“Is it the boiler room? Is this the part where we both fall asleep and Freddy comes after us? ’Cause I could so kick his ass.”

His key clicked open the lock, and he held open the door. “After you.”

I stepped into a small room, maybe ten feet square, piled floor to ceiling with books. A few old student desks balanced precariously in a corner. One naked lightbulb dangled from the ceiling.

“What is this? And why do you have the key?” I asked, sliding into a lone desk chair.

“It’s one of the English department storage closets. These are old class sets of books that never get used anymore. I took the key last year out of a teacher’s drawer and spent study hall trying doors until I found this place. No one ever comes in here.”

I stood up and ran my fingers across the book towers. Classics like Moby Dick and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and an array of Shakespeare titles in tiny, hardbound books quivered at my touch.

“So do you want to tell me what you were running from?” Leo leaned against the closed door. He looked almost sinister in the weak, shadowed light, like a man in a dream you’re not supposed to talk to but desperately want to touch.

I wondered what my face was saying now.

“Becca gave me something.” I cleared my throat, asking myself if I wanted to tell him about the list. He didn’t prod, which made me trust him. And he didn’t know Becca, which made me feel less guilty about sharing her secrets. Because now they were my secrets, too. “It’s a list of things she wants to do before she dies. We call it the Fuck-It List.” I laughed nervously, but his stoic expression remained unchanged. “And because she might, maybe, actually die, and she doesn’t know if she’ll get to do everything on the list, I said I’d help her.”

Leo asked, “So, what, like bungee jumping and dropping acid and going on an African safari?”

“Are those things on your bucket list?” I cringed a little. They sounded so unoriginal, and I hoped he was beyond that.

“I don’t have a bucket list. Nor do I feel the need to pay someone to drop me off a bridge. If I wanted to, I’d do it myself.”

“I hear that,” I concurred.

“So what, then?” he pressed.

“Just sort of random things that she wanted to do. Some are small, like eating a hot pepper.”

“Quite a goal,” he said, not exactly sarcastically but definitely unimpressed.

“Fuck you. She started the list when she was nine. And eating a hot pepper isn’t that easy.”

“Sorry,” he said. “What are some of the bigger ones?”

I didn’t want to get into it, all of the sexual requests and how Leo helped fulfill more than one of them, with him and by myself. “Well, like today, I was helping her with number fourteen—telling off Lottie McDaniels. Only I fucked it up and was a total cunt and said something about her camel toe.” I shook the memory loose from my head.

Leo laughed, a hearty laugh, which pissed me off. “What?” I demanded.

“I just like how you used the words ‘cunt’ and ‘camel toe’ in a sentence.”

“Oh.” We were both quiet, so I pulled a Tempest from atop a pile and flipped through the pages. A dried crumble of a page withered in my hands. I returned the book to its deathbed.

“Come here,” Leo beckoned. Maybe I was making the face again, or maybe it was the romantic nature of locked rooms and interrogation lighting, but I suspected what came next. At least the first part.

I obeyed Leo and walked up to him at the door. He wrapped his lithe arms around my waist and pulled me against him, leaning forward to meet my lips. We kissed urgently, tongues reaching for each other’s, nibbling at one another’s lips. I rubbed my hand along the back of his hair, the short pieces tickling my palms and making them tingle. He took his hands off my back, and I felt them wrangling with the button on the front of my jeans.

Were we about to have sex in a book closet? My body would have said yes to anything with Leo at that moment, probably most moments, but my head did the talking. I pulled away from his lips. He switched to kissing my neck, my cheek, my ear. I could hardly speak. “I don’t want to have sex right now.” When I heard the words, they sounded so unsexy, such a complete passion killer. But they were true. He didn’t seem to mind.

Breathing in my ear, he whispered, “We don’t have to,” and gently bit my earlobe. My legs could barely stand anymore.

