“Yeah,” he said. And for once, he didn’t say it like a lie.

He’d kissed her then. Not because he was brave, but because for one second, the pressure inside him found a pinhole. She kissed him back, and for three songs’ worth of time, he forgot he was seventeen. He forgot the absent father, the tired mother, the screaming silence. He just was .

That was the motto of being seventeen. Maybe. Not yes, because yes meant commitment, and commitment meant the possibility of failure. Not no, because no meant closing a door, and every open door was a future you couldn’t afford to burn. So: maybe. The coward’s gold.

His mother’s knock came. Two soft raps.

He typed back: “Maybe.”

“I’m going out. But I’ll be home by ten.”

Rocco pressed his forehead to his knees. He thought about Lena. Lena with the crooked smile and the book of Rilke poems she carried like a bible. Last month, at a party, she’d pulled him into a closet just to show him a glow-in-the-dark sticker of a jellyfish on the inside of the door. “See?” she’d said. “Even in the dark, there are things that make their own light.”

“Okay,” he said. His voice came out steady. That was another skill: the steady voice. The one that said I’m fine when his insides were a riot.

“Ma,” he said, leaning over the railing.