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“Drink?” was the first word I heard. Ben handed me a lukewarm bottle of water. I swished and spat first and then swallowed a mouthful but didn't think I'd ever rid my mouth of that tangy vomit aftertaste.

“I think someone hit me with a car.” My whole body hurt. I wiggled my fingers and toes to make sure everything still worked and was in its proper anatomical location. The fall from Cassie's window wasn't far, but it was still a miracle I hadn't broken any bones.

Coop was dangerously close to a full-blown panic attack. “What the fuck were you doing?” he asked. His voice was an octave higher than normal, and when I looked closely, I could see
the veins in his temples pulsating. I had to calm him before he did something stupid like call an ambulance, if he hadn't already.

“Practicing for the Olympics,” I said. “My landing needs some serious work.”

Ben chuckled and helped me up. “He's fine. In fact, I think the concussion improved his sense of humor, not that the bar was high to begin with.”

I steadied myself on the tree, trying to keep the ground from shifting under my feet. The back of my head hurt, but when I touched it, there was no blood or anything. Overhead, light still shined out of Cassie's window, but Eli was gone. His last word echoed in my head and I replayed everything, wondering how much of what he had told me was made up. I still clutched the scorecard in my fist, though. It didn't matter what else Eli might have lied about because the scorecard was undeniable proof that that night had meant something to Cassie. That I meant something.

“Nice shirt,” Coop said. His nuclear core was beginning to cool, but there was still an aura of frantic energy around him, and he could melt down if I didn't keep assuring him that I was okay.

The problem was that I wasn't okay. I'd been duped by Eli Horowitz. Somewhere along the way, Eli had realized that I had an actual shot at proving to Cassie that I loved her. He'd tricked me into telling him my plan, and then had all but shoved me out the window to sideline me so that he could get Cassie for himself. I briefly wondered if I'd have been capable of something so underhanded if I'd been smart enough to think of it but brushed
the thought aside. Time was against me and I still had a lot to do.

“Can we move away from the puddle of puke?” Ben asked. “Those fries are starting to make me hungry.”

Coop groaned and led us around the house. He kept a hand on my arm, for which I was grateful. I couldn't admit to him how badly I hurt. The bruises from my fall were layered on top of the bruises I'd earned during my fight with Dean. My throbbing brain insistently demanded a handful of aspirin and a twenty-four-hour nap, but I knew that by the end of the night either Eli or I was going to be with Cassie. It was one of those rare prescient moments. The knowledge took root with such certainty that I'd have wagered my entire future on it. My injuries would have to wait.

We sat down on the couch Cassie had stashed on the patio for safekeeping. It was quiet here, cool under the fan, and I was able to make an honest attempt to organize my thoughts. I was running on adrenaline and fear, but neither of those would carry me across the finish line.

“What the hell is Sia up to?” Ben asked. He was looking behind him at the pool. It was lit up with primary colors and filled with inflatable animals. But this was no haphazard arrangement. The alligator was tail down, tied to the steps, and someone had decorated the waterfall with a series of interlocked inner tubes. Other kids I recognized from the drama club scurried around like ants converging on something tasty. I spotted Aja Bourne standing off to the side, watching Sia with a bemused expression. No . . . bemused wasn't the right word. Aja was watching Sia the same way Coop watched
Ben. With pride, admiration, and a sliver of mortification. In short, she looked happy. I didn't know what that was all about, but it was kind of cool.

“I need to go home,” I said. Coop and Ben had been arguing about what the drama kids were up to, but my statement grabbed their attention. My time with Eli had strengthened my resolve. It had brought the entire night into perfect focus. I had one chance to show Cassie that I loved her. Everything else had been a red herring. Roadblocks Cassie had thrown in my way to keep me from finding her. But I knew the truth now and I knew what I had to do.

Coop nodded and grabbed his keys. “Agreed. We should probably think about stopping by the hospital first to get you checked out. I don't know if you've noticed, but you look like hell.”

“No,” I said. “I need to get something from my house and bring it back.”

“You do realize you just fell out of Cassie's window, are reeking of rum and puke, and that you probably have a concussion?” Ben said.

