Page 7 of Songs of Summer

“Oh my God, Jason. That is the cutest thing!”

She wiggled back under his arm.

“We should do it,” he said, just above a whisper.

“Do what?” she asked.

“We should get engaged.”

She slid back out, faced him.

“Stop kidding around.”

“I’m not! Hear me out. If we come out as dating, my whole family, and possibly the entire town, will obsess over us getting married, like we’ve talked about. This way we cut them off at the chase! We can be engaged in peace without everyone speculating where it’s going.”

Maggie laughed. “A long engagement—it’s actually not a terrible idea.”

Jason spun around and reached down into the crag of the tree. He pulled out a Mad Libs filled with every expletive they had known at twelve, a purple Princess Diana Beanie Baby they had been convinced would be worth a small fortune one day (it wasn’t), and a mixed bag of plastic figurines from McDonald’s Happy Meals. He felt around in the dark to the corners until his hand grazed upon what he was looking for. He held it up like a prize, a small jewelry box that she immediately recognized.

“Remember these?”

“Of course I do. Our mood rings.”

Jason fumbled with the box and took one out. He gotdown on one knee, took a deep breath, and with a nervous expression asked:

“Maggie, I can’t imagine loving anyone more than I love you. Will you marry me?”

He slipped one of the mood rings on her finger and gave her an encouraging smile.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I was kind of hoping for a Ring Pop!”

He placed both hands on her face and looked into her eyes.

“Maggie, I’m completely serious.”

“Jason. You can’t ask me to marry you because you predicted it when you were thirteen…or because it’s easier than telling your family we’ve been sleeping together!”

“That’s not why,” he insisted. “It’s always been you, and I want us to be family—officially and forever.”

His first attempt to take charge of the direction of their lives was certainly a humdinger. She loved Jason—of course she did—and couldn’t imagine life without him and his family. But they had said they were boyfriend and girlfriend for the first time only minutes ago. Now he was proposing! This was a leap she hadn’t anticipated, and she wasn’t much of a leaper.

“Give me a minute,” she said, as sweetly as she could. Jason’s face turned beet red. She hurried her thoughts, out of empathy for his obvious embarrassment. It turned out to be true that if Jason was cut, Maggie would bleed too.

“How about we secretly get engaged to be engaged?” she suggested.

“Until I can get you a proper diamond?”

“Well, that would be nice, but I need a little time to figure some things out before announcing it to the world.”

Now he looked dejected. She couldn’t take it and blurted out the softest thing that came to mind.

“I want to find my birth mother first,” she said, quickly realizing it was the truth. “It feels like a puzzle piece that’s missing. I can’t get married with a piece of me missing!” She smiled at him, hoping he would understand and smile back.

He did.

“I get it,” he said. “You want to know where you come from before you decide where you’re going.”

The conversation had taken some unpredictable twists and turns, but Jason looked visibly relieved. Maggie wondered if he had perhaps gone further than he’d meant to and welcomed the delay to give them both a bit more time to process the idea. She opened the jewelry box and wiggled the other ring onto Jason’s pinky to seal the engaged-to-be-engaged deal. They both looked down at their fingers and did their best to assess the color in the dark.

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