by Nicola Yoon
“I think so,” I say. The truth is I forgot that was the reason we started hanging out in the first place.
He stops walking. “One way to know for sure,” he says. He takes my right hand with his left and rests his other hand on my waist. We’re almost in closed position. All I have to do is move my left hand and rest it on his shoulder, so I do.
“You want to practice right now?” he asks.
He slides his arm up from my waist to just under my shoulder blade. He uses the heel of his hand against my back to nudge me closer. Fifi would be proud of his lead technique. We are in perfect closed position.
There’s at least six inches of space between us.
I can’t quite get myself to look up at him, so I look at his clavicle instead.
“I really want to kiss you,” he says.
Now I have to look up at him. “There’s no kissing in dancing,” I say.
He smiles a smile that’s somehow wider than his face. He doesn’t take his eyes off my lips. “Is that a yes?”
My heart slows all the way down. Strangely, I feel relieved. I know I’m going to kiss him. Honestly, nothing could stop me from kissing him. I’ve wanted to kiss him for a while now. Probably since our LaLaLand tour. Probably since before that.
The only reason I haven’t yet is that I’m afraid. Because of my dad and the divorce. Because of the visions. What if I see our future? What if it’s not a good one?
But I don’t want to be afraid anymore.
I lean in and tilt my face up.
Our teeth collide.
He smiles against my lips and pulls away for a second to adjust our position. But then he puts his hands on either side of my face and kisses me again. I wrap my arms around his neck, wanting to get closer—needing to get closer. His hands slide down my back and then…lower. Never again will I make fun of his enormous hands. They are the perfect size.
“Wow, that was better than I thought it was gonna be, and I thought it was gonna be good,” he says when we finally pull apart.
I laugh. “How much thinking about this have you been doing?”
“A fair amount,” he says, and kisses me again, and it’s more than good.
It’s excellent.
Stupendous.
Phenomenal.
Prodigious.
Every synonym for excellent ever conceived.
I’ll almost certainly worry about this kiss and what it means tomorrow, but for right now I lean in and kiss him again, happy to be in the here and now.
CHAPTER 25
The Ones You Don’t See Coming, Part 1
“WHY DO YOU keep touching your lips like that?” Sophie asks. She imitates me by pressing two fingers against her lips.
Cassidy stops chewing her PB & J. “You are acting stranger than normal.”
“Did something happen with you and X last night?” asks Sophie.
Across the table, Martin just watches me.
One of the hazards of having friends, especially longtime ones, is just how well they know you.
“We might have kissed,” I say.
“See, I knew it!” Cassidy says, nudging Sophie’s shoulder. “Didn’t I say she had poufy just-kissed lips last night?”
“You did say that,” Sophie says, laughing.
Martin joins in on the teasing. “Was it a good kiss?”
“Infinity on a scale of one to ten,” I say, with a huge smile I can’t seem to make smaller.
They tease me some more, with Cassidy claiming that she has kiss radar—“kissdar,” she calls it. Sophie asks when we can have another bonfire with my “boyfriend.”
Hearing her say boyfriend sends me into a small panic. First, X and I are not officially together. Second, don’t I know from the visions that things fall apart? Third, I don’t know why I didn’t see a vision of us last night. Maybe one of the rules of the visions is I can’t see my own future? Or maybe I have to actually see the kiss for it to happen? That’s fine with me. I like kissing with my eyes closed.
I stand up and grab my tray. “I’m going to get more chocolate milk. When I get back we can totally talk about something other than my lips.”
I make my way over to the drinks counter, dodging squealing hugs, back slaps and high fives. The cafeteria is always loudest and most crowded on the first day back from a break, and that’s definitely true today. But it’s more than that. With only ten weeks to go until graduation, the seniors are especially sentimental. Never have there been so many breakups, make-ups, temporary hookups, declarations of devotion and general shenanigans. The hallways are a minefield of nostalgia bombs and regret grenades. Most conversations begin with either Do you remember the time? or I wish I had. Lots of group selfies are being taken. Kids are laughing louder and longer, as if whatever was just said is the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. Groups of friends who haven’t hung out since freshman year are suddenly sitting together again. It’s like everyone has realized that high school is ending, and they’re trying to make every memory count.
I grab the last chocolate milk and head back to our table. When I get there, Sophie and Cassidy are gone.
“Where’d they go?” I ask Martin.
He shrugs. “No idea. Sophie had something to do and Cassidy went with her.”
He waits for me to settle back into my seat before he starts his interrogation. “So I’m guessing you didn’t have a vision after you kissed?”
I bounce a little in my seat. “Nope, not even a blip.”
“Huh,” he says. “I wonder why.”
“I’m trying not to wonder why,” I tell him.
“I’m happy for you, Eves. You guys are good together.” He smiles, but I can feel that something’s on his mind.
“What’s up with you?” I ask.
