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Noah grinned "Yes"

He brought rocery store, a short distance froed in little tins or paper wrapping tied with ribbon The men behind the counter hite butcher’s coats There was an entire corner devoted only to ravioli

"What do you feel like eating?" Noah said, walking down the cramped aisles, a bounce in his step

I bit"Pie?"

He gazed atover his face "Me too And olives Oh, and spaghetti," he said, pressing his fingers against a glass counter of prepared foods

He zigzagged through the store, picking things off the shelves and piling the One hard salas A container of prehetti with pesto And a slice of rhubarb pie froo on the side

I kept laughing and dropping things on the floor as he took the iteister

While Noah joked with the cashier, I gazed out theThe streetlaed fro the storefront I leaned forward, squinting into the night A car passed, its headlights wrapping around the silhouette of a boy, his shoulders shifting as he moved toward me

Slowly, the smile faded from my face Dante,to make out his arms, his chest, his face

"Renée," Noah said, leaning towardbeside e of cheese slipped froo

As I s slipped from my hands, but I didn’t even stop to pick them up "I’m sorry," I said to Noah as he bent over the fruit on the floor "I’ll be right back" And with that, I ran outside

"Wait!" I yelled, but when I reached the sidewalk, Dante was nowhere to be seen Desperate, I ran into thewildly in either direction He was gone

Through the storefront , I could see Noah staring atht my eye on the telephone pole next to where I had just seen Dante A flyer was stapled to the post, its sides flapping in the wind I flattened it out,as I read the words scrawled in Latin over the advertisement in thick marker I translated:

WAIT FOR ME

"Are you okay?" Noah said as I stepped inside "You look like you just saw a ghost"

"I think I did," I said softly,Had Dante left that note for me to find? How many people wrote notes in Latin around the city?

"Why did you run out there? What did you see?"

I paused, trying to feel for Dante’s presence, but there was nothing; not even the slightest hint of hi my mind Maybe he had never even been there in the first place "So time"

Wait for me, the wind seemed to say as we stepped outside Even if Dante hadn’t written it, I would wait

We walked to a stone courtyard nearby and sat on the ground, surrounded by skinny trees, barren, save for a few lingering yellow leaves Behind us stood a fountain with a statue of a boy playing the flute, filling the night with the quiet sound of trickling water What did a flute sound like? I tried to remember, but couldn’t

Noah loosened the knot of his tie, revealing a freckle on his neck, and handed me a fork

"Bon appétit," he said, the streetlalass of sparkling cider, I said, "At the end of class today you said you had an ulteriorme to coffee What was it?"

"I wanted to ask you what you were doing the other day in the hospital With Anya"

"Oh" I

I stared at , still tasted bland I could lie I could tell hi anyone," Noah said