He kisses me. One hand is resting on the steering wheel, and the other finds my leg. I settle into the seat and rest my feet on his spare sneakers and extra sweatshirt and half-empty Nalgenes. His hand travels toward the pocket of my jeans. Then my zipper. But before he crosses those several inches where the material is stretched between good and really good, my breath catches in my throat.

“Come on, we can’t miss Abigail,” I say.

“I know.” He brushes a hair out of my face, then tilts his head toward me and kisses me harder, his tongue swirling in my mouth, and my tongue swirling back in his. He moves the seat belt across my arm and unbuttons my shirt. His fingers are warm on the skin beneath my collarbone. “You’re so beautiful,” he says. It ignites the pilot light in my deepest furnace.

“We should go,” I murmur, biting his lip. He makes a noise from somewhere in his throat that I’ve only heard a few other times, but I want to hear more of it. Much more of it.

“Okay, okay, later,” he says.

“Are you sure your parents are gonna be gone all night?” I ask as he drives up my street toward school.

“I’m sex positive,” he says, then salutes the windshield.

“Wow,” I laugh. “That was so bad.”

“You liked it,” he says, grinning.

I grin back. “Only because I like you.”

School is so weird at night. Lights you never knew existed get turned on, and custodians you’ve never seen before open closets you thought were pretend. Inside the front entrance, balloons frame a banner that reads WELCOME TO YOUR NIGHT, SENIORS! Our whole class is trickling in loudly, and a little way down the hall, Evelyn is handing out itineraries. There’s the dance performance, the debate performance, and the make-your-own-pizza thing, which is not a performance but could become one. Gene and I hold hands as we walk toward the auditorium, passing a poster for the Breast Cancer Polar Plunge.

“Aw, man,” he says, “I was hoping everyone would vote for the Brain Degeneration Walk. I do not want to freeze my balls off.”

“Damn,” I say, but a chorus of angels is singing a cappella in my head. My mom still hasn’t broken the news to my dad and me about the walk, but I doubt she’s changed her mind. I don’t know how I would have dealt with both school and parents in the same venue. The same zip code is bad enough.

“Wow, I would not like to dance in front of all these people,” Gene yells over the music blasting in the auditorium. We take a seat next to Hilary, and he and I play elbow-footsies on the armrest. The whole senior class is plopping down in the maroon-felt seats, and there’s something exciting and loud and warm about that, especially when someone turns around and looks at me and Gene together. I exist, he exists, we do exist together.