We continued to kiss each other anywhere we could reach while he unzipped my jeans. I believed him when he said we didn’t have to have sex, so I didn’t stop him when he slid his hand into the top of my undies and moved a skilled finger in circles in exactly the right spot. I stopped my kisses and leaned into his soft t-shirt, inhaling his deodorant smell as I tried to command my legs to remain upright. With his free hand, he willed my face toward his again, and we kissed in rhythm with his fingers. I gripped the back of his neck to hold myself up, and his fingers moved faster. This was nothing like the poking of Davis, and I tensed my body as I had done uncountable times alone in my bed. I lost the ability to kiss, to control anything, and I bit his shirt to stop myself from screaming and calling attention to the book closet.

We stood against each other once it was over, still but breathless. The faint sound of the school bell rang outside the metal door. Quietly, Leo said in my ear, “AP History. I have to go.” He held me by the side of my arms and gently pressed me away from him. I steadied myself against a small spot of cinderblock wall, zipped and buttoned my jeans.

Before Leo opened the door, he walked over to me and gave me a last gentle kiss on the lips. “Feel better?” All I could manage was a nod.

CHAPTER 15

BECCA WAS NOWHERE to be found online, and my texts weren’t returned until Friday morning. According to Becca’s mom’s report she was home after three days in the hospital and would get oral chemotherapy at home for several days. She wrote that nausea was her worst side effect. I emailed Becca a lite version of the Lottie McDaniels story, focusing more on the nice things Lottie said about Becca rather than the ass-eyed things I managed to say. As I was leaving for school, my phone buzzed. A text from Becca read, “I’m sorry. Just hoarked on Mr. Toad.”

Mr. Toad was a stuffed animal I bought for Becca when my family visited Disneyland a few years ago. She had told me how Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride terrified her as a kid, so naturally I had to buy the toy.

S’OK. U can borrow my Chuckie doll

LOL

How are u?

Be thankful you cant smell over the phone When can I see u?

Dunno. Call me after school.

\m/

I left for school with a spring in my step, or at least more springy than my normally springless body was. Becca was alive and well enough to joke-text, and that would get me through the day. I managed to nicely avoid running into Lottie McDaniels when I saw her striking figure in the hallway and turned around, only to knock into Leo again. I smiled at him, and he looked leery.

“Did you poison someone?” he questioned.

“Why? Because I’m smiling? Give me some credit. My assassinations would be much more subtle than that. No, just kind of having a good morning. Are you stalking me again, by the way?”

“Yes. Want to tell me about your morning while you escort me to gym?”

“Wish I could, you know, be your hired escort and all, but I have to get to physics. I need to be awake during attendance so I can nod off during the movie. What about my lunch, your creative writing?” It turned out Leo’s creative writing independent study, which only required a checkin before he could head off to “write,” was at the same time as my lunch hour.

“Fridays I actually have to talk to my IS sponsor, so I can’t do it. Can you miss art?” We talked as we navigated through the shrieking hallway crowd.

“Not today. Critique day.”

“Then I guess I’ll just see you tonight.” We stopped in front of the gym hallway.

“Tonight?” I asked.

“Bruce Campbell. Army of Darkness screening? I had an extra ticket.” He looked a mixture of annoyed and disappointed that I didn’t remember.

“I totally forgot. A lot on my brain, I guess. I can still go.” I drummed up some enthusiasm. Not that I wasn’t excited, it was just that now Becca was home maybe I should stay by my computer in case she wanted to chat. There was always my phone, though.

“If you’re not too busy,” he mumbled. Now I could tell he was annoyed.

“Dude. I said I wasn’t busy. It just slipped my mind. There’s a lot of shit going on, and I just forgot. No big.”

“If you say so. Can you drive?” The bell rang.

“Shit. I have to go. I’ve been late every day since school started.”

“People appreciate consistency.”

“Teachers aren’t people!” I called to him as I sprinted down the hall. “I’ll come get you at seven!”

“Make it six. I want to get good seats!”

Ms. Leff didn’t seem to notice I was late, and I managed to ask her a question before the movie began to ensure I was accounted for. When the lights dimmed, I texted Becca.

U still puking?

Ten minutes later, still no answer.

Is it ok if I go to a movie with Leo Dietz tonight?

This time, I got a response.

Only if you two sleep on a beach after.

Skype later?