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“Oh, I don’t know. You probably have, actually. I hear that kisses add up fast when you’re, you know, naked with someone.”

  Like most of the rest of our team, Ming’s heard my Truth or Dare confessions: Noah was my experimental first kiss when I was fourteen, and I came very close to going all the way with a guy named Pedro whom I met at a wedding reception a couple of months later. What no one knows—not even Alejandra—is that both of those stories are complete lies.

  Has Reece heard these things about me? Does he think that I’m like Violet? Am I like her, and I don’t even know it yet?

  As if she’s reading my mind, Ming says, “Reece sure does have a type, doesn’t he?”

  “He does?” I yelp.

  “Short, tiny blondes with huge chests.”

  “What? My chest isn’t that huge!”

  She laughs. “Not like Violet’s. That’s still three out of four. You’re way, way, way prettier than her, though.”

  “Why, thank you!”

  “Why, you’re welcome.”

  A familiar blue truck pulls into the parking lot just then. Ming jumps out of her swing and turns to grin with triumph after landing without even a stumble. “Here they are!” she sings.

  And here we go.

  • • •

  When Ming and I get to Reece’s truck, she yanks the passenger door open and barrels into Xander, giving him the loudest, longest kiss imaginable. As they climb into the back on the jump seats and start kissing again, I glance at Reece. He’s smiling his just-for-me smile and I freeze.

  “Are you . . . getting in?” he asks.

  I’m not going to picture him with his ex-girlfriend. I’m not going to think about their two years as a couple, or their four hundred times together. I’m not going to stand here worrying and wondering if he wants that from me, too.

  No, no, no, no, no.

  No!

  “As a matter of fact, I am getting in,” I say, returning his smile.

  I strap on my seat belt, and Reece takes off. It’s obvious that, for some reason, he gelled his usually light-brown hair tonight, making it look dark and stiff. It doesn’t quite work for him, but it doesn’t totally not work, either. I don’t know what it is, but his dorky fashion missteps win me over every time.

  In the back, Ming and Xander finally break apart—it’s easy to tell even without looking since the way they kiss sounds like they’re slurping from cereal bowls—and I turn toward Xander. “So, where are we going?”

  “This girl,” Xander says, shaking his head at Ming. The “rock star” hair he’s been growing out is covering his eyes, and he pushes it back. “How many times do we have to go over this? It’s called a ‘surprise’ because you don’t get to know before we get there.”

  “Just go with it,” Ming says with a smile in her voice as she pokes my arm.

  “Coley needs to learn to be true to her roots,” Xander says. “Australians are supposed to be all about adventure.”

  “She doesn’t have Australian roots,” says Reece. “She’s a half Kiwi from New Zealand.”

  “Half Kiwi, half strawberry?” Xander asks.

  Xander happens to be the person in this truck who’s technically known me the longest, and who also knows me the least. He’s a grade ahead of me—just like Reece and Ming—and we never hung out until he got together with Ming before Homecoming. The main thing I know about him is that he’s as music obsessed as Reece: He plays drums for the marching band and is also in a band with some guys from school.

  “I’m half Kiwi, half American,” I tell him.

  “I spent the night at Coley’s last night,” Ming says. “So I got to meet her older brother and hear his cool accent. Which made me wonder—why don’t you have an accent, Coley?”

  “Why do you think?” I ask. “We moved here when I was little and I’ve been surrounded by you people ever since.”

  I don’t tell them the rest—that Bryan pretty much lost his accent too, until it magically reappeared when he got to high school. As far as I know, no one has called him out for it, but it seems to me that he does it to impress girls. Case in point: He sounded almost like a regular West Coast American all week until Ming came over yesterday.

  “You can’t blame me,” Ming says. “I’ve only known you since last year.”

  “Me too,” Reece says.

  Ming moved here from Oregon at the start of my ninth-grade year and Reece moved here from Alaska the year before that when I was still in middle school.

  There’s silence for a moment, and then Xander says, “Okay. I admit it. It was all me. When I was in second grade and Coley was in first, I enlisted everyone in the country to help me make her lose her accent. Television, movies, day-to-day conversations. We were ruthless.”

