Extraordinary Means

I wasn’t used to drinking, and the vodka kept making me cough. If we’d been anywhere besides Latham, we probably would have been busted. But that night, whenever one of us would cough, we all gri

I was lying on my stomach with my elbows in my pillow. On the screen, Ferris Bueller claimed he was Abe Froman, the sausage king of Chicago, and everyone laughed. The room was spi

I was there with the right group of friends, and we were up to a small, ridiculous act of mischief, and I never once worried that I should have been at home studying instead of out watching a movie.

About halfway through the film, Sadie scooted her blanket closer to mine.

“Hi,” she whispered.

“Hi,” I whispered back.

“Mind if I watch from here?” she asked, and then she put her pillow right next to mine and settled in.

It was dark in the gym, and it was just the five of us, sitting apart from everyone else. Something about Sadie lying there felt more intimate than any of the other times we’d watched a movie. I was mesmerized by the curve of her bare back in that dress, and she was so pretty that I didn’t know where to begin.

I propped myself on one elbow, facing her instead of the screen, and she copied me.

“Sorry it’s not a real dance,” she whispered.

“That’s okay, it’s a real gym.”

“And you didn’t stand me up.”

“I’d never do that.”

Sadie smiled at me, and it felt like she was holding the universe together.

“I know,” she said.

After the movie ended, we walked back to the dorm. Nick was sulking and had polished off at least three juice boxes. I could feel Marina silently cheering as Sadie and I walked together and I carried both of our pillows. Charlie kept moaning about how he’d had to pee for, like, half the movie, and how it wasn’t fu

There were twenty minutes before lights-out, hardly enough time for anything, but I’d consumed a juice box full of alcohol while wearing a shirt and tie, so the weirdness of that night was already out of my hands.

Charlie beelined for Cottage 6, and Nick followed.

“Um, I’ll see you later,” Marina said with a yawn, heading back toward the girls’ dorm.

And then it was just Sadie and me standing on the grass, with me awkwardly clutching our pillows.

“Why don’t we put these down?” Sadie suggested, so I dropped them on the porch swing, and then we stood there wondering what came next.

Everyone streamed around us in their pajamas, talking and laughing in this excited but exhausted way, and it felt so strongly like we were at summer camp. Like we’d never left but had grown old there separately, and had only now found each other again.

“Wa

“A promenade,” Sadie said, giggling. “Come, fair gentleman, let us take a turn about the garden.”

She rested her hand on my arm, and we walked toward the gazebo.

“Nope,” I said, steering her away. “That’s a sad place. We don’t go there.”

“That’s okay, I have a better idea.”

“You always have a better idea,” I teased.

“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment,” she said, and then she grabbed my hand and pulled me into the woods.

The moon wasn’t quite full, but it was still bright enough to see by. It had been a long time since I’d been in the woods at night, and they seemed to twist around me, to chirp and hum and vibrate from every direction.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Shhhh, we’re time traveling.”

Sadie bent down to take off her heels, and then she stepped ahead of me, in that green dress with the achingly low back, her spine pale in the moonlight as she pulled me deeper into the woods.

“We’re here,” she said, stopping suddenly.

“Where?”

“Camp Griffith, four summers ago. The night of the dance.”

Behind her was an enormous rock, like the legendary one from camp. I laughed at the reference.

“You brought the rock all the way here?” I joked.

“Yes, I did,” she said seriously. “Because I’ve considered it and have concluded that the make-out rock is the most romantic place in the world to have a first kiss.”

“Well,” I said. “Who am I to argue with the world’s most romantic time-traveling rock?”

I was awestruck by my good fortune, and by this profoundly gorgeous girl who was staring at me in the moonlight. And then she stepped forward, and her lips parted mine, and nothing else mattered. Not that we were sick and might never get better, not that we’d missed so much and would miss more still, and not that the band around her wrist wasn’t a corsage but a med sensor.

The world melted, and it was just us, in the woods, our mouths pressed together as we found the kiss that had been waiting for us since we were thirteen.

“Well,” she said.

“Well,” I said.

“I guess now I have your TB,” she joked.

“I guess now I have your first kiss.”

“Took you long enough,” Sadie said, biting her lip and staring up at me. “There’s a second kiss with your name on it, too, but it’ll have to wait or we’ll be late for lights-out.”

And even though I could have stayed there forever, her hand grabbed mine, and we hurried back through the woods toward the soft, warm glow of the cottages.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SADIE

I COULDN’T SLEEP after we got back from the woods. I lay awake under the too-warm covers, my whole body thrumming in the aftermath of that kiss. I felt the ghost of where his lips had been, and remembered the pressure of his hand on my back, the smell of his soap, the way his mouth had tasted faintly of apples.

I didn’t care that I’d promised myself I’d stay away from Latham boys, that I’d rolled my eyes whenever I saw other couples sneak off toward the woods or duck behind buildings to engage in Latham’s favorite pastime. I didn’t care about any of that. I just wanted to tiptoe over to Cottage 6 in my pajamas, and push open the door to Lane’s room, and crawl under the covers with him so the feeling of our lips touching never had to end.

Kissing Lane was like the first time you hear a song that you’ll listen to on repeat a hundred times. It was like the first spoonful of ice cream of the whole cup. But mostly, it was the strange and lovely experience of something being even better than I’d imagined.

What were the odds that out of the 150 of us at Latham, there’d be a boy whose smile did flippy things to my stomach, and who liked me back, and who made jokes about Harry Potter? And what were the odds that it would be a boy I’d known, and had wrongly despised, for years?

I’d been at Latham long enough that I no longer quite believed in second chances, but in the moments before I drifted off to sleep that night, I wondered if maybe Lane was the miracle Latham had promised, and if that miracle would be big enough.

Lane was waiting on the porch the next morning. He bounded out of the glider when he saw me, this big, goofy grin on his face. His hair was wet from the shower, and he was wearing these horrible athletic shorts with a giant Aeropostale logo on the leg.

“Really?” I said, making a face at the shorts.

“Hey, you already kissed me. No take-backs,” he joked, and then he leaped down the porch steps two at a time.

It was just a small thing, but it struck me how much healthier he looked than when he’d arrived. How the nurse never seemed to stay in his room very long when we hid our phones during lights-out, and how he rolled his eyes after a coughing fit, instead of struggling to catch his breath.