chapter thirty-nine.

Val - May 2011

The party had gotten loud enough that I was considering calling Dad and telling him to pick me up. It was Gracie Beaumont's thirteenth birthday party, and most, if not all, of the grade was there. The Beaumonts' living room was already littered with crushed red solo cups and crinkled paper plates, bent pizza boxes stacked on the coffee table like strange modern art. Gracie's parents weren't home ("They're out of town for like, the whole weekend. Absolutely all of it," she'd said), so it was likely the event had gotten more rowdy than it would in normal circumstances.

Everyone had migrated upstairs, where Tommy D'Angelo was probably treating them to the peach schnapps he'd made sure everyone knew he smuggled in. I, on the other hand, lingered by the television, which was tuned to a random news station. My cell phone was in my pocket; I touched it mindlessly, still debating whether or not to make the call. If I disappeared here, I'd never hear the end of it. They'd make fun of me for it for years. But staying was just as torturous.

I sat down on the couch, trying to breathe through the alcohol and pizza grease-scented air. It was Friday night, the weekend's very beginning. Friday nights were supposed to be simple and easy and fun, a time and place where anything could happen, where opportunity hung so heavily in the air that you could smell it. So why did I feel so...miserable?

A flurry of footsteps as someone came down the stairs interrupted the nightly news, as well as my dilemma. I turned, and just as he reached the bottom step, I saw Oliver.

His hair was so black it was almost blue in the darkness. He was wearing a tie-dyed Red Hot Chili Peppers t-shirt and some black jeans, and he wore enough rubber wristbands up his right arm to reach the center of his forearm. I wasn't sure what it was, but the tension seemed to flow out of me.

Oliver blinked at me for a moment, then smiled. "Val!" He said. I'd never exactly told him it was okay to call me that. He'd just kind of started doing so until there was no point in enabling him in the first place. I was sort of convinced that was his plan all along. "Glad to see someone had the same idea as me. Tommy and everyone are getting a little too crazy up there."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Someone just dared Gracie to jump topless into the pool."

"Oh." It was late spring and the temperatures still sat comfortably in the high fifties here in northern Massachusetts—upper forties at night. That was not skinny dipping weather. That was hypothermia-dipping weather.

Oliver laughed, showing a full set of bright teeth. He held out his hand to me. "Wanna get out of here?"

"God," I said, getting up and taking his hand. I tried to act like the feel of his skin so close to mine wasn't making my heartbeat speed, when in fact, it was. You see, just two weeks ago I had come to the realization that I wanted Oliver to be more than a friend to me. It had been a rather sudden and scary realization, actually, but it was inevitable. "More than anything."

Oliver, satisfied with my answer, dragged me outside and into the night, the wind cool and biting against the bare skin on my ankles and neck and hands. I was in a sweater and one of my favorite knee-length skirts. Gracie, in a miniskirt and V-cut sweater, had given me a weird look when I'd arrived, but it was a weird look I was well accustomed to receiving by now.

Better that look than the ones I'd get if I showed more of my mismatched skin, anyway.

Oliver marched around the side of the house; leaned against the side fence was a blue and white bike that I vaguely recalled seeing at the school once or twice. For some reason, though, I remembered it belonging to someone else.

Oliver slung his leg over it, guiding it towards the cobblestone walkway that led around to the pool on one end and to the driveway on the other. He looked at me expectantly, nodding his head towards the bike's front. "Come on," he said. "JoJo's is just down the street from here, you know."

I cast both him and the bike a wary look. "Custard?"

"It's to die for."

"It's past ten."

Oliver held my gaze, his face unchanging. "It's to die for."

So I didn't argue. I balanced myself atop the basket, holding onto the handlebars behind me, while Oliver did all the pedaling, leaning a bit to the side to see around me. We rode like that all the way from Gracie's place, down Keen Street, until the bright yellow JoJo's sign flickered and glared at us from the sky. Gravel popped underneath the tires; there was a thunk as Oliver let down his kickstand, and I hopped off.

