I took another step, testing the space between us. He didn’t move. He was decent, patient. I was connected to him by something electric, a taut, shimmering string. It pulled, pulled, pulled me forward until I was so close I had to press my hands into his shirt, his clean shirt, that’s what happens when you treat the mulch like bedclothes, when the sweat is honeycomb leaf. I gripped the fabric. Luke said nothing; he looked only curious, waiting to see what I would do next, his arms relaxed at his sides. Serena would never understand. She’d never feel this, what I was feeling now. She wouldn’t allow it, not with that cold mirrored heart of hers. Desire is the root of all suffering. I understood, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. I could only give myself over to this power of not-power, this body requirement. I reached up and wrapped my hands around Luke’s neck, but instead of pushing down with my thumbs to choke him, as I should have, oh, I should have, I pulled his head toward mine and kissed him, hard, digging my nails into the back of his neck, pushing my hips into his.

I felt something hot moving in my stomach. No, it was only his tongue in my mouth. I pushed into him, pushing him backward, that large man, a kind of magic in that alone. He made the tiniest sound, not a groan or a complaint, but something like air escaping, and suddenly I felt light-headed. He put his hands on my hips, and then they were lower, and I remembered something I’d seen from the back of the cab on the winding road up to the Center weeks before: a heavy policeman in sunglasses standing on the side of the road, the door of his cruiser open into oncoming traffic, pointing his gun into the ditch; at what, I couldn’t tell. He fired two shots in quick succession, but by the second one we were too far past; I pressed my face against the window and saw nothing. The cancerous cabdriver had seemed not to notice. What was it? An exercise? An execution? A mercy kill? It was the first time I had ever been kissed.

Luke pushed me away from his body with stiff arms.

“You don’t want this,” he said.

“I want it,” I said. Just a little more, I thought. A little more and I would be the one to lift into the air. I had felt it, the lightness, I had felt it, and it was Luke, and I would get there first, before all of them, and then I would have everything, he would love me again forever. I leaned forward, but Luke was stronger.

“You’re a peach,” he said.