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  “I was contemplating taking a jump on your parents’ bed.” Fortune favors the bold. Plus, I couldn’t think of anything better.

  Cassie made a pinched face. “What?”

  I pointed at the bed. “Jump. The bed’s begging us to jump on it. Come on.” I held my hand out to Cassie and prayed for her to take it. I didn’t expect her to. The idea was dumb, idiotic, but a voice in my head told me that at this second, this moment, Cassie didn’t need me to kiss her, she didn’t need my romantic declarations of Shakespearean love, she didn’t need me to eliminate Eli from the infinite arrow of time. All she needed was to jump.

  Cassie glanced at the bed and shook her head. “This is stupid, Simon.”

  “Stupid awesome.”

  This was not a Cassie thing to do. She protested school budget cuts of the arts programs, she rallied for organic cafeteria food, she studied hard and got good grades, she was proper and cool and classy. She always did the right thing. I knew she had a rebellious streak and I knew she’d been drinking, but I didn’t know if that would allow her to jump on her parents’ bed with a loser like me.

  “No,” Cassie said. “No.” I felt her slipping away, retreating back into the party, where she was safe, where I might not be able to reach her again. I knew I was being a flaming imbecile, but for the second time in less than an hour, Fate had thrown Cassie and me together. Had given me the rare opportunity to show her that she was oxygen and I was hydrogen and that we belonged together. Molecularly.

  I might not get another chance.

  “Yes,” I said, holding my hand out to her again. “One jump. If you hate it, we’ll stop.”

  “Simon—”

  “A trade, then,” I said. “Jump on the bed with me and I’ll go vegan for a month.”

  Cassie paused. “You? Vegan?”

  I nodded. “One jump,” I said. “And I’ll eat nothing with a face for a whole month.”

  “Two months,” Cassie said. “And if you welsh, I’ll tell everyone in school that you wear silky pink panties.”

  “That’s not true!”

  Cassie shrugged. “Dear, sweet Simon. It doesn’t need to be true for people to buy it.” Her smile was so genuine that it was nearly impossible to believe she was so deliciously devious.

  “Deal,” I said. “Two months for one jump. Unless you like it, in which case, I’ll be more than happy to provide subsequent jumps at a greatly reduced rate.”

  Cassie arched her sculpted eyebrow at me, looking rather like a Bond villain about to spill her evil plan for world domination. “I didn’t realize this was a pay-per-jump establishment.”

  “We can discuss alternate payment plans later.”

  “My mom’s head will explode.”

  “I’ll never tell,” I said. I drew an X over my heart. “You have my word. The only way your parents will ever find out that we jumped on their bed is if they have a camera in here somewhere.” I looked around conspiratorially.

  Cassie feigned shock. “Why would my parents have a camera in their bedroom?”

  “Duh,” I said. “For when they put on their after-hours sock puppet shows. They’re all the rage on YouTube. The Castillo Tube Sock Variety Pack. Over a hundred thousand hits and counting.”

  “Now you’re just being silly,” Cassie said, but she was smiling. For that, I’d be as silly as I needed to be.

  “Stop stalling. You owe me a jump.” I kicked my shoes off before climbing up on the bed. Cassie bent down to take off her heels, wincing as she pulled the shoe off her injured foot. It didn’t look as bad as before, but I could see that it hurt.

  “Sorry. Again.”

  Cassie didn’t say anything as she used the headboard to haul herself up.

  The ceiling in the Castillo bedroom was vaulted, and there was a skylight over the bed that let in all the stars. They seemed so bright and I wondered if any of this was real. This whole thing felt more like my dreams than reality. The lights were brighter, the lines sharper, the sounds clearer, and Cassie actually wanted to spend time with me. But dream or not, I didn’t care.

  My socked feet sank into the thick comforter and I took an experimental hop. The bed was springier than I could have hoped for, and a smile took root on my face and grew.

  “I haven’t jumped on a bed in forever,” I said.

  Cassie got her balance, but held on to the headboard for support. “I’ve never jumped on a bed.”