  “This is what happens when Xander puts his mind to something,” Reece says.

  “Looking back, it was a pretty huge success,” Xander deadpans. “Especially when you consider that my power of persuasion these days is twenty percent effective at best.”

  “No way.” Ming gives him another loud kiss. “It’s more like forty-five.”

  The kissing continues and I keep my eyes directed straight ahead. “So, Reece!” I practically yell so that I can drown out the smacking sounds. “I see that you’ve brought us to the Valley. Are we going to the river? The railroad tracks? A tattoo shop? I wouldn’t mind stopping for a snack somewhere!”

  “How does the highway leading out of town sound?” Reece asks, raising his voice extra-loud too.

  “Only if we can drop off these two!”

  “You might as well give up the guessing game now,” Xander says to us. “You won’t be able to figure out where I’m taking you because I guarantee that you’ve never been there. Oh, and you need to take a right there past the school.” After directing Reece through a few more turns, Xander says, “Okay, slow down. The driveway we want is hidden, but there’s a ‘For Sale’ sign kind of sticking out of some bushes. See it? There!”

  The truck bounces us down a long gravel driveway between thick trees until we reach a clearing. Reece parks in front of an imposing building.

  “Hey, I’ve been here before,” I tell them.

  “No!” Xander says.

  “Yes! I’ve come here tons of times. Just never from that direction.”

  Everyone laughs, obviously thinking I made it up to mess with Xander. We pile out of the truck and they all stare up at the structure. It was going to be a house at one time, but it was never finished. It has no siding or doors, and someone nailed black plastic over where the windows should be. Alejandra once told me that she heard the builder ran out of money.

  “Awesome, right?” Xander asks, switching on a flashlight.

  “Yes,” Ming says, kind of breathlessly as she takes his free hand. “And the sky tonight is like stars piled on top of stars.”

  Reece raises an eyebrow and I bite back a laugh.

  “Are you going to show us how to get inside?” Reece asks me, teasingly.

  “I can show you,” Xander says. “I’ve actually been here before, remember?”

  He and Ming head toward the house, Reece follows, and I bring up the rear. I hope none of them ever tell anyone else about this place; I’d hate for partiers to come in and trash it.

  Xander pulls on a sheet of plywood that’s attached with a hinge. It creeks open like a human-sized cupboard door. He and Ming rush inside, taking the flashlight and its glow with them.

  “Jeez,” Reece says, “it would have been nice if he’d clued us in about the need for flashlights, maybe.”

  I pull out my phone. “Pretty sure I already have one.”

  “Ah, good thinking,” he says, taking his out too.

  We press buttons for about two minutes and then make our way carefully through what would have been a garage, past dozens of wooden beams, and up the stairs, shining our phones at our feet. My eyes were pretty well adjusted outside, but it’s completely black in here and I can’t see more than three steps ahead of
me.

  When we get up on the second floor, Reece lifts his phone up high and a soft glow illuminates the framed rooms without walls. “It is pretty cool,” he says. “It’ll be a nice house if someone finishes it.”

  “Me!” I say. “Ever since I was thirteen, it’s been my secret wish to buy it someday.”

  “So you really have been here?”

  “Alejandra lives down the street and this was our hideout. Back, you know, before we stopped being friends.”

  He nods slowly as if he’s waiting for more.

  I don’t know what to say, though—we never talk about her—so I change the subject. “It’s set up for five bedrooms and four bathrooms. That’s where a bathroom would be, obviously.” I point toward a tub. “And over there’s the kitchen. And then the dining room.”

  “So this must be the living room?”

  “Yes. And that’s the master suite. There’s also two bedrooms downstairs and the other two are on the third floor. It’s actually really cool up there. We stashed sleeping bags and games and flashlights. I’ll show you.”

  I make my way up the next flight of stairs with Reece on my heels, hoping Alejandra hasn’t taken the stuff out in the months since I’ve been here.

  When we’re almost to the top, Reece takes my arm gently. “Um. Given the sound effects,” he whispers up to me, “I don’t think we want to keep going.”

