Dylan knocks on the door with his knuckle. “Hey, Brandon said you were still…what’s wrong?”

“I got it,” I breathe. “The contest, the internship, the recognition. I got it.”

I turn my computer to show him the email from The Pittsburgh Press.

His eyes flicker over it briefly, confirming what I’m telling him.

“Of course you did,” Dylan says like it is the most obvious thing in the world.

I think I’m in shock.

Good thing I’m sitting down.

He flips the just-washed strands of wet hair off his forehead. “Seems like something worth celebrating,” Dylan says.

I blink. “Yeah, I suppose it is.”

When I won the spelling bee in fifth grade, my parents took me out to a local ice cream shop and let me order the biggest size cone and whatever flavor I wanted.

That was, apparently, child’s play.

Because Dylan invites me to his house, and I arrive after stopping at my parents’ office to tell them the news in person, then he gives me the very fancy bottle of champagne.

“I don’t know how to open it,” I admit, tracing the label with my fingertips.

We’re sitting side by side on surprisingly comfortable wooden chairs at the edge of his property, and although we’re out in the open, it feels very private surrounded by trees and the other landscaping.

“But it’s pretty,” I add. “Maybe I should just keep it like this and let it sit on my nightstand.”

He rolls his eyes. “Only you would use a three-hundred-dollar bottle of champagne as a paperweight.”

“This was three hundred dollars?” I gasp. “Well, I definitely can’t drink it now. It’s like the most expensive thing I own.”

“Your computer,” he reminds me.

“Right,” I say. “You know, you don’t have to keep buying me stuff. I tolerate you well enough without benefitting from your limitless credit card.”

“Why do you think it’s so much fun to buy things for you?” Dylan poses. “Serena practically held her hand out on a weekly basis and was floored that I only got her sapphire earrings for her birthday.”

He’s comparing me to Serena, and the realization makes me squirm.

My mental catalog of Dylan Archer memories confirms that he once clearly referred to her as his girlfriend—not just someone he was talking to—in our sophomore Chemistry class.

I place the champagne in my bag for safe keeping, and as I’m rooting around, I pull out a Hershey bar that’s long been forgotten but perfectly intact. I gently set down my bag at my feet and tear open the wrapper with my teeth.

“Classy,” Dylan says, but there’s no venom in it.

How long has it been since there was the classic maliciousness to his tone with me? I can’t remember now.

I take a massive bite, touching a number of the little rectangles that are carved on the surface.

“I never understood the phrase ‘eating your feelings’ until now, Reed,” he says. “But if that’s how you want to celebrate, who am I to judge?”

I offer it to him, teeth marks and all. It’s a terrible offering, but it’s all I’ve got. Frizzy hair and half-eaten candy.

He breaks off a small rectangle to pop in his mouth. “I think I finalized what my Mount Rushmore is,” he says once he chews and swallows it.

“I’m glad all of those early mornings of filling your locker finally paid off,” I say. “What’s the lineup?”

He cracks his fingers in anticipation. “For starters, the far left of the monument, Almond Joy. At first, I thought the almond and coconut combination was gross, but then it grew on me. And next, definitely a Heath bar...what? Why are you laughing? I thought you’d be ecstatic that you’re going to have such a massive impact on my dental bills from all the sugar.”

“It’s just that you picked all of the old people's candy,” I explain to him.

“And from your vast experience of socializing with the elderly, you’re clearly the expert on this.”

“You’re funny, Archer, you know that? I’m just saying, though, those candy bars are the kind that Audrey and I tried to pawn off on each other when sorting our Halloween candy as kids.”

His gaze drops to his hands, and I consider the very real possibility that he never went trick-or-treating or wore a costume in his entire life.

“And what do you think I should add to it?”

“Well, most people our age like Skittles and Sour Patch Kids and Reese’s.”

“My palate is too refined for those,” he tells me. “Obviously.”

I roll my eyes.

“I’m certainly not putting this plain chocolate on my monument,” he says as he helps himself to another piece. “What else do you have in that bag of yours?”

I take the last bite and crinkle up the wrapper in my hand, then I start digging through my bag, shuffling around my books, planner, and all the other miscellaneous items that live inside.

He grabs my personal copy of Brave New World when I bring it to the surface and starts flipping through it. “Why do you still have this? We finished this unit weeks ago.”

“I liked it when I read it originally a few years ago, but now it’s one of my favorites.”

“Now? Helping me with my homework stirred up a love of dystopian literature within you?”

I shrug. “There’s a lot of good takeaways from that book.”

“Like what?”

I stop digging through my bag so that I can level with him. “You should know. You did a ton of work for class on it.”

“I do know, but I’m curious as to what yours are.”

“The message that we are each individually responsible for our own happiness, and it’s absurd to put someone else in charge stands out,” I admit quietly.

He relaxes into the hard back of his chair and opens to one of the highlighted sections in the book. “I would have thought you were one of those people who considers books sacred, but you’ve pretty much vandalized this.”

“I just like to mark what resonates with me in the moment,” I explain. “It makes it easier to come back to that way.”

I pull my feet up onto the seat and settle in, watching him thumb through the book.

It’s kind of like when Audrey, knowing I would love certain scenes in one of the movies she picked, watched me for my reaction instead of paying attention to the screen.

Seeing the world through Dylan Archer’s eyes was something I would have never planned to experience. Out of all the life events and possibilities I thought would happen, this wasn’t even a fraction of an idea in the back of my mind.

I was supposed to help him get a good grade this year, to move on with his life, but instead, I think he helped me unwind and find a better part of myself. I don’t even know if it was intentional or if that’s just what happens when you’re a bystander in his presence—you have to kick your legs forward or you’ll never keep up with how he moves.

He thumbs through it before he stops to read one of the earmarked lines: “Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly—they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”