“Levi,” I say, closing the two feet between us in one fell swoop and crashing right into him, my lips landing on his, my arms grabbing his shirt, and a feeling of complete want rising from my belly to my cheeks. He responds, kissing me hard and hot and fast, and as I sink into him, trying to press every bit of surface area of my body to is, I know, in an instant, how right, and wonderful, and final this is. Levi is who I want; it has always been him. I will always love Ollie unconditionally, but Levi is mine.

When the kiss finally breaks, I burrow my head into the spot under his shoulder that feels like it was built for me. Wordlessly, he traces a finger down my cheek, and we take in the night: the lake, the crisp air, the sliver of a moon.

“I love you, you know.” It’s not the first time I’ve said it, but even so, it shocks me every time I do. The old Emma, the one who started her junior year a broken wreck, had no idea how to love anyone. I was always so afraid I’d lose anyone I got close to. But Levi and I went through a year no one else will ever understand. We are bound to each other, and only a year so wrong, on so many levels, could make this—us—so right.

We spend the late hours of the night lying on the sand, looking at the stars. For the first time I can remember, I feel a certain kind of contentment, being here with him, right where I belong. There were days on Castor, months when I thought we’d never have this. Knowing now that we have real futures, together—it’s still hard for me to believe.

“I think about them all the time,” I tell him. I mean Duplicate Emma and Levi. We’re only graduating because they went to our classes, applied to colleges, lived our lives for us. It isn’t fair that they had to die. I’ll never stop mourning the lives they had to give up.

“How could we not?” Levi answers.

The next morning at breakfast, we’re greeted with a presentation on the view screen. It’s Ollie’s highlight reel. The film, even in its nascent stage, is brilliant, not that I’m biased or anything. It tells the story of everything that happened on Pollux Island, and one thing is overwhelmingly clear: the Similars stopped Gravelle and Seymour from implementing their plans—plans that would have been catastrophic for so many Darkwood families, and the rest of the world. And they risked their lives to do it.