“I’m really glad you came up here with me,” she continues. “I couldn’t let you leave without us seeing this together.”
“I’m glad too. There’s no way I’m forgettingthis,” I say. Wesit in silence for a bit. I move my eyes carefully across the sky, quietly naming the constellations.
Amari sits up and turns to face me. “You’re not going to forget me, right?” she asks, suddenly earnest.
I sit up when I realize she’s serious. “How could I forgetyou?”
“As easily as you will forget the other things about this place, I guess.”
“I don’t love those things,” I mumble.
“I heard that.”
I shrug.
“I love you, too,” she says, her eyes fixed on mine.
I hold her gaze, and her lips turn up in a small smile. “I never say that to anyone—not even my parents. You’re stuck with me forever now.”
“How do you know you love me?” I ask. I’ve never said it to anyone besides my mom and Desiree.
Amari leans in close enough that I can see little specks of light in her dark eyes. “How do you?”
“I just do,” I say. It’s the truth. I don’t know how else to explain it.
“Well, me too, then,” she says, moving back and tilting her head to the sky.
I glance at the timer.Five minutes.Time only flies when it’s borrowed.
“Are you going to be different when we’re out there?” she asks.
“Different how?”
“Like, pretend you don’t know me or that I’m not good enough for you? The way you were when you first got here.”
“I didn’t think you weren’t good enough for me! I was just scared. And I didn’t know you then,” I say with a laugh.
“You wasted time and now you’re leaving.”
I move closer, so our knees are touching. “You’re stuck with me, too. Forever.”
Amari looks at the timer.One minute.She turns back to me. “I’m holding you to that,” she says, smiling. She stops the timer before it can go off.
We put on our sweatshirts and Amari folds up the gown. I take one last look at the sky and breathe in the night air as deeply as I can.
Amari reaches down for my hand. I let her help me up. And there, under the stars, breaking the biggest rule we possibly can, we kiss. We linger in it as long as we dare, until we remember that we aren’t back in the real world yet, and the time we’re taking isn’t really ours.
“Ready?” Amari asks after we pull away.
“Ready,” I say.
Time is up. But on the other side, when we’re out of here, we’ll have all the time in the world.
19
“Is this the only after-party?” Mel asks when the host’s parents pop their heads in for the third time tonight.
The party is in the basement of this girl’s house that’s walking distance from the country club. We stumbled over here as soon as homecoming ended, all of us shivering, a few of us barefoot. It’s supposed to go until eleven, since most of us have to be home by midnight, but kids are still flooding in at ten thirty.
