“No,” Sam says.
“Me either,” I say.
“I’m really glad you came tonight,” he says. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”
“Well, I did,” I say. I take the cup from his hand and place it on the table.
“Maybe we can hang out sometime. Like, after school or something.”
“I’d like that.”
“Do you drink … coffee?”
“No, but I’m teaching myself to,” I say.
“I’m really glad you came tonight.”
“You just said that.”
Sam smiles at me and shuts his eyes.
Suddenly the music cuts off. Someone flickers the lights on and off. A voice shouts down from the top of the stairs.
“Dudes—cops are outside! Back door—everybody!”
“Sam, wake up, we have to go—”
“Huh—” He yawns as I wrap his arm around my neck and lift him up from the couch. A stampede of bodies races toward the backyard as I limp and stumble, trying to follow them out. Eventually, I make it through the door and emerge into complete darkness as the weight of Sam vanishes from around my shoulders. The scene changes again, and I find myself somewhere else.
A breeze blows against my skin, and when I look up through the dark, I see I’ve made it outside. I blink and a baseball diamond emerges through the moonlight. A telescope stands in the middle, angled toward the sky. Leaning down beside it is Sam, who is trying to adjust something.
“This isn’t going to work,” he says.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
He looks up at me, his eyes flashing with disappointment. “It’s too cloudy out. You can’t see anything. I thought this would work. I wanted to surprise you,” he says.
I squint at the sky. “Surprise me with what? Stars?”
“No. I wanted to show you Saturn’s rings. For that story you’re writing in class. You said you wished you could see it so you could describe it better.” He leans down, checking the lens of the telescope again. “Dang it.”
“I can’t believe you went out of your way to do this.”
“I emailed the astronomy department at the university and everything,” he tells me. “And they’re only letting me borrow the telescope for tonight.”
“Sam…” I whisper, and touch his back. He looks up from the lens. He and I have never kissed before. I’ll never forget his look of surprise when I pulled his face up slowly with my hands and pressed my lips to his, and we felt a slight shock of static from the metal of the telescope.
“Thank you for this,” I whisper.
“But you didn’t even get to see it.”
“I’m good with my imagination.”
We both smile. Sam puts his hands around me, and pulls me in for a longer second kiss beneath the cloudy night sky and bars of moonlight breaking through it.
I remember he said later, “I’ll show you them another time. I promise.”
He never kept that promise.
CHAPTER FOUR
NOW
The bell echoes down the empty hallway as I arrive late to school. I missed the bus this morning. Now I have to make an entrance to a class that’s already started, and draw more attention to myself. I consider skipping first period to avoid this altogether. But I’ve been absent for an entire week of school now, and I’m already here. I might as well get this over with, since I’ll have to face everyone sooner or later. At least I remembered to set my alarm yesterday. But I never planned to wake up in Sam’s bed and have to rush home.
Sam.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around last night. The phone call in the woods. Hearing his voice again. It was all real, wasn’t it? How else would I have ended up in his room? Only seven hours of this place, I remind myself. Then I can call him again. It’s all I can think about. It’s what’s keeping me together as I brace myself for the rest of the school day without him here.