  He’s right. I cover my mouth to hold in my giggles as we tiptoe back down.

  “One of these days we’ll learn, right?” I say, when we’re safely on the second floor.

  “Yeah, one of these days.” He takes a seat on the steps and pats his hand on floor beside him, so I sit too. “I don’t know why they keep bringing us. I’m going to pretend that they’re eating soup up there.”

  We’re so close that our elbows are touching. I can just barely feel it through all my layers. “Ooh. Chicken and stars?” I ask. “That’s my favorite.”

  “I was thinking more like the noodley kind you have to slurp. And actually, soup sounds really good right about now. Just not, you know, their soup.”

  I laugh. “Now that you said that, I’m totally hungry. It sucks that restaurants are closed this late.”

  “Not being able to suck soup sucks.” Reece shakes his fist in the direction of the upper staircase and calls out, “Damn you, Xander and Ming!”

  I giggle again and he joins in.

  Maybe it’s weird, but I kind of wonder what they’re doing. Ming is a total “Dare” girl—she’s never picked Truth when I’ve been around—so all I know is what I’ve seen. Which happens to have been Ming and Xander kissing pretty much nonstop when they’re hanging out with Reece and me.

  “So you’re heading out in the morning?” Reece asks.

  “Late morning. We can’t check into the town house until four.”

  My shoulder bumps his arm. I leave it there and he doesn’t pull away.

  “And I’m going to be stuck doing holiday and tourist stuff with my parents and grandparents for six days straight,” he says. “The curse of being an only child.”

  “Believe me, you won’t think it’s a curse anymore after staying with my family. You’ll be dying to escape to your own life.”

  “We’ll see,” he says.

  Our faces are close. He’s smiling at me and I’m smiling back. I wish I didn’t have my gloves on because he’s shifted his hand so that it’s kind of touching mine.

  “Have I ever told you,” I say, “that I’m going to miss you like the deserts miss the rain?”

  “Nope. But the song is by Everything But the Girl.”

  “Gah!” I playfully slug his shoulder. “You’re too good at this. Your brain is like a music encyclopedia.”

  “Not really,” he says. “I looked it up after we heard it the other day.”

  “Me too, actually.”

  I’m constantly researching songs these days, trying to find good lyrics to use for this silly game of ours.

  Reece says, “Have I ever told you that I’ll miss you like a child misses their blanket?”

  “Fergie?” I suggest. “Or the Black Eyed Peas?”

  “That would be Fergie.”

  “I thought so. And by the way, my compliment was better than yours. I mean, a blanket?”

  He shrugs, still smiling. “Was yours really a compliment, though? Lack of rain. That’s what makes a desert a desert. So adding rain would turn it into something else. Would a desert even want that?”

  “Yes! It’s a known fact that all deserts secretly aspire to become jungles because jungles have waterfalls and pretty plants and flowers.”

  “All right,” he says, with a crooked little smile. “But just so you know, I happen to think blankets are awesome. Especially, you know, those really soft ones? Man, would I miss a blanket like that.”

  My heart dances in double time. “Would you really?”

  “I would.” He glances in the direction of the third floor. “So, um. Your Christmas present. It’s in my truck.”

  “Which is the same place yours is.”

  He helps me up and doesn’t let go of my hand. I can hardly breathe as the light from his phone guides us down the stairs. Something’s going to happen. I think so, at least.

  I hope so.

  • • •

  We’re sitting beside each other on Reece’s bucket seats. I yank off my gloves and unzip my coat partway while Reece starts the engine for some heat and turns on the light overhead.

  “Ouch,” he says. “What happened to your neck? Wait. Don’t tell me. Vampire bite?”

  “Actually, curling iron burn. It’s very attractive, I know.”

  It’s very painful, too. I accidentally ripped the burned layer of skin off today while I was drying myself after my shower. Mom taped a gel pad over the open wound, which makes it look worse than it is, but eases the throbbing somewhat.

  Reece pulls a small rectangular package from under his seat and gives it to me. “Hope you don’t hate it.”

