Shuffle, Repeat(54)

Oliver stares at me for a long moment. “Don’t move,” he finally says. He closes Marley’s door and then nods to my mother, who is standing nearby, looking super happy and super buzzed. “I need to talk to your daughter.”

“Go ahead,” says Mom. “I might not remember it tomorrow anyway.”

“Cool,” says Oliver.

“Cool,” says Mom, shambling off toward the house.

I feel like I should say something, too, but “cool” doesn’t seem appropriate.

Oliver walks over and stares down at me. Even by moonlight, those eyes are lethal. “Here’s the thing: once we’re out of here, we won’t come back. Most of the time, we won’t even remember who we used to be.”

“I’ll remember.”

“No,” he says. “You won’t. Trust me on this one. I’ve seen it.”

This time, I don’t answer, because I don’t know what to say.

“When we get those few chances to remember, this will be the time we come back to,” Oliver tells me. “It’ll be now, tonight. Do you know why?”

I wish I had a smart-ass comment, but I only shake my head.

“Because we’re young enough to break the rules. This is one of our last moments of freedom, and guess what.”

“What?” It comes out in a whisper. Oliver leans down to me. He’s close—so close that even though we’re in the moonlight, even though I can hear his mother singing from inside his car and my mother tromping around on the porch, I am viscerally aware of the warm, minty smell of his breath and the hard angles of his jaw.

“You get to taste it,” he tells me, also whispering. “You get to live it.”

I stare at him, and all I can see is his goodness. Because Oliver Flagg is good and real and true….

“Get in the car,” he tells me. “You know you want to.”

He’s right.

And still I can’t.

? ? ?

I’m standing in the front hallway, looking out the window, when Oliver drives back past my house. I see the behemoth cruise down Callaway. It slows down, almost coming to a halt, and then finally speeds up. It keeps moving and disappears down the road.

Pain rises inside me. I can’t explain it, can’t define it. It’s something that makes no sense whatsoever. It’s loneliness. I miss something I’ve never had.

Crap.

I lean my forehead against the glass, aching for Oliver’s brake lights, which have receded into the distance, when I hear my mother’s voice. “You should go.”

I turn to look at her. “You’re encouraging vandalism?”

Mom leans against the wooden storage bench, smiling at me. “It’s not like you’re going to kill someone. It’s a prank.”

“I don’t even know what it is,” I tell her.

“I do,” she says, and I stare at her, not sure if I’m pissed or upset or amused. My freaking mother gets to know about the prank, and I don’t? But then Mom shakes her head. “Not the details. I have no idea what you kids are up to, but I do know it’s okay to be involved in something bigger than yourself, even if it’s just a goofy joke with a bunch of teenagers you might never see again after graduation.”

“But why?” I say. “Why should I do it?”

Mom walks over to me and I can tell she’s moving slowly so she won’t wobble. She reaches out to stroke my hair. “June,” she says in a voice that is all kinds of loving and gentle. “I think the real question is, why not?”

Yet again, I don’t know how to answer. Mom smiles at me. “I’m going to bed,” she tells me. “Do what you want but just know that, tonight only, you have no curfew.”

I watch her walk up the stairs before I turn to look out the window again, and what I realize as I stare into the blackness is that I wish I could still see Oliver’s headlights approaching, because if I could, I would run out into the night and flag him down.

But unfortunately, there are no headlights.

There are no lights at all.





It’s midnight when Shaun finds a spot two blocks from campus, far away from any streetlights. When we’re both out of the car, he grabs my hand and pulls me toward the school. “We’re already late,” he reminds me.

“Thank you again,” I tell him as we head down the darkened sidewalk. “I didn’t know if you’d come get me. Most of the time, you don’t even answer your phone.”

“Most of the time, you don’t have anything important to say.” He grins at me and I grin back.

“Did you text Lily and Darbs?”

“Yep, but I don’t think they’re coming.”

We circle the flagpole and go down the east side of the school, away from the main entrance. A couple of “guards”—Danny Hollander and Sara Francis—are stationed outside the art suite. They beckon us over and explain that we’re going in through a window several yards down, behind a pair of spruce bushes. “Don’t turn on any lights,” Sara tells me. “Feel your way through the room and close the door behind you. Things are happening on the second floor.”

Getting through the window is easy. Getting through the pitch-black art room—slightly less so. Edging our way down the hallway toward the staircase is downright terrifying, but by the time we reach the steps, we can hear laughter from upstairs and it starts to feel more like a fun caper and less like a low-budget horror movie.