She wiped her hands on her pants, then moved down to the KeyChains, adjusting the pink one on the rack. “What about him?”

“He told me what happened at Christmas,” I said. “What was it you said? That you weren’t in a ‘relationship place’? Is that anywhere near your comfort zone?”

“Reggie is my friend,” she said, straightening a clasp. “If we took things further and it didn’t work out, it would change everything.”

“But you don’t know it won’t work out.”

“I don’t know it will, either.”

“And that’s reason enough to not even try,” I said. She ignored me, moving down to the rings. “You didn’t know that hiring me would work out. But you did it anyway. And if you hadn’t—”

“—I’d be enjoying a quiet moment at my kiosk right now, without being analyzed,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be nice!”

“—you never would have made the KeyChains and seen them be so successful,” I finished. “Or been able to enjoy my company, and this conversation, right now.”

She made a face at me, then walked back over and hopped up on her stool, opening up the laptop she’d recently bought to keep up with her Web site stuff. “Look. I know in a perfect, utterly romantic world, I’d go out with Reggie and we’d live happily ever after,” she said, hitting the power button. “But sometimes you just have to follow your instincts, and mine say this would not be a good thing for me. All right?”

I nodded. Really, considering everything I’d just gone through, Harriet was someone I should be trying to emulate, not convince otherwise.

I moved back to the rings, reorganizing them the way I had originally, in order of size and color. I was just doing another quick pass with the duster when I heard Harriet say, “Huh. This is weird.”

“What is?”

“I’m just checking into my account, and my balance is kind of off,” she said. “I know I had a couple of debits out, but not for this much.”

“Maybe the site’s just delayed,” I said.

“I knew I shouldn’t have signed on for this new system with Blake. I just feel better when I sign every check myself, you know?” She sighed, then picked up her phone and dialed. After a moment, she closed it. “Voice mail. Of course. Do you know Nate’s number, offhand?”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t.”

“Well, when you see him, tell him I need to talk to him. Like, soon. Okay?”

I wanted to tell her I wouldn’t be seeing him, much less delivering messages. But she was already back on the computer, scrolling down.

Harriet wasn’t the only one not resting assured, or so I found out when I got home and found Cora in the foyer, wiping up the floor with a paper towel. Roscoe, who usually could not be prevented from greeting me with a full body attack, was conspicuously absent.

“No way,” I said, dropping my bag on the floor. “He’s mastered the dog door.”

“We lock it when we’re not here,” she told me, pushing herself to her feet. “Which is usually no problem, but someone didn’t bother to show up to walk him today.”

“Really?” I said. “Are you sure? Nate’s usually really dependable.”

“Well, not today,” she replied. “Clearly.”

It was weird. So much so that I wondered if maybe Nate had taken off or something, as that seemed to be the only explanation for him just blowing off things he usually did like clockwork. That night, though, his lights were on, just like always, as were the ones in the pool. It was only when I really looked closely, around midnight, that I saw something out of the ordinary: a figure cutting through the water. Moving back and forth, with steady strokes, dark against all that blue light. I watched him for a long time, but even when I finally turned out the light, he was still swimming.

Chapter Seventeen

That weekend, there was only one thing I should have been thinking about: calculus. The test that pretty much would decide the entire fate of both my GPA and my future was on Monday, and according to Gervais—whose method was proven—it was time to shift into what he called “Zen mode.”

“I’m sorry?” I’d said the day before, Friday, when he’d announced this.

“It’s part of my technique,” he explained, taking a sip of his chocolate milk, one of two he drank each lunch period. “First, we did an overview of everything you were supposed to learn so far this year. Then, we homed in on your weaknesses therein, pinpointing and attacking them one by one. Now, we move into Zen mode.”

“Meaning what?” I asked.

“Admitting that you are powerless over your fate, on this test and otherwise. You have to throw out everything that you’ve learned.”

I just looked at him. Olivia, who was checking her UMe page on her phone, said, “Actually, that is a very basic part of Eastern cinema tradition. The warrior, once taught, must now, in the face of his greatest challenge, rely wholly on instinct.”

“Why have I spent weeks studying if I’m now supposed to forget everything I’ve learned? ” I said. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Olivia shrugged. “The man says his method is proven.”

Man? I thought.

Gervais said, “The idea isn’t to forget everything. It’s that by now, you should know all this well enough that you don’t have to actively think about it. You see a problem, you know the solution. It’s instinct.”