She giggles, a light, bubbly sound. “Sugar? For real? That’s actually a thing people do?”
“Apparently.”
“Fascinating.” She lifts her eyebrows, two perfectly symmetrical white-blond arches. “What was he like?”
I shrug. “Not sure yet. But he wants to be best friends with us.”
“Did you tell him it’s a pretty exclusive club? Tied forever to our moms’ vaginas?”
“Ew, Ginger. Unnecessary visual. But yes. I did express it, though more politely.”
“Well, I suppose we can give him a chance to earn it.” She pauses. “Is he pretty?”
There’s no point in lying. “Very pretty.”
“Worth breaking the rule for?”
“Ginger! No! I am not—”
She exhales loudly, cutting me off. “I know, I know. It doesn’t matter if he’s very pretty. Or very charming, sweet, smart, funny, talented, et cetera et cetera. You aren’t dating anyone before college.”
I reach out and pinch her elbow. “Yes, and it’s a good rule. A great rule.”
A rule that served various helpful purposes. I could focus on friends, family, school. Avoid the drama and heartbreak that goes along with dating in high school—especially a small school like ours, where relationships are often like a messy overlapping Venn diagram. But the primary purpose—the one I absolutely never say out loud, and the reason I came up with the rule in the first place—is because of Noah. I can avoid the idea of dating him specifically if I make it clear I’m not dating anyone period. He’d slipped an anonymous Valentine’s Day card in my locker sophomore year, but “anonymous” isn’t possible after a decade and a half of seeing your best friend’s handwriting. You are the most beautiful human in the world. I knew the loops and slants of his letters as well as I knew my own. But it was obvious without the card anyway. Had been for a while, really. The way he looked at me was evidence enough. I never acknowledged that I knew—that I’d recognize his words anywhere. Instead, I declared my rule the very next day: No dating until college. To be fair, I had never dated even before I came up with the rule. No one had ever asked. But there was no one I wanted to ask me either.
“It’s an arbitrary rule.” She pinches me back with those fresh leopard nails, the tips fittingly sharp and clawlike.
I wince and rub the half-moon imprints on my wrist. “It’s not arbitrary. And it’s more important now than ever. We only have one year left in Green Woods together. One. I intend to use my time wisely. You and Noah. My moms. College applications. The Environmental Club—which, now that I’m president this year, I fully expect you to join. So, yes, actual important things. Not a meaningless relationship that’ll inevitably end anyway when it’s time for long distance.” And I do believe in all of these reasons. They’re good ones. Just not the only ones.
“Uh-huh. And have I ever told you that you seriously overthink everything?”
“Oh, at least a million and two times before today, I’d say.”
“Well, then let’s make it a million and three. Because you do. Overthink. Just let life happen sometimes, okay?”
I shake my head, and Ginger knows me well enough to move on. “Anyway, in other news, I think Penelope Park smiled at me a little… I don’t know, wistfully, yesterday when I went to buy some almond butter and fluff at the store. She was checking me out—at the register, I mean, but maybe actually checking me out, too—and our hands touched for a good three seconds when she handed me the receipt.”
“Not to be a buzzkill, but isn’t Penelope still with Ethan? And… potentially straight?”
“Well, right, that’s why I said the smile was a little wistful, like she maybe wants to be with me but is still too ensnared in the oppressive chains of her heteronormative lifestyle to break away quite yet. But maybe she will. I can be patient. It’s hard to come out when there are only two confirmed lesbians in a school of, oh, you know, five hundred students.”
The kitchen door opens before I can respond, and Noah steps outside slowly, balancing a pitcher of tea and three glasses on a wooden tray. He’s dressed like he usually is, plain white T-shirt and dark denim shorts, battered gray slip-on sneakers. In the cold months it switches to dark jeans and a sweater over a white T-shirt. He has the kind of fair skin that somehow turns a deep tan after one summer day in the sun—whereas I go straight to pink—and he already has that bronze glow now. His thick golden-brown hair is curling up in the humidity, looking purposefully, artfully messy, but I know he’s never touched a dab of product in his life.
He smiles wide when he sees me watching him.
Ginger looks between us and sighs dramatically. “What a shame.”
“What’s a shame?” Noah asks as he puts down the tray on the picnic table. He pours two tall glasses of tea and then delivers them to us in the hammock.
“Oh, nothing important,” Ginger says, waving him off as she lifts the glass to her bright red lips and takes a sip. “Mm. Excellent infusion. I do have a real affinity for all things ginger, not surprisingly.”
“I was just telling her,” I say, “about the new neighbors that moved into the Jackson house. It’s a shame, isn’t it? A nice, innocent family picking such a sad place for a home.”
“Seriously?” Noah looks off toward the woods, as if he might actually make out the Jackson house behind all the trees. “Someone is really living there?”
“Yep. I met one of them, a boy around our age. Max.”
“Yeah? Well, we’ll have to be extra nice to Max. Show him Green Woods isn’t all scary and gloomy like that house. Boring, maybe. But the scariest thing about Green Woods is the lack of good food options. Or maybe the fact that even a mediocre hospital is thirty minutes away.” He turns back to the table, pours himself a glass of tea.
“That house