  “Never?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m shocked,” I said. “Speechless.”

  “Not so speechless,” Cassie said.

  “You know what I mean.” I ran my hands through my hair and tucked it behind my ears. “I find it impossible to believe that you’ve never jumped on a bed before. That’s, like, child abuse. Your parents are totally going on my naughty list. What kid hasn’t jumped on a bed?”

  “There are a lot of things I never got to do,” Cassie said. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”

  “Oh, hell no,” I said, and took her arm, guiding her to the center of the bed. “We had a deal, and if you back out now, I’m stealing a car, driving back to Gobbler’s, and ordering a Big Bacon Belly Exploder, with extra bacon. Anyway, you know you wanna try this.”

  “Ugh. You’re like a bad drug dealer.”

  “Careful, Cass. One jump and you’ll be hooked. Next time I see you, you’ll be breaking into furniture stores, stealing jumps off the discount mattresses.”

  “Or turning tricks for jumps on strangers’ beds.”

  “Yikes,” I said. “This is gonna be fun, but I’m not sure it’s worth turning tricks for.” I cocked my head to the side and broke out my special occasion smile. “Who am I kidding? I’d trade hand jobs at truck stops for jumps. I’m Simon Cross, and I’m a jumpaholic.”

  Cassie laughed, which made me smile even bigger. So big, my cheeks hurt. “Are you going to tease me all night or are we going to jump?”

  “You can’t just jump into this sort of thing,” I said.

  “You can’t jump into jumping?”

  “It’s an art; it must be respected.” I held out my hands and Cassie took them. “Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do. When I count to three, you’re going to jump as high as you can. Got that? On three.”

  Cassie rolled her eyes dramatically. “I think I can handle it.”

  “Okay.” I tightened my grip on Cassie’s hands, but not too hard. They were soft and so small. My own fingers fit around Cassie’s like a perfectly tied knot. “One,” I said slowly, drawing it out theatrically. “Two.” I grinned at Cassie, memorizing her face. “Three!”

  I jumped and Cassie jumped. We jumped. The two of us, connected by hands and happiness and our declarative FUCK YOU! to gravity. Our smiles and laughter filling the void between our bodies, joining us, entangling us. One and the same.

  And then my feet hit the bed and I bent my knees and jumped again. Again. Again.

  Again.

  With Cassie.

  Because she couldn’t resist jumping with me. She couldn’t fight the pull of fate, the density of her soul locked in battle with her insatiable desire to leave this earth behind. Even if only for a moment.

  At least that’s what I thought I saw in her eyes as we hovered in the air for those brief moments. Maybe it wasn’t real.

  But maybe it was.

  “Oh. My. God!” Cassie yelled as we hopped like demented bunnies. The bed groaned and creaked, and I laughed, and Cassie squealed with delight.

  When we were in the air, everything disappeared. History, our history, vanished. The hours, days, and years that had existed between the time I’d turned chickenshit at Pirate Chang’s and this moment right now were nothing. We’d bridged the two points in time and space and come together. Here. In the air.

  I wondered if Eli was standing outside the door, listening to the sounds of us jumping, which to anyone else might have sounded like we were doing something less vertical. I hoped that he was standing there, right outside of the Castillos�
�� bedroom, imagining all the things I might be doing to Cassie and that she might be doing to me. The same way that I’d been forced for three long years to endure watching Eli touch Cassie’s neck in a way that made the tips of her ears turn pink. Watching him say something that made her laugh. Something that only the two of them understood.

  But Eli had had his chance. This was my time to soar.

  “I can’t believe I’ve never done this,” Cassie said. Stray bits of hair stuck to her slightly damp forehead.

  “Awesome, right?”

  “Higher,” she said as an answer, and I squeezed her hand and pulled her higher into the night sky, ignoring the ceiling and the limitations of mass and molecules and that buzzkill Newton. Leaving the house and the party and the whole damn world behind.

  Because Cassie was the girl for me. The girl for forever.

  So I kissed her.

  Or I tried.

