Me—he liked me. I didn’t even mind sharing his affection with Sylvia. “Should I keep the note?” I said. This was logical, my ascent over Dena clear and firm. But she gave me a sharp look and pulled away the piece of paper. By the end of the school day, which was less than two hours later, I learned not from Dena herself but from Rhonda Ostermann, whose desk was next to mine, that Andrew and Dena were going steady. And indeed as I left the school building to go home, I saw them standing by the bus stop, holding hands.

When I approached them—Andrew rode the bus, but Dena and I walked to and from school together—Dena said, “Greetings and salutations, Alice.” Clearly, she was delighted with herself. Andrew nodded at me. I looked for a sign that he was Dena’s hostage, being held against his will, or at least that he felt conflicted. But he seemed amiable and content. What had happened to Sylvia Eberbach, also Alice?

Improbably, Dena and Andrew remained a couple for the next four years. A pubescent couple, granted, meaning there may have been no one besides me who took them seriously. But they continued holding hands in public, and they were permitted by their parents to meet for hamburgers and milk shakes at Tatty’s. Andrew was quiet, though not silent, around Dena. The three of us sometimes went to the movies at the Imperial Theater, and once in seventh grade it happened that he sat between us—usually, Dena sat in the middle—and before the curtain opened, Dena got up to buy popcorn. During those few minutes when she was gone, Andrew and I said precisely nothing to each other, and for the entire time, I thought, It is really the two of us who are together. Not Andrew and Dena. Andrew and me. I know it, and he knows it, and anyone who would look over at us now would know it, too. I felt that we were under a kind of spell, and when Dena returned, the spell broke; his energy shifted back to her. Certainly he never gave any proof that I was still one of his two favorite girls. I searched for it, I waited, and it didn’t come. In eighth grade, Dena fell while running across the pavement behind the school, and he licked the blood off her palms. For weeks, thinking of that made me feel like a chute had opened in my stomach and my heart was descending through it.