I wish I could say we made up, but that hasn’t happened yet. I’m ready to forgive her, but she has to meet me halfway. The days of me kowtowing are over.
“So where are we headed tonight?” Lennon says. “Mission and Western Avenue, or Mission and Euclid Street?”
We now have four different routes we walk. One is our old path, from when we were kids, and one goes through the farmers’ market, which is so deserted at night, it’s practically romantic—you’d be surprised what two people with dirty minds can do on bales of hay. Two of the routes go in different directions around the edge of the Bay, but my favorite one snakes through a park, where we can climb a hill and look at the city while sitting under a big old oak tree. It’s not dark enough for ideal stargazing, but it’s private enough for making out.
Oh, the make-out spots we’ve discovered. They’re on all our routes.
“It’s too brisk for the Bay routes,” I say. “Andromeda will get fussy.”
“We could take Wick Boulevard up through the edge of the warehouse district and cut through to the train tracks up on the hill.”
“That sounds suspiciously like a fifth route.”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
For our one-month anniversary, he made me a picture map. It has all the milestones of our intersecting lives. Where we met. The night we played poker with his dad. Our first fight. Our first kiss. The homecoming debacle. The sequoia cathedral. The night we said I love you at the observatory.
A map of us.
It’s years in the making, and it’s messy and convoluted, some of it even tragic. But I wouldn’t change the route, because we walked it together, even when we were apart. And the best part about it is that it’s unfinished. Uncertainty isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes it can even be filled with extraordinary potential.
“So what will it be?” he asks when the light turns green. “Old route, or new route?”
“Surprise me,” I say.
He smiles down at me, and I thread my fingers through his. We put one foot in front of the other. Clear head, steady steps. And we move forward.
Acknowledgments and Thanks-a-Millions
For their hard work:
Laura Bradford, Taryn Fagerness
Nicole Ellul, Lucy Rogers, Sarah Creech
The entire Simon Pulse and Simon UK teams
For cheerleading:
Karen, Ron, Gregg, Heidi, Hank
Brian, Patsy, Don, Gina, Shane, Seph
For feedback:
Aya Sharif
For inspiration:
Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon National Parks
City of Berkeley, California
Nancy Grace Roman, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan
Tsugumi Ohba, Takeshi Obata
Kimberly Saul
For existing:
Every single librarian
Every single bookseller
And you
Author the Author
Jenn Bennett is an artist and RITA Award–nominated author of the Arcadia Bell urban fantasy series (for Kindling the Moon) and the Roaring Twenties romance series, including Bitter Spirits, which was chosen as a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2014 and was the winner of the RT Book Reviews Choice Paranormal Romance Book of the Year, and Grave Phantoms, which was awarded the RT Book Reviews May Seal of Excellence for 2015. She is the author of Alex, Approximately, and The Anatomical Shape of a Heart (titled Night Owls in the UK) was her first YA contemporary romance. She lives near Atlanta with one husband and two evil pugs.
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Also by Jenn Bennett
Alex, Approximately
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SIMON PULSE
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First Simon Pulse hardcover edition April 2018
Text copyright © 2018 by Jenn Bennett
Black-and-white interior illustrations copyright © 2018 by Jenn Bennett
Jacket photograph copyright © 2018 by plainpicture/Cavan Images/Nick Roush
Photograph of boy by the campfire copyright © 2018 by Jill Wachter
Photograph of starry sky copyright © 2018 by Thinkstock
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Jacket designed by Sarah Creech
Interior designed by Tom Daly
The text of this book was set in Adobe Garamond Pro.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bennett, Jenn, author. Title: Starry eyes / by Jenn Bennett.
Description: First Simon Pulse edition. | New York : Simon Pulse, 2018. | Summary: When teens Zorie and Lennon, a former couple, are stranded in the California wilderness together, they must put aside their differences, and come to terms with lingering romantic feelings, in order to survive. Identifiers: LCCN 2017025646 |
ISBN 9781481478809 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781481478823 (eBook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Survival—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. | Camping—Fiction. | Family problems—Fiction. | California—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B4538 St 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017025646