Since it was indeed past ten, we had the whole place to ourselves. Oliver got a gigantic triple chocolate concrete, and raised an eyebrow at me when I got a small cup of vanilla custard with strawberries on top.

"I'm not all that hungry," I justified, later. "Besides, there's a lot of sugar in it."

Oliver scoffed. "Live a little, Love," he said, and it took me only a split second to realize that he was calling me by my last name and not by a term of endearment. Normally it took me less time than that. "It's just custard. It's not like I'm asking you to do a line."

Oliver and I settled in the booth furthest in the corner, where only the sleepy 80s music playing over the speakers and the constant chirping of crickets could disturb us. On one hand, my nerves were awake, awake, awake, screaming at me to make some sort of move, any move at all. On the other, I'd never been so...calm.

"Speaking of," I said, digging out a hearty spoonful of custard, then manually placing the perfect slice of strawberry on top.

Oliver rolled his eyes. "Speaking of what? Crack?"

"Sort of," I said with a shrug. "You were up there a while, Oliver Bonavich. A lot longer than I was. So what crazy stuff did they talk you into?"

Oliver blinked at me for a moment, his eyes a piercing blue beneath the overheads. Then, to my slight surprise, he laughed—open mouth, teeth showing, head tilted back. When he gathered himself again, he leaned back against his seat, looking at me through his eyelashes. "Nothing."

"Nothing? Not one thing?"

"No. Not one thing. Honestly, I'm a little hurt you think I'm that easily influenced," Oliver replied, shaking his head. "I just watched. I like to see how far people will go, you know. How far they'll go to try and make themselves look cool."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "That sounds psychopathic."

"Maybe because I'm a psychopath," Oliver said without care. "Who even knows, really? Psychopaths don't. You think psychopaths walk around knowing they're psychopaths, identifying as psychopaths?"

"No, but—"

"Case in point. We could all be crazy and none of us would know it. Maybe the psychopaths are the normal ones."

I stuck my spoon into my custard, folding my arms instead. "Oliver, are you sure you aren't drunk?"

He grinned. "I promise, I'm very sober."

"So you're just naturally this deranged."

Oliver laughed again.

We were there for a few minutes longer, finishing off our dessert and shaking off our party faces and party thoughts and party dispositions, shedding our costumes until we were our usual, comfortable selves. When the older teenager behind the counter finally announced to us that JoJo's was closed, we stepped outside again, where the air had grown marginally cooler.

Oliver shuddered and tapped the front of his bike again. "I'll take you home."

If there was one thing I'd learned from this night, it was that arguing with Oliver Bonavich was useless. So I climbed back upon my perch, and away we went.

Wind stung on my face, tossed at my hair, played with my skirt. I gripped the handlebars tight enough that my knuckles ached, the handlebars' cold steel pressed against my palms. Oliver's hands were on mine and his breath was in my ear.

The ride was over too soon; Oliver pedaled up my steep driveway with ease, dragging us to a stop in front of the garage. One light was on in the kitchen, meaning at least one of my parents was still awake. I weighed the chances of me getting in trouble, and decided I probably wouldn't be allowed out again for at least a few weeks. My curfew was 10:30, after all, and it was way closer to eleven.

I was split between wanting to rush inside to lessen my punishment—if that was even possible—and wanting to stay here, a few inches from Oliver, for the rest of my life.

"Val," Oliver said as I hopped off his bike.

I turned. "Yeah?"

"You've got some custard here," he said, pointing to my shirt.

I dipped my head to look, but then his shoe came awfully close to mine and I looked up and he was kissing me.

It was a gentle, brief moment of mouth-to-mouth contact, but when he stepped back, all of me was alive with it.

And I thought—I thought he was blushing.

"Good night, Valerie Love," he said, and before I could gather myself and slow my heartbeat and manage to say something back, he was already on his bike and down the driveway again.

I stood there in the driveway a moment, watching Oliver as his silhouette got smaller and smaller, further and further away.

It felt like Friday nights were supposed to feel.

It felt like the beginning of everything.