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Prologue

Once they hit their teenage years, Leo and Shira only met at the old swing set back in the woods, where nobody could see them. They’d made this decision after the time in seventh grade when the girl across the street saw Shira running into Leo’s house without knocking and went on to tell everyone that obviously the two couldn’t be doing anything after that other than kissing, which, thought Shira with indignation, was:

Gross, because at twelve, any boys who weren’t in famous musical groups still had cooties, and also Leo hadn’t quite discovered deodorant yet despite the gentle urging Shira had done by leaving a stick she’d stolen from her parents’ bathroom closet on his pillow, where he couldn’t possibly miss it;

Insulting, because it was the most pedestrian rumor anyone could’ve possibly come up with—if the girl across the street was going to try to ruin their lives, she could’ve at least been creative with it by telling everyone Shira and Leo were secretly siblings or that they were running a counterfeit Pokémon-card ring that could make even the rarest holographics;

Annoying, because it led to Shira’s friends and frenemies making fun of her to the point where she couldn’t even wave to Leo in the hallway without someone making smooching noises at them or asking Shira what she was going to name their baby, which was really stressful, honestly, because every time they teased her, it made her picture kissing Leo, which maybe wasn’t as terrible as they wanted her to believe it would be.

People grew up a little after middle school and let it rest, especially once everyone woke up one morning and the other kids no longer had cooties but pheromones, but Shira and Leo kept their swing set meeting place. Partially because Leo had started dating one of the girls who sat in the back of the class with him and Shira didn’t want to upset her, and the rest because meeting back there gave her what she’d eventually come to understand as nostalgia. It reminded her of all the years they’d spent racing each other for the slide or trying to do handstands on the swings or climbing up into the little fort so they could pretend they were spies surveilling their New Jersey neighborhood.

And okay, because while Shira knew perfectly well rumors didn’t necessarily mean anything, there was one going around that Leo’s girlfriend carried a knife in her combat boot. It was true that Shira didn’t want to upset the new girlfriend, but mostly Shira didn’t want to get stabbed.

On this particular day, they were fourteen, and Shira was the first one there, blowing on her hands to keep them warm in the icy air because she’d run out so fast she’d forgotten her gloves. Usually she would’ve hopped onto a swing to wait, but this time she paced in a tight circle over the snowy ground, alternating between trying to warm her frozen fingers and checking her phone over and over. Leo’s text had been short and to-the-point: 911. So, even though she had an essay for English to finish and a bio test she had to study for, she’d come right away.

She’d gotten a 911 text from Leo once before, when his grandma died, the grandma who’d babysat him as a child, whose house he slept over at every year on his birthday.

Today, Leo showed up before she wore a moat into the snow. Her brows pinched at the sight of him: His dark hair, which he’d cut short for cross-country, was still somehow flying every which way; his tall, skinny form was as tense and coiled as the spring of a garage door, which, fun fact, was among the most dangerous things in a standard suburban house. Thousands are killed and maimed by garage doors every year—people underestimate how tightly they’re wound up.

Shira flew toward him, hands fluttering, forgetting the fact that soon she’d probably have to amputate a finger or two due to frostbite. “Who’s dead?” she burst out.

Something in that tightly coiled spring of him eased as soon as he saw her. His arms fell to his sides; he looked slightly less like he might strangle the next person to cross his path. “Nobody’s dead, Shira,” he said, voice full of venom. “Unless you count dead to me. That fucking cheater.”

Shira’s thoughts leaped immediately to his girlfriend, who she knew mostly as that girl who sat in the back of the classroom and always disappeared with the bathroom hall pass because she was vaping out the window, and who also always got away with it, maybe because of the knife. To be fair, Shira had never exchanged more than a hi with her, since they were separated by the honors track Shira was on, which the girlfriend and Leo were not. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Shira said. “You deserve better than her. You are such a good guy. The best guy. She’s going to regret—”

“Not Livvy,” Leo interrupted. Shira grimaced at the flash of irritation that for some reason always ran through her whenever she heard the girlfriend’s name. “That asshole formerly known as my father.”

Shira gasped. “What?”

“Months. It’s been going on for months, and we had no idea.” Leo threw himself onto a swing, and the story poured out of him in furious fits and starts that Shira had to piece together like a puzzle. His father—his devoted father, the one who’d helped him build a wooden car for the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby and then helped Shira, the non–Cub Scout, build one because she felt left out—was cheating on his mom. And had been for, like, a long time. His mom had found out, and she’d screamed at his dad, and his dad hadn’t screamed back but replied that he was in love, and not with his mom; with the lady he cheated with. There was more screaming. His dad was leaving? Maybe? Leo had run outside before he could be sure.

“I’ve been running ever since,” he said, which explained why he was glistening all over with sweat. He jumped off the swing and began pacing in a tight circle, following Shira’s tracks. “Around the neighborhood, then back here. So that I didn’t have to think. But it didn’t work. So I texted you.”

He hadn’t texted Livvy, Shira couldn’t help but note, which wasn’t a kind or helpful thing to be noting right now. So she just hugged him, which was allowed when they were hidden here in the trees. “I’m so sorry,” she said, her face pressed up against his shoulder as she tried not to breathe. (He’d eventually discovered deodorant, but in the tradition of teenage boys, that deodorant had been way too much Axe.)

“You make it sound like someone died.” His voice cracked. He was obviously trying very, very hard not to cry, so she made sure not to look up at him.

“It sounds like the way you think about your dad did,” Shira said. Still not looking directly at him, she stepped back, taking a deep breath of air that froze her lungs, and guided him to the other swing. He slumped into it and bowed over like he was about to puke. Shira sat on the one beside him, facing the opposite way, so he could feel free to tear up without her eyes on him. “Okay, let’s make a plan. You know that having a plan makes everything better.”

“I know that you think having a plan makes everything better,” he mumbled, which Shira chose to ignore.

“Since you don’t know all the details yet, let’s think short-term,” she said, pumping her legs. Crafting a good plan always got her energized. “Before you can make any decisions for the long term, you’re going to want to know all the details. You only know what your parents were yelling at each other before you ran out, right?”

“Yeah.” She could barely hear him.

“We want information, not emotion. No, we need information, not emotion,” she said. “So let’s wait out here and let them calm down for a bit. Then we’ll go back to your house and find out what actually happened. Maybe it’s not as bad as they’re making it sound.”

“I doubt that.”

“I’ll come with you,” she said. “We’ll get all the information, and then we’ll go from there, okay?”

He was still all hunched in on himself. She reached over and gave one of those rock-hard shoulders a squeeze. “Hey,” she said, trying to sound comforting, which was not her natural state. “It’s going to be okay.”

But it wasn’t okay. They hung out there on the swings for another half hour, until Leo’s eyes were no longer red and he’d stopped sniffling (“allergies,” he claimed half-heartedly), and then they marched through the woods and into his backyard.

If Shira had known that would be their last turn on the old swing set for an unfathomably long time, she would’ve…she didn’t know, done something. Not held a ceremony, because Leo would’ve rolled his eyes, but at least, like, paused for a moment and laid her hand on the splintery wood and bowed her head while thinking of all the good times they’d had there.

Leo’s parents were waiting for him when they approached the backyard, standing out on the deck despite the cold. They could’ve fit a king-size bed in the space between them, and their arms were crossed, and it was a testament to how much Leo looked like he was about to crumble that they didn’t send Shira home. They sat him, and by extension, Shira, on the stiff green velvet couch in the formal living room that nobody ever used, as if to emphasize the importance of the moment. Leo’s parents moved two armchairs across from them as if his parents were teachers about to tell them how deeply disappointed they were.