I nodded, which was a terrible idea.

“Is this a Cassie thing?” Coop asked.

“Isn't it always?” Ben said.

Coop wasn't joking, though. He was still King Serious, ruler of Grimland. “You fell out of a window. I heard a rumor that you got into a fight with Dean over a Ping-Pong ball. And I'm guessing it all somehow relates to Cassie.”

“Please,” I begged. Coop already knew the truth; I was at
his mercy. Coop could refuse to drive me home and there was nothing I could do about it, but I hoped that he would hear my desperation and help me one last time.

“Fine.” It was all he said to me. A few minutes later we were idling outside of my house.

Ben threw a pack of gum at me and said, “In case you run into your folks.”

I popped two sticks of gum into my mouth and got out of the car. As I walked around to the side door of the house, I used the time to compose myself. Puking had rid my body of some of the rum I'd consumed with Eli, but I'd absorbed enough of it that, combined with my likely concussion, I would have a difficult time convincing anyone of my sobriety, least of all my parents, whose alcohol-sensing skills were razor sharp.

I stopped to take a leak in the bushes and didn't notice that the lights in the kitchen were on until I saw my dad staring at me through the window over the sink. He was wearing his angry face.

“Shit,” I said over and over as I finished watering the Christmas cactus and zipped up. In another time or place I might have been able to come up with a perfectly good explanation as to why I was pissing in the bushes, but right then, my mind was blank.

The only thing to do was man up and walk inside like everything was normal, like I peed in the garden every single day.

“What's up, Dad?” I said, and tried to walk by him casually, not making eye contact.

“I'm not even going to ask what I just witnessed,” Dad said. “But you're not moving a muscle until you tell me what happened
to your face, why you smell like a frat house, and why you're wearing a Hanukkah shirt in April.”

Dad stood at the kitchen island wearing one of Mom's silky bathrobes. The fridge was ajar and there was a can of whipped cream and strawberries chilling on the counter. Based on my dad's tone, I knew I needed to do some fast talking to avoid being imprisoned in my bedroom until graduation.

“I got into a fight chasing the girl of my dreams and my shirt got covered in blood so I had to borrow this shirt from the girl's ex-boyfriend, who tricked me into drinking a ton of rum and climbing out a window, which isn't as easy as it looks on TV.”

Dad tapped his finger on the tile counter and stared at me. I couldn't read his expression, which was always a bad sign. “Are we talking about that Cassie girl?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I came home only so that I could get something that would prove to her that I really love her.”

I thought Dad was going to lock me in the attic, but instead he got a bag of peas from the freezer and tossed it at me. He sat down on a bar stool and motioned for me to do the same. I wanted to tell Dad that I didn't have time to sit, but I knew that would make the situation much, much worse. So I sat and held the peas to the lump on the back of my head. The cold hurt so good.

“You and I never really talked about girls—” Dad couldn't look me in the eyes and it was all I could do not to run screaming from the conversation. Solitary confinement might have been preferable.

“I'm sorry for the drinking,” I said. “For the fighting and all of it, but this is important. I've waited a long time to tell Cassie how I feel and now I finally have my chance.” To Dad's credit, he turned off Dad mode and treated me like a man.

“So you really believe this is the right time for you to tell her that you're in love with her?” I nodded, hoping that Dad would see the urgency of my situation and let me go. Instead he sighed and said, “Simon, I'm afraid I've failed you as a father.”

That wasn't the response I'd expected, and I didn't know how to react.

“Do you know how I met your mother?”

“In college,” I said, annoyed. Time was running out. Every second I was here, Eli was there. With Cassie. “You had a class together or something.”

Dad nibbled on a strawberry. “Sort of,” he said. “The only reason I took Renaissance literature was because of this girl I fancied.”

“ ‘Fancied,' Dad? Really?” I tossed the melting bag of peas on the counter and pushed back my stool. “The girl was Mom and you fell madly in love. The end. Can I go?”

“Sit.” Dad pointed at the stool and I dropped back onto it. “The girl was Nancy Stadler. The first time I saw her was in registration. I bribed her roommate to give me Nancy's schedule.”

