Cover

Dedication

FOR CHRISTOPHER,
MY FAVORITE TOUGH CROWD

Midnights

December 31, 2014, almost midnight

IT WAS COLD OUT ON THE PATIO, UNDER THE DECK. Frigid. Dark.

Dark because Mags was outside at midnight, and dark because she was in the shadows.

This was the last place anyone would look for her—anyone, and especially Noel. She’d miss all the excitement.

Thank God. Mags should have thought of this years ago.

She leaned back against Alicia’s house and started eating the Chex mix she’d brought out with her. (Alicia’s mom made the best Chex mix.) Mags could hear the music playing inside, and then she couldn’t—and that was a good sign. It meant that the countdown was starting.

“Ten!” she heard someone shout.

“Nine!” More people joined in.

“Eight!”

Mags was going to miss the whole thing. Perfect.

December 31, 2011, almost midnight

“Are there nuts in that?” the boy asked.

Mags paused, holding a cracker piled with pesto and cream cheese in front of her mouth. “I think there are pine nuts . . .” she said, crossing her eyes to look at it.

“Are pine nuts tree nuts?”

“I have no idea,” Mags said. “I don’t think pine nuts grow on pine trees, do they?”

The boy shrugged. He had shaggy brown hair and wide-open blue eyes. He was wearing a Pokémon T-shirt.

“I’m not much of a tree-nut expert,” Mags said.

“Me neither,” he said. “You’d think I would be—if I accidentally eat one, it could kill me. If there were something out there that could kill you, wouldn’t you try to be an expert on it?”

“I don’t know . . .” Mags shoved the cracker in her mouth and started chewing. “I don’t know very much about cancer. Or car accidents.”

“Yeah . . .” the boy said, looking sadly at the buffet table. He was skinny. And pale. “But tree nuts specifically have it out for me, for me personally. They’re more like assassins than, like, possible dangers.”

“Damn,” Mags said, “what’d you ever do to tree nuts?”

The boy laughed. “Ate them, I guess.”

The music, which had been really loud, stopped. “It’s almost midnight!” somebody shouted.

They both looked around. Mags’s friend Alicia, from homeroom, was standing on the couch. It was Alicia’s party—the first New Year’s Eve party that Mags, at fifteen, had ever been invited to.

“Nine!” Alicia yelled.

“Eight!” There were a few dozen people in the basement, and they were all shouting now.

“Seven!”

“I’m Noel,” the boy said, holding out his hand.

Mags brushed all the pesto and traces of nuts off her hand and shook his. “Mags.”

“Four!”

“Three!”

“It’s nice to meet you, Mags.”

“You, too, Noel. Congratulations on evading the tree nuts for another year.”

“They almost had me with that pesto dip.” “Yeah.” She nodded. “It was a close call.”

December 31, 2012, almost midnight