  What really happened was that we were jumping on the bed, had been jumping on the bed for a full minute. And I was looking at her and thinking about her, and this little voice in my head, a voice that I should have known better than to heed, told me to go for it. And I listened. Midjump, I craned my neck for the kiss, sure that Cassie would kiss me back and we’d spend the rest of the night in the fluffy comforter, rolled up like sushi.

  “What are you doing?” Cassie dodged my lips and shoved me into the headboard. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” She was Shiva, the angry god, and she was going to tear my arms from my scrawny frame and choke me with my own hands.

  “I love you, Cassie,” I said. Because trying to kiss her hadn’t been bad enough. There had been a moment, a second, where I might have been able to pretend that I hadn’t meant to try to kiss her, that it was all some monumental misunderstanding. Or I could have blamed it on that shot of tequila or the music or the stars or anything. But I didn’t. No. Because I was a moron. Certified. When I died, scientists were going to cut open my skull and scoop out my brain, pickle it, and study it as a prime example of the long-term effect of love on the brain of a moron. Because surely, I was the biggest moron who had ever been in love with a girl.

  Cassie stopped jumping. She was tethered to the earth now, a prisoner of gravity once again. “I know, Simon. You wear your feelings for me like a neon sign over your heart. What do you want me to do about it?”

  The words were deadly shards of glass. They sliced my skin, and I watched as my blood fountained from a million tiny wounds, spreading over the bed like a new duvet.

  “I thought—”

  “You thought that since I dumped Eli, you’d lure me into my parents’ bedroom and make everything in my life all better because we jumped on a fucking bed? And then what? We’d ride the mattress into the sunset? You’re like everyone else. No, you’re worse because you’re so naive.”

  I grew smaller. I grew small. Insignificant. A worm not worthy of even her pity.

  “I only wanted to make you smile,” I said. And I meant it. “I wanted to make you happy.”

  Cassie laughed. It was dark and devoid of joy. “I don’t need you, Simon Cross. I’m capable of taking care of myself.” Cassie sat down and slid off the bed, slipping her feet back into her shoes, ignoring any pain from her injured foot. “You don’t love me. You love some girl you invented in your stupid pea brain. But I’m not that girl. She doesn’t exist.”

  When I said, “I do love you, Cassie,” my voice was as small as I was. It barely registered above the bass line of DJ Leo’s latest song. I wished that guy had a mute button. “If you’ll just let me show you.”

  Cassie crossed her arms over her chest. “How about a barter, Simon?” Her voice kept cutting me.

  “Anything.”

  The anger Cassie had loosed was fading, wrestled back into Pandora’s box along with that tiny flame of hope upon which my future happiness now rested. “Prove that you love me, Simon. Prove irrefutably that you love me, the real me, not just some idea of me, and I’ll give you anything you want.”

  And then she left.

  I was still standing on the bed, watching the space where Cassie had been, when Coop and Ben walked through the door hand in hand. Coop frowned at me while Ben just chuckled.

  Ben dropped Coop’s hand and leaped onto the bed. He hooted and jumped as I stood there bouncing in his wake, still stunned. He didn’t jump with the same kind of innocent joy Cassie had. Ben was a madman.

  I pushed Ben aside and got down off the bed.

  Coop grabbed my sleeve. “Simon, what’s up? You okay?”

  Explaining what had happened wasn’t at the top of my list of superfun things to do, so I stormed into the adjoining bathroom to get away from the boys. I shut myself in and sat on the floor.

  Hardly a moment had passed before Coop slid open the door and poked his head in. “Hey.”

  “What if I’d been pooping?”

  Coop plopped down cross-legged on the immaculate white tile. “Remember the eighth-grade DC trip?” I nodded. “Remember the free oysters in the hotel?”

  I chuckled. “We ate like a pound of those suckers. Stupid food poisoning.”

  “Right,” Coop said. “I’ve seen things coming out of both your ends that would make a garbageman bleach his eyes out.”

  “Point taken.”

  Silence.

  “Cassie hates me.” I told Coop everything. More than he probably wanted to know. When I was done, he patted my arm.

