Chapter 1
Memories are like plants: if you care for them, they grow. I’ve relived this one night so many times that what was once just a sapling has now become a tree, its roots twisting deep into the dirt.
I was standing on the roof at a New Year’s Eve party during winter break of tenth grade. It was below freezing, but we stayed outside anyway because up there we could be reckless and loud. And sometimes the cold feels good, the way it holds your heart in its claws.
Below me, the city spread out in all directions. Sparkling lights lined up in the neat rows of Manhattan, and the bridges to Queens and Brooklyn draped like beaded necklaces across the glassy East River. Looking at New York from above at night is like looking at a galaxy full of stars.
“This is the best.”
I turned and Noah Bearman was standing next to me. A lock of dark hair fell helplessly across his face, grazing the top of his sharp cheekbone and covering one of his dark eyes. He was wearing a sweatshirt that looked nowhere near warm enough. His hands were shoved into his pockets and his shoulders were hiked up to his ears, like maybe his muscles were cramping from the cold.
“What is?” I asked, trying to act like it was normal that he would be talking to me.
“This,” he said, looking at the view. His breath froze when he spoke, making icy, geometric shapes in the night air.
I pulled a cigarette out of my pack and lit it. I hate smoking, but I thought it made me look cool. If Willa were there, she would have made me put it out. I sucked hard, hoping I seemed experienced.
He watched as I took a drag and then asked, “Can I get one of those?”
“Sure,” I said. I held the pack out to him.
He paused before taking a cigarette, and I willed myself not to stare at him. Still, I couldn’t help notice the way the winter air had made his full lips even redder, and how it had turned his nose adorably pink.
“Which one do I want?” he murmured.
“What do you mean? They’re all the same,” I replied, confused.
He looked at me and his eyes twinkled. “Are they?”
Noah kept his eyes glued to mine as he reached into the pack and pulled out all the cigarettes. Then, he stuffed them all in his mouth so that they stuck out in every direction like crazy teeth. The whole time he kept looking at me.
I said, “Those are my cigarettes. They’re expensive. Don’t waste them.”
Noah didn’t answer me. He couldn’t speak anyway, with his mouth full of cigarettes. He held out his hand for my lighter and I gave it to him. He flicked it on and wiped the flame across the tips of the cigarettes, torching them all. They lit up at once.
I was aware that Noah was doing something so strange and twisted that it verged on being mean. But he was trying to tell me something. And anything Noah Bearman wanted to tell me, I wanted to know.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice tiny now.
He reached up and took the cigarettes out of his mouth, grabbing them with his full fist. Then he dropped them on the ground and stomped on them.
“I just did you a favor,” he said. “Don’t be mad.”
“I am mad.” I pouted. But I wasn’t.
“I’m Noah,” he said, as if I didn’t know who he was.
“I’m Sadie,” I told him.
“So the girl with the red jacket has a name.”
Noah Bearman wondered about my name?
An icy wind howled, licking across the roof and whipping against us so hard that I had to turn my back on it and cower.
“You’re shivering,” he said, tapping my elbow with his own.
Even with the fabric of his sweatshirt and the thick wool of my coat between us, and even though it was just his elbow knocking against mine, Noah’s touch made the cold night turn hot.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”
So we did.
In some ways, it doesn’t matter what happened next, or back at school, or in the year and a half since then. That night was perfect and I’ll always have it. I’ll hold on to the memory tight as I want, because it’s mine.
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