I throw my razor in the bag. “So you plotted your revenge? Lying in wait?”

“That’s not it.”

“You just said it!”

“Fine. You want to see the revenge I plotted?” he asks. “I can show you.”

“You can show me?” I ask suspiciously. “I don’t think I want to see the revenge you plotted.”

“I want you to see.”

“Too bad,” I say.

“Jesus Christ.” He snatches up my phone and heads out of my room and down the hall.

“Hey!” I say, following after him. “Gimme that!”

He keeps going. “I will.”

“What are you doing?” I say.

“I’ll give it back, don’t worry,” he says, turning the corner, heading straight for the workout room.

He pushes open the door. I follow him into the empty space. A band of yellow moonlight streaks up hardwood. He flicks on the lights, sets my phone on a ledge, and heads straight for the boxes.

Is he going to show me what’s in the boxes?

“Stand back,” he says.

Stand back?What the hell?

I grab my phone and take a few backward steps.

He pulls a box away from the base of the mountain and a whole bunch of them come tumbling down.

I’m watching, mystified, thinking that whatever is in them must be light as feathers. He keeps pulling them away from the far end of the workout room, digging through them. His movements are abrupt, all harsh angles, familiar in the most painful way.

I wrap my arms around myself. Is there some specific box that he’s going for?

One of the boxes that tumbled down is only a few feet away from me, flap partly open. I go over and give it a shove with my foot. It’s almost as if there’s nothing inside it.

“What’s in there?” I ask.

“Nothing,” he says. “There’s nothing in the boxes. There never was.”

“What?” I don’t understand. “Why store empty boxes?”

He keeps tearing down the wall.

“As revenge schemes go, it doesn’t seem that effective,” I say.

He’s pulling more of them away from the wall, baring something, maybe.

And then I see the mirrors. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors. My belly swoops. More boxes come away

A ballet barre stretches all the way across.

I’m standing in aballet studio,not a weights room. A gorgeous ballet studio in the most beautiful building in all of Manhattan.