Danny slides to the ground, cringing against impact. The Grays catch her. It’s the least they can do. June pulls small, sticking bits of Danny’s wet hair from her face and hugs her, jumping to keep warm, and kisses her, cold wet lips against cold wet lips. Hawthorn and Lelia do it, too. Then they tip their heads back and scream at the thunder.

“I didn’t find the ravens,” Danny shouts over the full-throated storm, the raging Grays. But no one is disappointed. That’s a small-time feeling compared to what’s coursing through them right now. Rush grabs Danny by the wet straps of her tank top and kisses her. Everyone has been kissing her.

But Rush doesn’t stop.

Danny: Now

I’m waiting for the end, but this kiss sprawls into a messy, beautiful beginning. Rush crowds my hips with hers, fists in my shirt like she’s in the middle of an invisible fight and she can’t tell if she’s winning or losing. Her breath falls warm on my neck, and then she’s kissing me at the soft branching place between neck and shoulder, working her whole body against mine, like she might be able to pass through me if she tries hard enough, like I am a doorway to somewhere she wants to be.

The Grays are watching.

They are silent, unblinking, blurry because nothing else can be perfectly in focus when Rush is kissing me.

“Whoa,” June whispers.

“Wait a second,” Lelia says, raising her hand. “I have questions.”

“What about Imogen?” June asks, and I snatch back from those words like they’re trying to burn me. I wonder how long I’ll have to be here, how special they’ll have to believe I am before anyone asks What about Danny?

It was bad enough in Michigan without having to worry about losing this feeling. The one I just got when I touched the electric arc of Rush’s lower back and opened my eyes to find her face so close, eyes open and staring back at me, so blue I can’t imagine any other color. It takes me back to the first time I saw the redwood trees. The scale was shattered. My heart couldn’t adjust.

A feeling this big shouldn’t exist.

It shouldn’t even be possible.

I’m about to walk away from it, but Rush takes my hand and slowly, carefully, leads me away from the rest of the Grays.

“I’m sorry, Danny!” June cries after us.

Rush laces us between trees. Soon we are in our own grove, rounded on all sides by tall, thin trees — ones that look young, somehow, even though they’re already a hundred times taller than we’ll ever be.

Rush takes my hands in both of hers.

“Remember when you kissed me in the cemetery?” she asks.

“Of course.” I remember every movement, every breath.