  “I’m not going to hate it.”

  Even though I have no guesses whatsoever about what it might be, it’s from Reece so it’s going to be perfect. I know it.

  I rip into the silver snowflake paper and find . . . a box of granola bars.

  “Peanut butter chocolate chip!” I say, making a big deal out of holding it up high so that he won’t realize how disappointed I am.

  He’s watching me, grinning probably even bigger than I am. “You eat those every day after dancing, right?”

  I nod. “Uh-huh!”

  “Cool. I thought so.”

  “Well. Yeah. Thank you. So much!”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He looks from my face to the box and back again like he wants me to tear it open and eat one right now. I hand him the smashed gift bag that I brought for him, and while he’s sliding his hand into the tissue paper, I drop the box he gave me into my backpack.

  Granola bars. Reece got me granola bars for Christmas.

  He pulls out the stuffed giraffe and a huge smile spreads across his face. “Oh, wow. Coley, this is so awesome. You have no idea.”

  He seems to mean it, but maybe he’s a liar like me. Maybe we’re both terrible gift-givers and way-too-polite receivers of terrible gifts.

  “Are you sure?” I ask. “Is a stuffed animal for a boy weird?”

  He shakes his head. “No way. She’s cool. And soft. Like a blanket. You know, the kind of blanket that I would miss.”

  I burst out laughing at that.

  And now it’s time for me to get over it. Because, okay, he did give me a totally not-great present, but he made sure it was something that I’d like, at least. It’s really sweet the way he pays attention to things like that.

  Reece sets the giraffe on his lap. “I’ll name her after you. Your middle name’s Marie?”

  I nod. He must know that from when I showed him my driving permit a few weeks ago.

  He stares down at the giraffe. “No, not a Mar
ie,” he muses. “She’s a Sterling. Now the big question: Sleeping with her—creepy or cute?”

  “Hmm.” I rub my chin, pretending to consider. “Definitely cute.”

  “Cool.” He slouches way, way down, and sits with his body turned slightly toward me and the side of his face pressed against his seat. “That was a good day, wasn’t it? With the giraffes?”

  “Of course it was.” I ease into that same position, facing him. “We fed them, I knocked you on the ground, giving us both bruises all over our bodies, and then we ate ice cream. Best day ever!”

  “Best day ever, so far,” he says. “I’ve always thought that maybe you meant to fall on me. Because, I mean, the way you walk. And dance. You’re so graceful. For you to accidentally trip and take me down with you. It doesn’t seem possible.”

  He’s staring into my eyes and I’m getting totally lost. “I promise you,” I say softly, “it was very possible and very accidental. There should be a law against cracks in sidewalks like that.”

  He brushes my hair back from my cheek and my heart kicks into quadruple time.

  Oh my God, oh my God.

  “Well, see,” he says. “I was kind of hoping you’d done it on purpose.”

  “Oh. Then the next time I take you down it will be.”

  “Okay,” he says, nodding.

  I nod too. We’re watching each other and our heads keep moving and moving and I’m getting dizzier and dizzier and I wish that he would just lean in and kiss me or that I had the guts to lean in and kiss him but he isn’t and I don’t but I want to, I really, really want to, and I’m going to make myself sick if I don’t stop nodding—

  Reece’s door flies open and we jump back from each other.

  “Hooray!” Ming grabs Sterling from Reece and makes her dance all over the steering wheel, completely not seeming to notice that she just interrupted what was supposed to be our “quality time.”

  “See what Coley got for Reece?” she says to Xander. “Isn’t she cuuuute?”

  Reece is still looking at me. “I think she’s beautiful.”

  CHAPTER 6

  It’s the day of our trip and every single person in my family is stressing me out. Mom’s panicking because, like usual, she waited until the last possible second to pack her clothes. Tony keeps yelling at us kids to help load the vehicles so that we can “get on the road already!” Bryan’s stomping around and muttering to himself about “this goddamned family” while Jacob, Emma, and Zach battle fiercely over who’s sitting where and which movies they should watch during the drive.