“I think Danica really likes her new guy,” he says. “She posts about him a lot. What if I missed my chance?”
I don’t know what to say. I’m torn between wanting to make him feel better and not wanting to encourage him about something that’s never going to happen.
“I don’t think you missed your chance,” I say.
The four-minute-warning bell rings, and we gather our things and leave. Our next class is on the third floor. Martin pushes the stairwell door open but then stops walking so suddenly that I almost run into him. “Oh my god,” he says.
At first I think Danica must be here somewhere, because she always stops Martin in his tracks. But then I follow his gaze. It’s not Danica.
It’s Sophie and Cassidy standing right there in the middle of the staircase.
They’re kissing.
And I see.
CHAPTER 26
Sophie and Cassidy
SOPHIE AND CASSIDY outside Cassidy’s enormous house. It’s late at night. Cassidy is struggling to fit her key into the front door.
“Let me help you,” Sophie says. She tries to take the key away from Cassidy, but Cassidy doesn’t let go. Instead, she tries to pull Sophie in closer.
Sophie resists.
Cassidy says: “You’re so pretty. How come it took me so long to notice how pretty you are?”
Sophie’s dark eyes are hopeful and careful. “How drunk are you?” she asks, kind of teasing, kind of not.
Cassidy shakes her head. “You’re pretty when I’m sober too,” she says.
This time when Cassidy pulls her in, Sophie doesn’t resist.
* * *
—
Cassidy leading Sophie through the doors of the planetarium at Griffith Observatory. Except for a guard and a tour guide, no one else is there.
“How did you do this?” Sophie asks, excited and awed.
Cassidy shrugs. “Might as well use my parents’ money for something good,” she says.
* * *
—
This moment
right now, them kissing in the stairwell like no one’s watching.
* * *
—
A late-night pool party in someone’s backyard. Christmas lights strung across the sky. Kids strewn across the lawn.
Cassidy stumbles, almost falls into the pool, almost pulls Sophie in with her.
“God, Cassidy, how much did you drink?” Sophie asks.
“Don’t be like that, Sophie,” Cassidy says. “Relax.”
Sophie looks down into the pool. It’s lit from inside, glows blue-green against the night. To Cassidy she says: “But I thought you liked me like this.”
* * *
—
The four of us at Surf City Waffle. Martin’s USA map is folded and tucked between the syrup bottles and the wall.
Sophie and Cassidy are next to each other but not touching.
Cassidy is looking out the window. Her face says she wants to be someplace—anyplace—else.
Sophie is looking at Cassidy. Her face says she wants the same thing.
Cassidy starts ripping pages out of her Road Trip USA guidebook.
She doesn’t look at Sophie, or any of us, as she leaves.
CHAPTER 27
The Ones You Don’t See Coming, Part 2
THE VISION ENDS, and I’m back in the stairwell.
Sophie and Cassidy aren’t kissing anymore. Instead, they’re waving at Martin and me with goofy, happy expressions on their faces.
Martin nudges my shoulder. “Shit,” he says. “You saw them, didn’t you?”
I’m too rattled to talk, so I just nod.
Sophie and Cassidy realize something’s wrong. They start walking down the stairs toward us.
I can’t stay here and pretend to be happy for them when I understand how much pain they’re going to cause each other.
“I have to go,” I say, and push my way out the door.
And it’s strange, because I’ve seen so many visions that I know to expect all relationships to end. But the ending of our friendship is a heartbreak I didn’t see coming.
CHAPTER 28
The Fall
I KNOW SOMETHING’S wrong as soon as I get home from school.
First of all, the sliding glass door that leads to our patio and the common courtyard is wide-open. Mom hardly ever opens those doors because she hates nature. Mostly she hates bugs, but bugs are a part of nature, so. Her back is facing the room and she’s gripping the doorframe, like she needs to steady herself.
I frown over at Danica. She’s on the couch holding her phone to her ear with one hand and tugging on the ends of her Afro with the other. “Okay, Daddy,” she says, using her usual happy-happy-joy-joy Dad voice.
I don’t have a voice like that for Dad anymore. If Danica knew the truth of why Mom and Dad got divorced, she wouldn’t either.
I spin on my heels, trying to escape upstairs and avoid talking to him.
Mom halts my escape. “Evie, your father needs to speak with you.”
I start to protest, but she looks so blindsided that I stop. “What’s going on?” I ask.
“Your father will explain.” Her Jamaican accent is so thick, she sounds like she just immigrated yesterday.
Danica holds her phone out to me.
I take the phone but don’t hold it to my ear right away. It always takes me a few seconds before I can say anything to him. Inside me are two Evies: the one that used to love him and the one that still does but doesn’t want to.
“Hi,” I say, using my flattest voice.
“Hi, sweet pea.” He has me on speakerphone. I hate speakerphone.
“I don’t like it when you call me that,” I say.
