“You’d do your best not to hurt my feelings. Especially after reading ‘Wrong’.” The drawer rattled as she opened it and shoved in a stack of shirts.

“If I ripped everything you write down to shreds, would you believe me?”

Another laugh. “Probably. It’s always easier to believe the bad.” She picked a piece of real or imaginary lint off the shirt in her hands.

“Maybe you need to be the one to stop judging what you’ve written. Can you sing one for me?”

“Which one?” She shoved her t-shirt into her open drawer.

“‘Found.’”

“Out of all the songs in there you want me to play ‘Found’.” Her eyebrow lifted.

“What’s wrong with ‘Found’? Don’t judge my song choice.”

She shook her head and picked up her guitar. Sitting on her desk, she checked the tuning and opened and closed her hand.

“You don’t know it by heart.”

“The song I wrote in sixth grade about losing my retainer and having to sort through three lunch periods of cafeteria food? No, sorry, I haven’t committed that one to memory.”

“I’d have thought it would’ve left a permanent mark on your mind.” I handed over the notebook.

She shuddered. “So much ketchup. I can’t eat it to this day.”

I pushed myself back on her bed until my back pressed against the wall.

By the end of the song, tears of laughter rolled down my face. I’d never look at French fries and green beans the same way again.

I stood, cupping my hands around my mouth, pumping my one-man crowd roar as she sang the last syllable of ‘corn dog’ before taking a seated bow.

She flung a balled-up sock at me, hitting me in the chest. “Does anyone else know you’re such a goofball?”

“No one but you, Bay.”

17

Bay

My neck ached. Eraser shavings covered my bedspread. The words on the index cards blurred. But I’d finally made it. I’d crossed the bio practice final finish line.

“How can you stand it?”

“Stand what?” I kicked my feet and scribbled in my notebook. Words flowed, filling line after line, page after page. My bio textbook and notebook had been abandoned. The first part of the practice test with a giant 92 in Piper’s bubbly, flowing handwriting covering the entire first page meant it was time for a reward. I’d gone downstairs and retrieved the container of goodness and two glasses of milk. Chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies.

“Being this close to Dare.” She sighed, a legit hand-to-chest, staring-out-the-window-longingly sigh.

My hackles raised before I tamped them down. Of course she was interested in Dare. Who wasn’t interested in Dare?

“He’s at least a hundred feet away. You’ve sat closer to him in class.”

“He’s not shirtless in class.”

I dropped my pencil and scrambled across my bed to her sentry station in front of my window. After our shower and my impromptu concert, he’d come over to watch a movie the next night. He’d practically lived at my house through the weekend of our relationship reckoning, only leaving when I went to the final tech rehearsals before the musical performances this week. Whether that would go beyond staring at him, shirtless and glistening after a post-downpour shower, remained to be seen.