“Why do you want to be with me?”

His eyes opened to the whites. “Don’t you think we’re good together?”

“Of course I do! Obviously.”

“All right, well.” He made as if to pout.

“Is it because I’m sick?”

“No!”

“You have a thing for sick girls?” He looked so affronted I poked him in the arm. “Just say it, Jack! It doesn’t matter. Don’t think too much. You always think too much!”

He stared at me as though I had uttered some profound, prizewinning thing. “That’s just the point! I do think too much. I can’t help it. I like people who think. Most kids are hung up on sports or looks or being popular. It all seems so trivial.”

“And I’m not trivial.”

“No . . .” His voice went low and teasing. “You’re definitely not trivial . . .”

“I’m not?”

“You’re deep . . .” He tipped his head sideways between the chairs and kissed me lingeringly to let me know he liked me for much more than my lack of triviality, which, by the way, was not only the result of a random thing that went wrong in my immune system. But I wasn’t going to give in yet. I made him look at me.

“Listen, Jack. In the future? If I’m not here?”

“Yeah?” He was ready to fight again.

“Anything good happens to you?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s me.”

Jack looked as if he might burst out laughing or crying, and couldn’t decide which. We went up to the house, arms around each other.

Strange at first, doing it in the lake bedroom with the life preservers hanging on the wall and the shelves full of board games and stuffed animals I’d never bothered to get rid of. We left the curtains open. There was something thrilling about that, even though no one was out there to see us. Maybe it was being at the lake house. Maybe it was the conversation we’d had on the dock. But that time was the closest and the best. The way it’s supposed to be. So it was the saddest time too. The books don’t tell you about that.