He sighs. I can picture exactly what he’s doing: pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand and rubbing his palm across the back of his neck with the other. “I have some news,” he says.
I don’t say anything.
“I wanted to tell you in person, but—”
He stops talking. What he wants to say is that since I refuse to visit him, he can’t tell me anything in person.
Mom has stepped completely out onto the patio now.
Danica’s big, dark eyes are scouring my face.
“It’s about Shirley,” he says.
For a second I think he’s going to say they’ve broken up. For a second, I see us all back together at our house having blueberry pancakes for breakfast.
But that’s not what he says. “We’re getting married.”
There was a time when he would’ve used an obscure phrase like plighting our troth instead of getting married. He’d have made me geek out over the etymology with him, and I would’ve teased him about his word nerdiness even though I’m a word nerd too. We were so close before the divorce. We have the same sense of humor: slightly quirky, slightly cynical. We have the same outlook on the world: halfway between amused and bemused.
It’s still hard for me to believe how far apart we are now.
He sighs into my silence. “Sweet pea, say something,” he says.
“Don’t call me sweet pea,” I say.
“I know you’re having a hard time with everything…,” he says, sympathy in his voice.
His sympathy just makes me angry. If it wasn’t for his duplicity, I wouldn’t need his sympathy. “Don’t act like you care, because we both know that—”
“Stop,” he says. Speakerphone makes his voice echo back on itself.
I sit down on the bottom step of the staircase. Now I understand why Mom was unsteady before.
Danica’s frowning and shaking her head at me in disapproval.
“I want you to come to the wedding,” he says.
“No,” I say. “I’m not going.”
“Evie, let’s talk about this. I really want you—”
“No,” I say. “I’m not going and you can’t make me.”
He sucks in a long breath and I know he’s gearing up to flood me with words to try to convince me.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I say.
“Evie, I—”
“Really have to pee,” I insist. “Going now.”
He gives up. “Okay,” he says.
I hang up but don’t move from where I am on the stairs.
Mom comes back into the house and slides the glass doors closed. With them shut, it feels like we’re in our own little bubble, cut off from the world.
“Okay, well,” Mom says. “I suppose we should talk.”
Before she can launch into whatever parent talk she’s about to give us, I ask her: “When did he tell you?”
“We spoke about it last night, but he wanted to tell you himself.” She looks at Danica and clasps her hands in her lap. “How are you feeling about the news, D?” she asks.
“I feel fine about it,” she says.
“What about you, Evie?” she asks.
“You know how I feel,” I say.
She nods at the glass door. “I know this can be a challenging time,” she starts, sounding like she’s reading from a parenting book. How to Talk to Your Children About Divorce.
Except I’m not a child anymore. I’m almost eighteen. The visions have taught me more about how love really works than I ever wanted, or expected, to know.
I interrupt the speech she’s giving us. “Mom, please don’t make me go to the wedding.”
She squeezes the arms of the chair. “It’s important to your father.”
“What about what’s important to me?”
Danica slaps at her thigh. “Why are you always so mad at Dad?” she demands. “He didn’t do anything wrong. They fell out of love and got divorced. It happens all the time.”
I press my lips closed tight for a moment so I don’t say anything I shouldn’t say.
“Mom, please don’t make me go,” I be
g.
“I think you’re going to regret this, but I’m not going to make you go.” She stands up and heads for the hall closet. “You’re really willing to upset your father like this?”
We both know the answer to that question.
“Promise me you’ll at least think about it,” she says.
I don’t know if I’ve ever been so relieved. “Okay,” I say, but only to make her feel better. I’m definitely not going to think about it.
Mom slips on a sweater. “I’m going for a walk,” she says.
Danica shakes her head at me but doesn’t say anything. She goes upstairs, leaving me alone on the couch.
Mom’s wrong that I’ll regret not going. What I would regret is seeing Dad kiss Shirley and learning their fate. I’d regret pretending to be happy for him. I’d regret seeing how happy he is in his new life, knowing that he was once ours. And most of all, I’d regret being there to commemorate the official end of our family.
* * *
——
I spend the rest of the evening doing nothing but responding (and not responding) to text messages. Sophie texts to say she’s sorry she didn’t tell me about her and Cassidy earlier, but isn’t it great that they’re together? She seems really happy. Cassidy texts too. She doesn’t apologize for keeping their relationship a secret, and she’s just as thrilled as Sophie is. Can u believe she’s my gf now??????
Probably because I ran away from them earlier, they both want to know if I’m happy for them. I tell them that I am, and I want to mean it. But all I can see is what their relationship does to our friendship.
X texts right as I’m getting into bed.
My stomach does a happy little boogie when his name pops up on my screen, but then the boogie turns into a slow, heavy shuffle. What am I even doing? Between Dad’s announcement and seeing the vision of Sophie and Cassidy, I don’t need any more reminders of why being with X is a bad idea.