Tradition: Chapters 12–20

Javi was always morose after speaking with his family.

...it sounds so clinical.

He turned away, suddenly coy.

But he couldn't hold back his smile. Javi. The model with the nonplussed face.

We dashed back through the rows of boats, crouched behind a giant crate of life vests and buoys, and wedged ourselves between the crate and a giant plastic barge.

Teachers wanted to talk about chemistry, or the transcendental movement in literature; coaches could help you perfect your butterfly stroke.

The warped wood stuck and then popped free of the jamb, just as it had for us, and I felt the vibration shudder down into the pit of my stomach.

The warped wood stuck and then popped free of the jamb, just as it had for us, and I felt the vibration shudder down into the pit of my stomach.

But if I’d been letting my dreams get away from me and dreamed about Javi and me, who’s to say other people’s thoughts didn’t get away from them—but not with affection, with a denigration.

...if they catch me and Max playing Casablanca, you know who calls up Father Jimenez to speak about an intervention?

I put my hands on my hips and screamed at the window—belted out my loudest and most unhinged.

We pulled down the window, allowing enough room to pry it open from the outside.

She glared for a second at Javi, but then relented.

I couldn't get a thought together in class, where I was supposed to think and speak—how could I ever say anything coherent at a college party?

I don’t know how long I'd been standing like that, gawking, mouth agape, when Jules suddenly tugged my arm and dragged me into the crowd after her.

Javi popped out of the barn and sauntered up the hill toward us, walking alongside one of the guys he'd danced with earlier.

...it was so obvious they were flirting with each other, but not really, because even though nobody would ever say Fullbrook was a homophobic place, I'd believed Javi when he told me he still felt that hesitation, that inclination to backpedal...

The cloudless night was a scatter of stars above us, and even though it was the largest party of the year, it was impossible to tell where everyone was, because the party sprawled across the bluffs and into the woods.

A couple of the other girls groaned, though, when they heard my pronouncement, but not Aileen.

Lit by the pale glow from the nearly full moon, Horn Rock rose like a giant gray tusk from the edge of the bluff and jutted up into the night sky.

Music was playing, and someone had lit candles and stuffed them in divots around the rock, but they weren't strong enough to provide much light.

Condescension. That knowing look of superiority. I was less than them and they let me know it—even with only a glance.

I wasn't paying attention to anything else—just trying to set the tableaux—and when Javi finally shuffled into position, the whole moon glowed behind him, casting a pale corona around his head.

I wasn't paying attention to anything else—just trying to set the tableaux—and when Javi finally shuffled into position, the whole moon glowed behind him, casting a pale corona around his head.

And Javi and I went back and forth, calling out toasts, invoking the sky, celebrating nonsense with nonsense until we had everybody cheering.

I slunk away, not even finding a voice to say I was sorry.

...another guy was giving a girl a piggyback ride up the path while she whacked his chest like a jockey on a horse.

One day it would fall, or the ground would crumble beneath it, but for as long as I'd been at Fullbrook, it had been just as it was now—tenacious, determined, leaning like a body into the breeze, bare branches extended toward the sky.

There was something so much cockier about him this year, even the way he stood and walked, like there was more weight in his gait—he never hurried anymore.

...we had a hard time talking to each other, not to mention the hard time I had listening to him spout off in class, or worse, when we were all hanging out for lunch or something.

Bushes and brambles would slow her fall, but who knows what she might break along the way.

“Come on, Aileen,” I said, bolstering her again with an arm around the waist.

“Whatever,” she said, sidling up on the other side of Aileen, taking her other arm.

If we waited any longer, Aileen would be dead asleep, and Shriya and I both knew it, so we devised a plan: We'd put her on my back, and I'd crawl backward down the slope so we wouldn't tumble, and Shriya would crawl down alongside and help me hoist Aileen onto my back every time she slipped off.

I didn't want to think in grandiose terms like that, but it was impossible not to, because that night, catching my breath and looking up into the cloudless sky, everything did feel larger than life.