Page 18 of Full Circle

“Wes?” I heard Celeste call from my window.

“Up here,” I replied.

Her tan legs swung out and she slowly climbed the slope of the roof towards me. Her eyes were still as round as saucers and her hair was starting to slip out of its ponytail.

“Don’t you ever do something like that to me again, y’hear?!” She was trying not to shout, but her anger was written all over her face. “Best friends don’t scare each other!”

Scared? I hadn’t meant to scare her. I opened my mouth to say so, but she held up her hand to stop me.

“I ran into the store and told the clerk I had been out looking for you,” Celeste explained. “Said I saw smoke coming out of someone’s back yard on Main Street and needed to let the fire department know. The clerk pulled up the phone and called them. I ran back out as soon as I heard him talk to someone.” She pulled up her knees and rested her forearms on them in front of her.

“Thank you,” was all I could think of saying.

She smirked at me, throwing me a sideways glance. “I’m still mad at you, but I have to forgive you.”

I grinned. “Didn’t you give me that lesson on what poetic justice means?”

Celeste snorted, trying to hide her amused smile. “I’d hardly call setting his garage on fire ‘poetic justice.’”

We grinned at each other, then both snapped our heads up to the sky. Fireworks were going off, painting the dark night with dazzling colors. She scooted closer to me and pointed out all the shapes. Her face was alight with wonder and awe, highlighted with the greens, blues, and purples as the world exploded above our heads.

I couldn’t even look at them because I was so mesmerized by her face. The way her mouth sloped with her smile, the straight edge of her dainty nose, the way her wild brown mane surrounded her in a halo of frizz, even when she tried to contain it in a ponytail. She had called me perfect earlier, but she was the perfect one. My best friend…but also the reason my heart now skipped a beat.

She turned to look at me, no doubt noticing my lack of response, and I don’t know what came over me at that moment, but I kissed her. It was the first kiss for both of us, I knew, and I had zero idea what I was doing. Yet when I felt her soft lips against mine, when I felt the way they kissed me back and held the moment, with all the fireworks still lighting up the world around us, I knew I was a goner. Celeste Hendricks might be my best friend, but she was also the love of my life.

CHAPTER 8

CRUEL SUMMER

CELESTE

Two years later

Locker doors slammed all around me in the wild craze that comes at the end of the school day. Summer break was just around the corner and my entire eighth grade class was eagerly awaiting its arrival. We were at the point in the school year where pretty much everyone had stopped caring about homework and grades because freedom was tantalizingly close. Even I found myself wistfully staring out the window at the bright sun and budding flowers during most of my classes. I was ready to have another perfect summer with Wesley before the daunting fear of high school crashed into reality.

“I swear, Mrs. Gallatin hates me!” Maggie whined as she slumped one shoulder against the locker next to me.

Maggie moved here in the middle of our seventh grade year after her parents divorced a couple counties over and her mom wanted a fresh start. Everybody looked at her like she was an alien simply for being new, so I had made it a point to befriend her. Wesley told me I needed to stop adopting lost puppies, but when I pointed out that included him, too, he merely grinned at me and swore he was different. Maggie and I had been practically sisters ever since.

“What happened?” I asked as I swapped out books from the locker shelf to load into my backpack.

“I was five minutes late to class because I had a bathroom emergency and she gave me detention!” Maggie threw up her hands in frustration.

Laughing, I clarified, “An actual bathroom emergency?” I already knew the answer because Maggie was obsessed with two things, makeup and boys. For all the times she claimed to have a “bathroom emergency” with me, I had yet to experience one that didn’t have something to do with one of the two.

She rolled her eyes at me but joined me in laughing. “Max Daniels was tooootally checking me out! I had to make sure my lipstick was on point!”

“Max Daniels is a douchebag,” Wesley said from behind me. “You can do better.”

I turned and flashed him a smile. He had grown a few more inches over the course of the past couple years and it felt like he towered over me now. Puberty was still as foreign to me as ancient Greek, so despite my recent 15th birthday, I retained my child-like figure and flat chest.

Maggie had already started blossoming what looked to be a good size set of boobs and more of an hourglass figure that I envied. We could no longer share clothes like we had only a few months ago because her shape was changing so rapidly. It seemed like all of my peers were lightyears ahead of me in maturity and development, and I tried not to feel embarrassed at the prospect of being left behind.

“Be nice, Wes,” I reminded him. Since Maggie had become friends with us, he was very protective of her.

Maggie just shrugged, though. “As long as he can give me my first kiss, I don’t really care. It’s gotta happen sometime, and I refuse to start high school with that kind of innocence!”

I chanced a quick glance over my shoulder at Wesley and found his bright blue eyes burning into mine. His smirk grew wider, and I diverted my eyes as I felt my cheeks start to redden. We had never told Maggie about our first kiss, almost two years ago now, that had never been repeated. I wasn’t sure why I wanted it to be a secret, but I loved having that remain a special moment between Wesley and me. Something only we could share.

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