, because then the rest of our relationship could be online. I’d been wearing a name tag, so I had to give him that first name, but I made up a last name, and then I made up an online profile using some of the photos from the real guy’s profile. I think his name was Ian.”

This surprises me, that A was a boy in love with a boy. Maybe because it’s a girl’s voice telling me this story. Or maybe because I assume girl when I hear boyfriend. Which I know isn’t right, but it’s where my mind goes.

After I express my surprise, she asks me if it matters. I tell her it doesn’t. And while she tells me the rest of the story—she tried to keep it going online, but he wanted to meet, and she knew they never could, so she ended it—I try to convince myself that it really doesn’t matter. And I guess it doesn’t matter, in terms of her (him). But it still matters in terms of me. At least a little.

As she wraps up the Brennan story, A tells me, “I promised myself I wouldn’t get into any more virtual entanglements, as easy as they might seem to be. Because what’s the point of something virtual if it doesn’t end up being real? And I could never give anyone something real. I could only give them deception.”

“Like impersonating their boyfriends,” I can’t help but say.

“Yeah. But you have to understand—you were the exception to the rule. And I didn’t want it to be based on deception. Which is why you’re the first person I’ve ever told.”

I know this is meant as the highest compliment A can give me. But I want to know what I did to earn it. I want to know how A knows I’m the right person to tell. I want to know what that means.

I tell her, “The funny thing is, you say it like it’s so unusual that you’ve only done it once. But I bet a whole lot of people go through their lives without ever telling the truth, not really. And they wake up in the same body and the same life every single morning.”

Now she’s curious. “Why? What aren’t you telling me?”

I have known you less than two weeks, I think. I wish I could disarm myself so completely in such a short time. But even if A thinks I’ve earned that, I am not even close to believing she’s earned it. Not because of who she is or what she is. Because it’s so soon.

I get that her life has a special set of rules. But my life has rules, too.

I look her right in the eye. I am not angry—I want to be sure she knows I’m not angry. But I am serious. “If I’m not telling you something, it’s for a reason. Just because you trust me, it doesn’t mean I have to automatically trust you. Trust doesn’t work like that.”

“That’s fair,” she says. Although I can tell she’s also a little disappointed.

“I know it is,” I tell her. “But enough of that. Tell me about—I don’t know—third grade.”

There is no point in talking more about us. We need to talk about ourselves separately for a little while longer.

It’s not entirely separate, of course. We’ve both been afraid of teachers. We’ve both gotten lost at theme parks. We’ve both fallen into hair-pulling, teeth-kicking fights with siblings. We’ve grown up on the same TV shows, being the same age. Only, while we both had dreams of waking up in Hannah Montana’s body and Hannah Montana’s life, A actually believed that the dream could come true.

I ask about all those lives, all those days, and what A can remember. The result is like a series of snapshots—a slideshow of bits and pieces with the faces always changing. All of the firsts—first snow, first Pixar movie, first evil pet, first bully. And other things I wouldn’t have even realized were things—the size of bedrooms, the strange diets parents put their kids on, the need to sing in church even if you don’t know any of the tunes or any of the words. Discovering allergies, illnesses, learning problems, stutters. And living the day with them. Always living another day.

I try to keep up. I try to offer some of my firsts, some of my surprises. But they don’t seem as first or as surprising.

We talk about family. She asks me if I hate my mother.

“No,” I tell her. “That’s not it. I love her, but I also want her to be better. I want her to stop giving up.”

“I can’t even imagine what that’s like. To come home to the same parents every day.”

“There’s no one who can make you angrier, but you also can’t really love anyone more. I know that doesn’t make sense, but it’s true. She disappoints me every day she just sits there. But I know she would do anything for me, if she had to.”