“Yes,” I nearly gasped.

Ask me to do anything. Anything! I practically screamed the words in my head. I’ll kiss you again; I don’t care about the risk.

Joshua paused for a beat and then—

“Do you want to listen to some music?”

That wasn’t exactly the question I’d expected. My head darted back, and I stared at him. He wore a mischievous smile, as if he’d read my mind and intentionally avoided the questions I wanted him to ask. I scowled a little.

“Tease,” I muttered under my breath. Joshua simply grinned wider. I was more than ready to give him a soft smack on his chest for being so infuriating, but then I noticed his breath was just as uneven as mine. I sighed. As long as he seemed at least mildly ruffled by our contact, I could forgive him.

I carefully lowered my arms from his chest and backed away. Once there were more than a few inches between us, I made a show of stretching and yawning. The picture of utter boredom, totally blasé. Joshua obviously wasn’t fooled, because he chuckled softly at my performance.

“So, you’re finally going to entertain me? With music, I guess?”

Joshua sat down on his bed and patted a spot next to him on the dark blue comforter. I thrilled a little at the image of us sitting . . . on his bed . . . together, and then tried to accomplish the act as calmly as possible. I couldn’t imagine how badly the mood would be ruined if I accidentally slid off the comforter and onto the floor.

“Actually,” Joshua said, “the music is part of my devious plan.”

I raised one eyebrow. “Your ‘devious plan’?”

He nodded, and his face lit up with excitement. He tucked one leg beneath him on the bed and spun around to face me more fully.

“We need to figure out more about your personality, right?”

When I nodded, he went on.

“Well, what tells us more about your personality than your musical tastes?”

I twisted the corner of my mouth in disbelief. “Isn’t that a little too simple?”

Joshua shook his head, still smiling. “Not really. Short of finding a time machine and going back to 1999, we aren’t going to figure out who you were. So why don’t we figure out who you are now? Isn’t that more important anyway?”

I blinked in surprise. “That . . . well, that actually might be brilliant, Joshua.”

He shrugged again. “Just because I can’t do differential equations, it doesn’t mean I’m totally useless.”

I laughed, and then mirrored his position by crossing both of my legs under me.

“So, how do we do this?”

“I play DJ, and you tell me what you like.”

“Got it,” I said with a firm nod, fighting little jitters of excitement.

“And who knows? Maybe something will be familiar. As long as it’s not death metal, I think we can rule you out as a potential Satan worshiper.”

“Well, don’t judge me if it is.” I laughed.

He chuckled and then reached back to his nightstand to fiddle with something on it. I craned my head to get a better look at the object. It appeared to be a tiny, plastic box with a glowing screen sitting atop a small stereo.

“What is that thing?”

Joshua stopped what he was doing without letting go of the little box and threw me a quizzical look over his shoulder.

“You’ve never seen an MP3 player before?”

“A what?” A defensive note crept into my voice. “Died in 1999, remember?”

“Not a big deal.” Joshua gave me a warm smile and went back to working on the machine. “I don’t remember whether these things were big back then.”

“Probably not for a poor girl from Oklahoma,” I grumbled. Joshua simply nodded, too distracted by his efforts to answer aloud.

The machine made some soft clicking noises under Joshua’s hands and then a few strains of perfectly clear music flooded the room. I assumed it came from the speakers, and the MP-whatever thing.

“Tell me what you think,” Joshua murmured as he leaned back against his pillow.

The song started with a soft guitar, strumming out a sad little melody. Then a young man’s voice joined in, southern and a little slurry. As he sang, drums and a more insistent guitar merged with his voice. The song grew until it transformed into something soaring and plaintive: a sort of lament that managed to sound heartbroken and angry at the same time. Finally, the song began to fade, and I sighed a little

“Don’t recognize it?” Joshua asked.

“No, I don’t. But I like it.”

“It’s one of my favorites.” Joshua wore a strange expression as he watched me listen to the last few chords of the song. He almost looked proud that we seemed to have the same taste. I smiled a little at the thought.

“What else have you got?” I asked.

“Let’s see . . .” He adjusted the machine again and eventually found something appropriate. “This is from the early 2000s. Jillian likes to listen to it when we’re in my car. She calls it ‘old school,’ which is kind of ironic, if you think about it.”

Bass pumped from the speakers. After a few thumping drumbeats, a girl’s voice warbled out, barely audible over the accompaniment. She wasn’t the best singer in the world, but she sang in a throaty manner I guess one could classify as sexy. I wrinkled my nose each time she went off-key.

“Nope,” I said after only a few repetitions of the chorus. “Don’t know it, don’t like it.”

“Thank God,” Joshua breathed, putting the song to a merciful, early end.

“Akin to death metal?” I asked with a sly grin.

“Close.” He laughed. “If you’d liked that one, I might have had to get behind Ruth’s ‘pitchforks and torches’ campaign.”

“Har har,” I said as Joshua tried to find something else on the MP3 player for us to analyze.

“Here we go. Late 1990s. This is a rock song from when I was a little kid. I actually really like it, but I was too young back then to remember whether it was popular.” Joshua made one more click and then looked up again to watch me listen.

This song began much like the first, with a few repeated guitar chords. Then drums and a man’s voice—older than the one in the first song but just as slurry—entered the song. When the man growled louder, so did the guitar. The sounds became raw and joyous. It made me recall the way I’d felt in Joshua’s car while we drove to school. Free and flying.

And then it made me recall something else.

About halfway through the song, just at the point of its crescendo, my surroundings shimmered and changed.

When the image steadied, I was no longer in Joshua’s bedroom. I was in some other room, standing at an open window and looking out over a sunlit yard. My hands gripped a wooden windowsill, its surface rough from the chips in its white paint. A warm breeze hit me from outside. There was just a hint of cool in it, promising fall but still tugging at the end of summer. Somewhere behind me, a radio played the same song I’d just been listening to in Joshua’s room. As the man’s voice wailed happily, I smiled and swayed to the beat. Free and flying.

Suddenly, the flash vanished.

The residue of light from the flash still ghosted across my eyes in weird black splotches, as though I’d been looking directly at the sun. It took a few seconds before I could see clearly—could see Joshua staring at me expectantly. When I finally could, a smile began to spread across my face.

“I know it!” I crowed. “I know the song! I listened to it once, inside some house . . . mine, I think.”

“Excellent!” Joshua cried out, clapping his hands to his knees. Then he leaned closer and whispered, “You know, I don’t think anyone who likes so much of the same music as I do can be evil.”

“Let’s hope not,” I whispered back.

“I don’t need to hope. I know.”

I was simply playing—we were playing—and yet I suddenly believed what he’d just said.

I wasn’t evil. Ruth was wrong; Eli was wrong.

I didn’t have much proof: only a few guitar chords, some disconnected memories, and a handful of moments with this boy. But I knew it, too, then. Believed it.