Page 130 of The Glittering Edge

Penny swallows. “I make you nervous?”

Alonso works his jaw. Then he steps closer, until they’re inches apart.

Penny can’t stop drinking him in; the shadows of his face, the way his lips are slightly parted, or how his eyes make the night around them seem brighter.

“‘I should have loved a thunderbird instead,’” Alonso says.“‘At least when spring comes they roar back again.’”

Loved.Loved. The word rings in Penny’s head like a wind chime. But he’s only quoting the poem; she read it time and time again last night, trying to decipher Sylvia Plath’s words. To figure out how Alonso saw her in them.

“Thunderbirds aren’t real,” Penny says, her voice shaking.

“That’s how I felt when I looked at you,” Alonso says. “You always seemed too good to be true.”

“Always?” Penny repeats. “How long…?”

Alonso leans down. “Do you know how hard I worked to get you to notice me? It was exhausting. And then, if you did notice me, you didn’tseeme. You saw what everyone else saw. Some asshole, I guess. It drove me insane. I thought… I thought if you couldn’t see any good in me, then there was no hope.”

All this time, Alonso was watching her. He never hated her at all. But something in his words makes Penny uneasy.

“So what, I was some fantasy to you? You projected all of this stuff onto me when you didn’t even know me?”

Alonso’s eyes turn sharp. “I think I know you pretty well.”

“No, you don’t! Haven’t you noticed that I struggle to do the most basic things? Do you know how hard I had to work just to have conversations with people? I’m scared ofeverything. I’m not like you, or Corey, or Naomi. You’re all so… so bright. You make things happen. I just let them happen.”

“Really? So that’s why we’re here tonight? Because Corey and I decided to try and break this curse all by ourselves, and you thought you’d tag along?”

“That’s different—”

Alonso grabs her shoulders. “Wake up, Penny. Everybody is scared all the time. But unlike most people, you never let that hold you back from doing the right thing.”

“I let people walk all over me.”

“You didn’t let me,” Alonso says. “And I’m scary. Ask anyone in Idlewood.”

The words come out in a rush before Penny can stop them. “You’re not scary, Alonso.”

Alonso’s expression turns soft. Open.

With him this close, memories of this summer flood Penny’s mind—not just of sitting at the hospital with her mom, but of the good things. Playing bike polo. Wearing his T-shirt after her own got soaked in vodka-cranberry. Sitting in the café as Alonso wiped down tables, head bobbing to faint music over his headphones.

There’s a distantboom, and tiny sparks of light reflect in the leaves above their heads—blue and gold and pink and purple. Fireworks. There are distant cheers from the guests at the gala. Under the trees, Penny’s own skin shimmers inside and out.

“Penny,” Alonso whispers, and she realizes she’s clutching the front of his shirt. “Can I…”

“Yes,” Penny breathes, and then his mouth crashes into hers.

There’s another boom overhead. Alonso presses her back againsta tree, his arms tight around her waist. Penny’s knees go weak, and she clings to him as his mouth moves from her lips to her cheek to her neck.

Penny wants him to see every side of her. The good girl, the coward, the failure. And she wants all of him in a way she didn’t know it was possible to want anyone.

In this moment, nobody else exists.

“Penny,” Alonso breathes again, and she pulls his mouth back to hers.

Corey

THREE HOURS OF SMALL TALK, AND SOMEHOW COREY HAS SURVIVED.

---