Page 90 of If Anything Happens To Me

“If anything can make it better,” Matt said, watching me, to see if I really believed that. I wasn’t sure I did, but I was willing to give it a try. I pictured us here, the core group that was left: Adalyn, Chris, Matt, and me. There would be owls, and I would bring something that Eloise had loved. I would carve a pumpkin for her. Instead of a jack-o’-lantern, it would be the face of a great horned owl.

“We could have cider,” Matt said, sitting beside me as I held the note. “Hot, in a thermos.”

“Apples, too. Or a pie,” I said. “Our grandmother used to bake great apple pies. Maybe she’ll be up to baking another one this year. I can help her.”

“Yes,” Matt said. “That would be great.”

The leaves on the maples, oaks, birches, and sassafras all around the blinds would change color. They would turn scarlet, crimson, orange, bright yellow, and they would twinkle down from the branches to the ground. The Braided Woods would smell like spice—black walnuts, bayberry, bittersweet, the last of the goldenrod. Dusk would fall, and owls would call.

But still, for now, it was summer.

Just then I heard an unusual call, but I knew it right away: a cedar waxwing. A favorite bird of mine and Eloise’s, pale gray with a yellow tinge, a red wing-stripe, a subtle crest, a dashing black mask. Delighted, I turned to Matt, assuming he would be focused on the direction in which the call had come. But instead he was gazing at me.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“A cedar waxwing,” I said.

“Oli,” he said.

“Matt.”

“When we were just out on the raft,” he said.

I nodded, thinking back to earlier that afternoon.

“We almost,” he began.

“I know,” I said, feeling heat rise in my chest. I was almost too overwhelmed to look at him, but at the same time, I couldn’t look away.

Some things had already happened, weeks or months in the past: We had hugged, he had brushed his lips across my cheek, held me while he whispered in my ear. We had held hands. He had given me the rope bracelet that I still wore—now worn and frayed, still brown from that day.

But until now, one thing hadn’t happened.

And then it did.

We were looking straight into each other’s eyes. He put his arms around me and pulled me even closer. I always thought people closed their eyes. I was sure of it. But we didn’t, not at first. And I’m glad. Because I wanted to see him. I wanted him to know, to read in my eyes what I was feeling when . . .

When he

When he kissed me

And he did: He kissed me

Or maybe I kissed him

Or we both, or we both, or we both . . .

Either way, we kissed.

It was my first kiss. And I closed my eyes. All of me tingled. I wanted the kiss to go on forever. I reached up to touch his face, and he touched mine. And then we opened our eyes again.

“Oli,” he said.

I tried to say “Matt,” but my voice wouldn’t work.

It was summer.

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