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I said.

  “But you’re my best friend,” Coop said. “And Cassie doesn’t deserve you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re supposed to say shit like that.”

  “Yeah,” Coop said. “But this time, I also happen to mean it.” He was quiet again. “What are you going to do?”

  I shrugged. “Kidnap Cassie and put her in your trunk? I’ll keep her in a deep pit in my backyard. Nothing says ‘I love the real you’ like kidnapping.”

  “This is Florida,” Coop said. “You can’t dig a pit in your backyard.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “This was supposed to be different.”

  Coop nodded. He knew what I’d expected. He’d probably also known I’d been delusional. “Quick question: You got a condom?”

  Oddly, it was a relief to talk about something other than my monumental failure in the Cassie department. “No. My mom found the one I kept in my wallet and chucked it. Apparently, I’m too young to be having sex. She informed me that if she found out I was doing it with anyone, she’d neuter me.”

  “Ouch. Someone should tell your mom that not having a condom won’t keep you from having sex.”

  “Luckily for her, social awkwardness is one hundred percent effective.”

  Coop stood up and helped me to my feet. He put his arm around my shoulders and said, “Don’t waste the whole night, Simon. If you love Cassie, prove it. If not, then have some fun. But you’re only seventeen once. And for a dick, you’re a pretty awesome guy.”

  Only, I didn’t feel pretty awesome. I felt like an ass. But Coop was right. It was time to crap or get off the pot. Cassie had issued me a challenge. And even though I was sure she figured I’d never be able to do it, I was going to prove to Cassie that I really loved her.

  I was going to earn my kiss or die trying.

  Reality Bites

  “Did that just happen?” Cassie asked as she stood in the doorway, staring at me, absently touching her lips with the tips of her fingers.

  “No,” I said. “That was a figment of your imagination. Here comes your real kiss.”

  For a moment, I thought that was going to work, but then Cassie smacked my shoulder and giggled. I didn’t know what else to say. I was struck mute by the fact that Stella had managed to accomplish in ten seconds what I’d failed to do in three long, lonely years. I played the ridiculous scene over and over in my head: Cassie, standing by the doorway, smelling of tequila, looking beautiful—more beautiful than I’d eve
r seen her—telling me that I had to kiss her to get into the party. And then Stella, a girl I’d only just met, wedging herself between us and stealing that kiss like it was nothing.

  “Sy?” Cassie pulled me aside as a group of girls I half recognized pushed their way into the house and were absorbed into the party.

  I pinched my arm hard, which made Cassie giggle again. “I don’t even know that girl,” I said. “I mean, I know her. I didn’t pick her up on the side of the road. Actually, she picked me up off the side of the road. But there’s a perfectly good explanation for that. Stop me from babbling any time.”

  Cassie rolled her eyes and pulled me into the house by my sleeve. “Same old Simon.” Her smile was a shooting star—brilliant and gone before I could capture it. Cassie was beautiful without thought, without effort. And I was in her thrall.

  As Cassie closed the door behind us, I stood in the foyer and looked around. The last time I’d been to the Castillo house, I’d barely made it past the unwelcome mat. Mr. Castillo had answered the door sporting a surly face, glaring down at me like I was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words: “Future Baby Daddy.” Cassie had been beautiful that night too. But that was years past and this was now.

  And in the now, the house was a wall-to-wall collection of people I barely knew in varying states of drunkenness and undress. The party was in overdrive. It usually took a couple of hours for people to start losing articles of clothing, but one girl was already down to her bikini top. I wondered what she’d bartered in exchange for her shirt. I was about to ask Cassie when I was interrupted by a crash from the room to my left.

  “Contact Scrabble,” Cassie explained, as if that was somehow supposed to make sense. “The debate team started a Scrabble game in the library, but Jody got the lacrosse guys involved and, well . . . Contact Scrabble.”

  “Should I break it up?” I asked, as if there was any way that I could do such a thing. Jody Johnson was a beast of a guy who spoke exclusively in grunts and wedgies.