There were moments in the laughing when she felt totally miserable and wanted to cry—she missed the whole thing!—but that just made her laugh harder.

“What do we do now?” Gabe asked. “Hit the street? Camp out until the next showing?”

“I’m going home,” Elena said. “I’m going to sleep for twelve hours.”

“Good idea,” he said, sobering up a little. “Me, too.”

Elena looked at him. At his curly brown hair and red stubble. She wondered what he’d look like when he hadn’t been sleeping rough for a few days. (She’d know this if she ever picked up her head at school.) “We could come back tonight,” she said. “We might be able to get tickets.”

“I actually already have tickets,” Gabe said, running his fingers through his hair. “I was going to come back at seven and see it again.”

“Oh,” Elena said. “Cool.”

“You can have one . . .”

“I don’t want to take someone else’s ticket.”

“It was for my cousin, and he can wait a day,” Gabe said. “You’ve been waiting a week.”

“I’ve been waiting my whole life,” she said.

Gabe smiled at her.

Elena smiled back.

“Meet you tonight?” he said.

Elena nodded. “First person here gets in line.”

Winter Songs for Summer

SUMMER WAS CURLED INTO A BALL ON HER DORM room floor.

Or as close as she could get to a ball.

She wasn’t one of those girls who could collapse into nothing. She was curled into more of a boomerang shape. A miserable boomerang.

She should probably move onto the bed, but it felt more pathetic to lie on the floor, and the floor was closer to her speakers.

She had a small, all-in-one stereo with a dual cassette player and a radio and a three-CD carousel. It was her prize possession; she’d saved up for six months to buy it.

In the old days, when Summer wanted to listen to one song over and over, she’d have to hit rewind on the tape deck and then guess when to stop. Or sometimes she’d make a tape with the same song dubbed over and over—that was time-consuming.

Now she could put in a CD and press repeat track, and listen to the same song infinitely without ever getting up—without ever having to shift out of her misery.

It had really revolutionized this breakup.

Summer had been listening to “Silent All These Years” on repeat since she broke up with Charlie five days ago.