“Oh, but I do! It’s my duty as the first person allowed in here. It’s for posterity, Nolan. Somebody deserves to know what the great N. E. Endsley thought about Rebecca Wise and…” I pause, my finger scanning down the page. “Jessica Rabbit?”

Despite his red hue, Nolan stares me down. “You have to admit, Jessica Rabbit is hot.”

“I do not. I mean, if you’re into unrealistic animated hourglass portrayals of women … rabbits? Was she supposed to be a rabbit?”

“She married Roger Rabbit; she’s a human,” Nolan says defensively.

“Like that makes it better.”

“Whatever. Can’t you just skip to the next journal?”

“Fine, but only because we can’t possibly read every single one of these. Do you have any you would recommend? Like maybe one that is a little less wet dream and a little more substance?”

Nolan stands in front of the case, fingers tapping against his full bottom lip, and now I’m thinking of kissing him. Will there be more before I leave? And is it fair to him or me that I want there to be another?

My first kiss was with Greg Peterson, during homeroom our fifth-grade year, on a dare, and we both got sent to the nurse’s office for a lecture because whooping cough was going around. It was a dare I had taken willingly, because I had a crush on Greg, but I was more disappointed in the kiss than in the whooping cough I got a week later.

I thought maybe I was going to be someone who would rather read than kiss.

But just as I didn’t really understand death until Jenna, I never fully appreciated the appeal of kissing until Nolan roused a longing in me that I couldn’t name. I used to think that love interests falling into each other’s arms in stories sounded disorderly and … kind of boring.

But there’s nothing boring about kissing Nolan Endsley.

When he turns back to me with a journal—a regular black spiral—I try not to look like I was checking him out the way he checked out poor Rebecca Wise of the mountainous boobs, or that I am disappointed in the plainness of the journal.

“This one,” Nolan says.

It’s another diary, from an older Nolan Endsley. Each entry is meticulously headed with the date and the time it was written, and the handwriting is so sharp and orderly that I imagine it would prick my finger to touch.

“The first bits aren’t important,” he says. “It’s around July thirty-first that you’ll want to start reading.”

I know what I’m going to find, but I’m still not fully prepared when I read the first line: “They are dead.”

I jerk my head up, but Nolan is looking down at his hands, lacing his fingers together and apart unseeingly.

“Are you sure?” I ask.