Every morning, a motorhome parks across the street from Barrington High. The boy who steps out is Barrington's Everything Boy: its homecoming and prom king, its lacrosse hero and senior class president.

The yearbook would have called him Most Likely to Secretly Be Satan, if a fangirl hadn't made them take it back.

This morning he's spotted Lucy Selcouth, a first-year who's dropped an everything bagel with cream cheese face down on the sidewalk. It's raining, she's got a cast on her leg, and it's Wednesday, a day without hope.

Lucy doesn't litter. So she squats awkwardly to pick up her ruined bagel, her broken leg stretched out. People stream past her because people always stream past her. Rain lashes her face.

Then the rain stops and she looks up. A smiling boy is holding an umbrella over her. Helping her up, he hands her a bag from a local patisserie.

"They had a two-for-one special on chocolate croissants. Think you could take one off my hands?"

Lucy stutters that she's fine, she'll snack on her lunch.

"But you have the spring art show today. We can't have the talented painter of the Venusian Cat Pirates faint from hunger. Especially when you're about to win a silver ribbon." He winks.

Lucy feels ready to faint right that minute. She's never spoken to this boy. She's not attractive in a stop-you-on-the-sidewalk way, although she does have nice teeth. (The dentist always says so.)

Had her painting of the Venusian Cat Pirates in the lobby touched his heart? Had he gone as far as to look up the girl who'd painted it?

She'd been bold enough to show her inner weird, and that inner weird was acknowledged by--dare she think it--a normie.

With trembling hands, she accepts the croissant as the bell rings.

It's only later that Tita tells her that the Everything Boy is nice to everyone.

"I got my hair cut an inch and he said, 'Looking sharp, Two Punch!'"

"Two Punch?"

"It's my boxing name."

How very bland. Not the boxing--that was cool--but the idea of a perfectly handsome guy being perfectly nice, smart, yadda yadda.

Lucy and Tita are sitting in fold-out chairs at the spring art show. Everyone is passing them by, which is what people always do.

Now Lucy is scrolling through the social media page devoted to "Things Everything Boy Says!!! <3"

* "Fundraising for the Society for the Protection of Naked Mole Rats? Consider it done."

* "Sure, I'd love to help you with those differential equations."

* "You were so close to beating them at regionals. How about some chocolate caramel gelato with cake? It's on me."

She turns to Tita. "And no one finds this suspicious?"

Tita laughs. She's drawing a picture in purple marker on Lucy's cast. "Nah. He's just what a guy's supposed to be."

Just then, one of the art teachers comes over. She congratulates Lucy with a smile and hangs a silver ribbon on her picture frame.

Lucy thanks her. Then Tita caps her marker and gestures to Lucy's cast. "Voila!"

It is a surprisingly accurate caricature of Everything Boy's face. He's winking and blushing.

"It's like the picture of the Virgin Mary that appeared on a poor man's cloak," she explained. "You are a living relic of the miracle that is Everything Boy."

Lucy checks the marker to see if it's permanent.

It is.

* * *

As the show winds down, Lucy sneaks out the back. She's clutching the chocolate sampler that came with her art prize.

It's time to pay her debt to Everything Boy for that chocolate croissant. No one is around to think she's being a creepy fangirl. She'll just leave the box on the hood of his motorhome ... and limp away in a cast with his face.

Yeah, nothing weird about that.

It's tiring walking with crutches. Behind the school, she stops to catch her breath. A guy is slamming his fist against the snack machine.

Lucy finds some change in her pocket. "Hey, I was going to get something. Maybe it'll help?"

The guy nods and steps back. He's wearing sunglasses and a cap pulled low over his eyes. As she feeds in her quarters, he eyes her cast.

"That's some picture."

Right. She'll be explaining this for the next eight weeks. "Yeah, my friend drew it as a prank."

"Not a fan of Mr. Perfect?"

"It's more that he's a little suspicious, you know?" She punched the button the same thing he'd picked, salted peanuts.

Then she explains the oddities: how he'd known her face, name, painting, and the award she would receive.

"Most people would find that flattering," he observes.

They watched as the machine, miraculously, dispenses two packs of peanuts.

"Really? I just thought he was a robot."

He bends to retrieve the peanuts. "What do you mean?"

"You know, one with facial recognition, text-to-speech, AI, information available about people on the internet..." She laughs. "You could make a perfect version of yourself! I'm kidding. Though I'd totally like him better if he was."

He tosses a bag of peanuts to her and takes the other. "It's weird to prefer a fake."

"It's not! It would be a total send-up of high school, wouldn't it, to program something that fools everyone? Meanwhile you could ..." She pauses. "I don't know. What would you do if you didn't have to be at school?"

The boy smiles. Leaning sideways on the vending machine, he takes off his sunglasses and hat, running a hand through his hair.

Lucy gapes. It's Everything Boy.

Then he pulls a key ring from his pocket and nods in the direction of the motorhome. "Want to find out?"

Lucy tilts her head, considering. Then she smiles. Even on a rainy Wednesday, if you look closely enough, there's a world beyond the visible. Possibly weirder than Venusian cat pirates. But not a world you'd ever want to pass by.

She follows Everything Boy across the street and into the beyond.