And then he kisses me, and all the nerves in my body that I thought had died that day last year spark back to life.

Chapter Thirty-four

This.

Chapter Thirty-five

After Zach leaves, the house is quiet. My parents still aren’t home. It’s funny—I’ve been invisible to them since it became clear that Jordan had something that I don’t, that his brain worked in beautiful, mysterious ways, that it needed to be cultivated into something great. Maybe now I just feel it more. Before they could remember that I existed in relation to Jordan. Or maybe it’s because Jordan always forced them to notice me—at the dinner table, he would make an effort to bring me into the conversation, even during the last few years, when we would go weeks without really speaking.

Now, with him gone, it’s all collapsed. My parents and I don’t know how to relate to each other without him. I didn’t realize it until he was gone, but he was the glue holding us all together. Now we’re untethered, floating, occupying the same space but never touching.

I head upstairs, phone in hand.

It dings with a message. Lucy.

Tell me everything.

I roll my eyes at the screen. I think about trying to put that kiss into words and my cheeks grow hot.

And I realize that I care. Fuuuuuck. Guilt churns in my stomach.

He’s nice, I reply to Lucy as I walk into my room.

Wowwwww. You like him!!!

It’s not a question.

Yeah. I guess.

Oh MAY, I’m so happy! I can basically hear Lucy’s scream of excitement from across town.

That makes one of us.

She sends me an eye-roll emoji. So dramatic. Come to breakfast tomorrow with me and Grann? We can have those blueberry pancakes you love so much.

I plop down on my bed and take my shoes off, throwing them across the room one at a time.

I type: Okay. I can’t get out of it; Lucy knows the way to my heart. Grann’s pancakes are legendary.

I can already picture what breakfast is going to be like, can picture the cross-examination from Lucy and Grann about the last two nights, all the questions about my feelings.

This is why I’ve been hiding under my covers for the past year. It’s not right that I can move on, go back to school, start to like a boy, play the trumpet, sing, laugh, live—and Jordan doesn’t get any of that.

He doesn’t get anything at all.

In the silence of my bedroom, the suffocating weight of everything I’m hiding—from Lucy, from Zach, from Chim, from my parents—starts to press down on me again.

My phone dings and I look at its screen, anticipating another message from Lucy, but I see that it’s from Zach.

My traitorous heart leaps in my chest.