It was difficult to picture my dad bribing anyone. He was the kind of guy who wouldn't even jaywalk. “How very
Mission: Impossible
of you.”

Dad gave me a wry smile. “It took me all semester to talk to
her. I memorized this poem. ‘Come live with me and be my Love—' ”

“This walk down Old Geezer Lane has been fun and all, but the clock's ticking.”

Dad gave me a look that told me I was lucky to get a story and not a beating, so I shut my mouth. “Anyway, I waited until class ended and then I stood on my desk and began to recite the poem. What I failed to notice was that Nancy had left and I was wooing an empty room. When I realized I was alone, I hopped down off the desk, slipped, and hit my head on the wall. Your mother saw the whole thing from the hallway and helped me up. We've barely been apart since.”

I stood up again, and this time I wasn't going to sit back down. “So what you're saying is that I inherited my sense of timing and balance from you?”

“What I'm saying,” Dad said pointedly, “is that sometimes love hurts, but it shouldn't be so hard.”

“Thanks for the words of wisdom and the hilarious mental image of you crashing into a wall. Can I go now?” Somewhere, in the undamaged part of my brain, I knew that my dad was trying to tell me something important, to have a big father-son moment that would change the course of my life, but that part was buried too deeply for my father's dubious wisdom to penetrate.

Dad sighed. “Fine. But tomorrow you and I are going to have a discussion about drinking.” He paused. “We can keep your mom out of it.”

“Thanks, Dad.” I looked around the kitchen. “Speaking of Mom, is she asleep?”

Dad's eyes flicked to the whipped cream and strawberries and he turned the color of the fruit on the counter. I wished I'd never asked.

“Dad! Gross!”

“What? It's perfectly natural for your mother and me to have relations.”

I covered my ears with my hands. “Jesus, Dad, can you never say the word ‘relations' again?”

“Sex is a beautiful thing between two adults who love each other.”

“La la la la!”

We were saved by Coop, who popped his head in the door without knocking. “Hey, Mr. Cross.”

“Cooper,” Dad said. “I trust you haven't been drinking this evening.”

“Sober as a stone,” Coop said. My parents trusted Coop more than they trusted me, and my dad just nodded. “Simon, if we're going to go back to the party . . .” Coop sounded like he would have preferred not going back, but that option wasn't on the table. Not for me.

“Yeah. One second.” I ran up the stairs and tore my bedroom apart until I found what I'd been looking for. When I showed it to Cassie, she'd know that I loved her. She'd be able to tell me what was going on, and we could be together. It was perfect. Nothing could stop me now. I was panting when I got back to the kitchen, but I ignored every ache, every pain.

“You and Mom have fun,” I said to Dad before I left.

“Remember what I told you,” Dad said, but I was already out the door.

No one spoke as we left my neighborhood. It wasn't until we got up to the beach road that Coop asked me what my plan was.

“I'm sort of improvising,” I said.

Ben laughed. “You don't improvise well. Remember that time—”

“Fuck!” Coop slammed on the brakes as something white ran into the middle of the road. It looked like an albino raccoon. A girl in a yellow tank with bright red dreads chased after the animal. The seat belt bit into my shoulder and I cussed up a storm.

“What was that?” Ben asked, but Coop was too busy yelling out his window to answer.

The girl in yellow scooped up the furry white animal that had nearly become roadkill and ran back to the sidewalk.

“Did that just happen?” I asked.

Coop drove off in silence. We were almost back to Cassie's house when Coop said, “Are you sure you want to go back to the party, Sy? We can go to Howley's. Get some loaded fries, crash at my place.” It was the kind of question Coop had asked me a million times because it was the sort of thing we'd done a million times. But his voice had an urgency to it now that I didn't comprehend.

“That's low,” I said. “Tempting me with loaded fries.” I was joking, but when I caught Coop looking at me in the rearview, I knew that he wasn't. Something was going on that had nothing to do with fries. I pulled out of my pocket what I'd gone back to my house for and held it up for Coop and Ben to see.