lifting his chin at a row of them. “People think they’re just there to look nice, but back a million years ago, masons used to use lime mortar on buildings like this, which doesn’t hold up in the long term. So eventually, the front of the building starts to pull away from the rest of it. The stars are actually just decorative bolts to keep the whole face of the thing from crumbling down on some unsuspecting pedestrian.”
Meg shook her head, momentarily surprised out of her meltdown. “How do you know that?” she asked.
Colby smirked a little. “I know stuff.”
“Clearly,” she said. “What else do you know?”
“What, like, about construction?” He ducked his head and tucked his hands back into his pockets, suddenly shy. “I don’t know. A reasonable amount, I guess.”
“Tell me?”
Colby looked at her curiously, but in the end he nodded and did it, keeping up a running monologue as they walked along the darkened sidewalk—about peg-and-beam framing and how to properly organize a workshop and machines that could lift whole houses clear off the ground—until finally Meg lifted a hand to stop him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, taking one last deep, shuddering breath and wiping her face with the back of one hand. She sat down on the steps of a tidy little brownstone, smoothing her dress down over her knees. “This is embarrassing.”
Colby shook his head. “Hey, what are you apologizing to me for?” he asked, sitting down beside her and running a hand down her backbone.
“I don’t know.” Meg took a deep breath, exhaling in a shaky sigh. It was still unfamiliar for him to touch her this way. “I’m just sad, is all.”
“You ever tell your dad that?”
Right away, Meg shook her head. “What am I supposed to say?” she asked, pulling back to look at him. “Congratulations on being happier than you’ve ever been in your life, Dad—sorry you had to throw the rest of us away to get here?” The words were out before she’d even known she was thinking them; she felt her eyes widen and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” she said, between two fingers. “That’s awful. I didn’t mean that.”
Colby shrugged. “You can mean it,” he said, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “If that’s what you mean.”
Meg sighed, tilting her head back so her hair pooled on the step behind her, staring up at the dark canopy of new leaves overhead. “I think maybe it’s what I mean, yeah.”
“Then why not tell him?” Colby asked. “If somebody’s pissing you off, you ought to let them know.”
Meg laughed; she couldn’t help it. The way he said it made it sound so easy, not at all like the horrifying, humiliating spectacle she knew it would be if she were actually to do it. “Is this how I sound to you when I tell you that you should get involved with the electoral process?” she asked.
“What, like I have no idea what I’m talking about and should probably mind my own business?” Colby grinned. “Maybe.”
Meg’s mouth dropped open. “Rude!”
“I’m kidding. Mostly.” He leaned over a little, bumping their shoulders together. He smelled like Dial soap and medicated face wash and drugstore deodorant, boy smells. “Anyway, it feels like it’s probably a little late for either one of us to be minding our own business, right?”
“Yeah,” Meg agreed. “It probably is.”
“Can I ask you a question?” Colby looked over at her in the darkness. “Say you did talk to your dad, right? Say you went back into that fancy restaurant right now and told him how you’re feeling. Or say you told your friend Emily the whole, unvarnished truth. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“I don’t know,” Meg said immediately, though in fact she knew exactly what the worst might look like. She gazed out at the empty street for a moment. Took a deep breath before she spoke again. “So, every year right before Christmas, my school does a potluck.”
“Okay,” Colby said, leaning back on his elbows. “I’m listening.”
“It’s this big thing. Everybody in the whole school comes and brings their families, from kindergarten all the way on up, and you all cook or bake something, and they set it up on these tables in the gym and the jazz band plays and there’s all these games—and whatever, I know you probably think it sounds unbearably corny, but—”