Penny tosses her hair over her shoulders and waves us off. “What took you guys so long anyway?”
Will leans between us. “We were discussing Lake’s great, big, epically magnificent, cowabunga awesome birthday surprise. She was trying to pry hints from me, but as you all know, I’ve got it under lock and key like it’s a goddamn national treasure.” Will settles himself back into the seat. I look back to see him looking smug. We all know Will is the actual worst at keeping secrets. Far too excitable. In fact, I give him a week on this whole birthday thing, tops.
That’s why it’s Penny who sneaks a sideways look at me, then reaches over and squeezes my hand. Penny’s the only one who knows that, for years, I’ve been approaching my eighteenth birthday with a sick sense of anxiety. Because she’s the only one who knows my resurrection has been earmarked to be used for someone who’s not even dead yet.
I squeeze back twice so that she knows I’m fine. I have the two of them.
Penny follows the curve of the road, and the wind begins to air-dry my skin and hair. As if to echo my thoughts, though, we pass a billboard on the side of the road that reads: ARE YOU PREPARED? SUMMER SAVINGS ON CRYOPRESERVATION FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY! The billboard, which features the left half of a beautiful female model’s face—skin frosted with beads of ice, frozen crystals glittering from her hair and eyebrows—wasn’t there last week. In the last few decades, facilities specializing in cryonics, the process of low-temperature body preservation, have multiplied, giving families a low-cost means to preserve their loved ones while they wait for a member of the family to reach resurrection age. Parents even purchase cryonics insurance for their kids. But lately, I’ve wanted to ignore the resurrections. They only remind me of death. And so I’m thankful when the advertisement disappears in the distance behind us.
I stare out at the white jasmine that lines the side of the road, interspersed with red and orange wildflowers. We’re whizzing along the stretch of road when I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to see Will unbuckling his seatbelt.
“What are you—?” I ask.
He tucks his legs underneath him, and pushes himself to stand on the seat, his fingers wrapped around the Jeep’s roll bar, gripping tightly.
Penny does a double take in the mirror. “Will!” She stretches her arm back and tugs on his ankle. “Will, get down from there. You’re going to make me get a ticket.”
But Will tilts his face up to the sun like he’s praying.
“Not funny, William.” Penny looks back at the road. And I can tell she kind of means it. Penny rarely gets mad. Occasionally she and Will get into it about something dumb—bound to happen after eighteen years of friendship—but overall, when it comes to minor annoyances, she’s, like, some sort of Zen master.
Will reaches a hand down for me. “Come up here,” he says. Fine bits of salt crinkle into the folds of skin around his eyes as he squints in the sun. Sometimes I think that I love Will so much that my heart will combust. It actually embarrasses me, because I know that it’s the type of thing that if I tried to put into words would just sound weird and stupid and make both of us uncomfortable. So then I get this feeling of trying to carry it all around in my chest, a feeling that’s too big to fit, like a balloon on the brink of being filled with so much helium it pops. Luckily for both of us, Will’s the one who’s good at this sort of thing, at grand romantic gestures and sappy words that, even though they make me blush or even occasionally cringe, somehow fit him. More than that, they make Will Will. Something about the tone and rhythm in the way he speaks that makes it all sound confident, casual, earnest, and innocent at once.
My heart performs a little tap dance in my chest. The air is warm. The water has evaporated from my skin, leaving behind a layer of sea grime. The sky is so saturated with blue, I swear if I could reach up high enough, my finger would come away dripping with it.
And I’m seventeen. There’s only three measly weeks left in my life that this will be true. I’m seventeen and this is our last summer together, at least like this, and in three weeks, after my resurrection choice, it’ll all be different.
I swallow down the sick feeling that wells in the back of my throat every time I think about my birthday, and grab Will’s hand. He’ll be starting senior lacrosse practice in a few weeks too, and everything we do has the weight of the last days of our last high school summer ever coloring it. He pulls me to my feet and I grab the bar for support. The wind blows back my eyelashes and the corners of my mouth, and I can’t help but smile because up here it feels as if we’ve been untethered from the world. I look down into the Jeep’s cabin and Penny is shaking her head. But then I feel her hand, warm from the baking steering wheel, snake around my ankle, anchoring me to the spot protectively.
Another car sweeps past us in the opposite direction, honking its horn. Will and I let out rowdy whoops after the car, our voices carried away. Penny digs her fingernails into my ankle and I relent. I latch my hands onto the ledge at the top of the windshield and drop back into my seat. I’ve learned to listen to Penny when she tells me I’m about to take a stunt too far, because when I haven’t, I’ve wound up with stitches, broken toes—once I nearly knocked out a tooth. A couple of seconds after, Will lands safely in the backseat. I can feel the happy flush in my cheeks as I click my seatbelt into place. Will spreads his arms across the top of the entire backseat and puffs out his bare chest like he’s king of the whole car.
Penny turns the music down a few decibels. “My mom will freak out if I get pulled over, you guys,” she says in her calm but meaningful voice. It’s true, Tessa is wonderful, but you do not want to cross her.
“Sorry, Pen.” I squeeze her shoulder and the crease in her forehead disappears. Because in the same way she’s there to make sure I don’t go too far, I make sure she lives beyond the confines of that beautiful brain of hers. The world just isn’t as scary as she thinks. “From this point forward, we’ll keep our butts planted firmly in our seats.”
The road back to town is twisty, the kind that, if you’re prone to motion sickness, turns your insides to slime.
“Where’s your phone?” Will leans between us and asks Penny when the song changes over to a hair-removal commercial. “Put on that playlist I made.”
“What playlist?” I ask.
Penny sticks her hand into the cup holder. “I could have sworn it was in there. Shoot, I hope I didn’t leave it on the—” Penny pops open the center console and torques her back only a fraction to look into the cubby. “Found it,” she sings out, retrieving her cell.
It’s a split second. That’s all it takes. Her hand shifts the wheel to the left. At the same time, half a ton of metal in the shape of a silver Lexus is barreling toward us in the opposite direction.