As I do my work in English class, I imagine switching places with Amy. I don’t even know where her school is, but I wonder what it would be like if I had a completely new start. Would I still remain me? Or would I become someone else? I would have to become someone else, because I can’t imagine me without Justin. It hurts to think about it. I imagine myself walking those halls—and the alone I feel there is so much worse than the alone I feel here.

I remember the ocean, and know that, no matter where I go, I want him to come with me.

I feel silly, but I’m a little sad to see Amy go. As we head to the parking lot at the end of the day, I write down my email address and give it to her. While I’m doing this, Justin finds me. He seems so much better now that the day is over. And from the way he lingers, I know he wants to hang out, not just say goodbye.

“Walk me to my car?” Amy asks.

I look at Justin, wanting to make sure he’ll wait.

“I’ll get my car,” he says.

It’s a good thing he seems to be in a patient mood, because Amy has parked about as far from the school as you can get. As we walk over, I wonder what Justin is going to do now. I’m trying to figure it out when Amy breaks into my thoughts and says, “Tell me something nobody else knows about you.”

“What?” I ask. It’s such a slumber party question.

“It’s something I always ask people—tell me something about you that nobody else knows. It doesn’t have to be major. Just something.”

I decide to go with whatever comes first to my mind. “Okay. When I was ten, I tried to pierce my own ear with a sewing needle. I got it halfway through, and then I passed out. Nobody was home, so nobody found me. I just woke up with this needle halfway in my ear, drops of blood all over my shirt. I pulled the needle out, cleaned up, and never tried it again. It wasn’t until I was fourteen that I went to the mall with my mom and got my ears pierced for real. She had no idea. How about you?”

There’s a beat as she thinks about it—which is a little off. If this is a question she always asks, doesn’t she always have an answer ready? After a few seconds she says, “I stole Judy Blume’s Forever from my sister when I was eight. I figured if it was by the author of Superfudge, it had to be good. Well, I soon realized why she kept it under her bed. I’m not sure I understood it all, but I thought it was unfair that the boy would name his, um, organ, and the girl wouldn’t name hers. So I decided to give mine a name.”

I can’t help but laugh, and also can’t help but ask, “What was its name?”

“Helena. I introduced everyone to her at dinner that night. It went over really well.”

Helena. I can’t figure if Justin would find this funny, too, or if he’d just find it weird.

We’re at Amy’s car now. “It was great to meet you,” I tell her. “Hopefully, I’ll see you around next year.”

“Yeah,” she says, “it was great to meet you, too.”

She thanks me for taking her around, for introducing her to my friends, and for putting up with her questions. I tell her it wasn’t any problem at all. Justin drives over and honks.

I almost tell him I want to go back to the ocean.

But instead I decide to see if I can bring the ocean here.

We go to his house like we always do, because my mom is always home at my house. We don’t have a chance to talk on the way over, because I’m in my car, following his. But even when we get there, we don’t say much. He asks me if I want something to drink, and I tell him water. He steals some scotch, but not that much. I never mind if he has a little. I like the taste of it on his tongue.

He sits down on the couch and turns on the TV. But I know what’s going on. It’s like he can’t come out and say, Let’s make out. A few times he’s started kissing me the minute we’ve gotten in the door—but usually he has to make sure no one’s home, get used to the gravity of being home before we can resist it a little.

So most of the time, it starts like this. Both of us watching the show but not really watching. Him leaning into me or me leaning into him. Putting our drinks down. A hand on a leg, an arm over a shoulder. Bodies starting to confuse. He won’t say that he wants something from me. But it’s there in the air. It’s there and understood between us as his hands go under my shirt and my hands touch his cheek, his ear, his hair.

I return to him. He returns to me. But then it’s not enough for us to balance like that. He pushes it. He’s saying things, but they’re not really directed at me. They’re directed at what we’re doing. They’re part of what we’re doing. The heat feels good. The touch feels good. But it doesn’t feel like enough. Not for him, since he wants more, and more, and more. Not for me, because if it was enough, I wouldn’t be thinking about whether or not it’s enough. We aren’t going all the way—not on the couch, only in the bedroom, where there’s a door to close and protection to wear and blankets to pull up when it’s over and we lie there, pleased. But we’re still doing something—he does what he does when we’re on the couch, and I do what I do when we’re on the couch, and none of our clothes are totally on and none of them are totally off. He starts to murmur, starts to moan, and yes there’s something he wants from me, there’s something he really wants from me, and I am giving it to him and he’s giving it back to me. I want him to get that peak, because what I want more is the sweetness of breathing together afterward.