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Chapters (37)
  1. Cover
  2. Also by Jenny Valentine
  3. Dedication
  4. Novo
  5. ONE
  6. TWO
  7. THREE
  8. FOUR
  9. FIVE
  10. SIX
  11. SEVEN
  12. Novo
  13. EIGHT
  14. NINE
  15. TEN
  16. ELEVEN
  17. TWELVE
  18. THIRTEEN
  19. FOURTEEN
  20. FIFTEEN
  21. SIXTEEN
  22. SEVENTEEN
  23. EIGHTEEN
  24. NINETEEN
  25. TWENTY
  26. TWENTY-ONE
  27. TWENTY-TWO
  28. TWENTY-THREE
  29. TWENTY-FOUR
  30. TWENTY-FIVE
  31. TWENTY-SIX
  32. TWENTY-SEVEN
  33. TWENTY-EIGHT
  34. Novo
  35. Acknowledgments
  36. About the Author
  37. What’s next onyour reading list?

I closed my book without bothering to mark the page, and I wondered if anyone else had heard this central thing in me, this core thing snapping like a twig. SNAP when the car pulled up and I saw that boy inside it. SNAP when we looked at each other. SNAP when those eyes blackened and that mouth opened and the breath tumbled out of him in soft clouds. He saw me watching, I’m sure of that. We watched each other, and I still dream of it now, his body turning away like it was supposed to but his eyes staying with me, the way dancers do it, the dark and light of them the very last things to go.

NINE

I was still in my sunlit place in the yard when Novo left through his new front door, singing, and I remember thinking how brilliantly shameless that was, to exit a house you just invaded, hands in pockets, loud, like nothing-to-see-here, breezy and carefree. I recognized straight off that the rules of normal did not apply. He was untouchable. Dazzling. I imagined the force field glinting around him, all that fearlessness catching the light. And at the same time I had this feeling that he wanted me, of all people, to notice him, that he was thinking right then about me.

I hid from that feeling in the long grass because I didn’t trust it. He was the width of the street away from me, and I told myself it was nothing, even though my palms felt hot and my thoughts were giddy and my heart might as well have been beating in my neck. I tried to count ordinary things—blades of grass, gravel on the path, bricks in the wall, the contents of my pockets (mostly receipts and a twisted half-pack of gum)—but none of them were ordinary enough. None of them talked me out of getting up and opening the gate. I knew straightaway that something impossible was happening, something about this boy in the world that couldn’t be explained, not like a cheap magic trick anyway. I had this feeling, the kind that comes from your gut instead of your brain, the kind you should listen to, because your gut knows what it knows, and is usually right, and doesn’t need anything as complicated as logic to prove it. I had this overwhelming feeling. So I followed him.