A group of students posed in front of a building with tall glass sections. Teddy's face smiled back at me and my gut clenched.

"You were at the museum yesterday?" I clicked through a short slide show, scanning the handful of pictures, looking past the smiling faces, searching the figures in the background for my own. Finding no sign of either myself or Reece, I let out a shaky breath and scooted it back to him.

Jeremy's face was paler than usual and he looked tired. "I had permission to leave school to cover it for the paper. I guess you heard about Teddy," he said, closing the picture and looking awkward and uncomfortable. "I'm sorry for that stuff I said about him at the amusement park. I didn't mean it like it sounded."

I nodded. I doubted anyone knew about Posie yet, but it was only a matter of time. Monday morning, the entire school would be buzzing over it. As if reading my thoughts, Jeremy said, "You should get to school early on Monday. The police are auditing attendance records and I heard teachers are giving detention if you're late without a pass. There's supposed to be some big announcement and a lecture on personal safety in every first period class. And I'm pretty sure all after-school activities are canceled until further notice. Counselors from all six high schools have been called in and they're supposed to be making the rounds. You know . . . grief counseling for anyone who needs it." He massaged his eyes under his glasses, then pulled them off and dropped them on the desk. "I'm not a big fan of shrinks, but I thought you should know about it. Just in case . . . you know . . . you needed to talk to someone."

"How'd you know about all this?"

Jeremy opened the Twinkies and lay down beside me on the bed. "Contrary to popular belief, I'm actually not a shitty reporter." He smirked it off. He knew he was a great reporter. I was just lucky he hadn't seen me at the museum.

"So what was it like?" he asked around a mouthful of sponge cake.

I bit into my own. "What was what like?"

"You know . . ." he mumbled, "your first kiss?"

I stopped chewing. Jeremy stopped too. We lay staring at the ceiling instead of at each other. I searched for tiny imperfections in the surface-imperfections I knew weren't there-while I thought about what to say.

"It's okay. You don't have to answer that." I felt him reach for his glasses, to push them up the bridge of his nose, even though he wasn't wearing them. It was something he always did when he was uncomfortable-like some people chew their nails or pace or twirl their hair. I hated that I was the one making him feel that way.

"That wasn't my first kiss." My first kiss had been with Jeremy, when he'd gotten drunk at a party and made an unexpected pass at me six months ago.

Jeremy frowned as if the memory stung. "That one doesn't count."

"Just because you were too shitfaced to remember it, doesn't mean it doesn't count."

"For the record, I remember very clearly. My face hurt for two days."

"That's called a hangover."

"No, it's called an upper cut. It doesn't count because you didn't kiss me back."

Of everything that went wrong that night, this is what bothered Jeremy most. Not the fight with his father that'd made him want to get drunk in the first place. Not that he'd been too inebriated to listen when he tried to kiss me and I said no. Not that I'd hit him, or the fight we'd had before I took his car keys and walked myself home. No, what bothered him most was that I hadn't returned that kiss. Not at all. It may have started out like my kiss with Reece, but it ended very differently. It never had any traction. Never turned me inside out like Reece's kiss had. I hadn't lost myself in Jeremy's kiss for a single minute. Because I'd never wanted it to begin with. But I'd never told him that. Instead, I'd hidden behind Mona's rules. To tell him that now, when we were so close to finding our way back to normal, felt unnecessarily cruel.

"Well, it counted to me. And I'm sure if you hadn't been such a sloppy drunk, you would've proved yourself a much better kisser than Reece Whelan anyway." I teased a sad smile from him. Jeremy's kiss may have been a disaster, but it had been real for him. He'd wanted it. He'd wanted me. And I wasn't sure I could say the same for Reece.

I fell back onto the mattress and stretched. Let my muscles melt into the thick down comforter. They ached, swollen and knotted with the tension of the past few weeks. With the door shut and the blinds closed, the house quiet and Jeremy lying beside me, I relaxed.

Jeremy cleared his throat softly. "So I heard Reece got expelled . . ."

"Suspended," I corrected before he could finish.

"Right . . . suspended. I was thinking maybe you'd need a date for prom? We could go together . . . if you want to?"

For a moment, neither of us spoke, and the look on his face was two parts regret and one part hope. I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn't find the right words. I hadn't intended to lead him on when I told him he was probably a better kisser, but it was too late to take it back.

"I kind of assumed you'd be taking Anh to prom."

Jeremy frowned. "I haven't asked anybody yet. I was hoping maybe you'd want to go. I mean, I know you hate crowds. And I know there's going to be like a thousand people there, but I just figured maybe . . ."

The thought of a crowd that size made me cringe, but throw alcohol, drugs, and touching into the mix and it made the prom seem like a tame alternative when I considered Friday night's rave. The difference was the matter of choice. I didn't have a choice about the rave-I had to be there, like a mandatory graduation requirement. Prom felt more like an elective.

"You should probably go ahead and ask Anh," I suggested as gently as I could. "I hate those things. Wouldn't be caught dead at a school dance." I looked over at Jeremy. He stared at the ceiling, his chest motionless. I twined my fingers in his and felt the thin ray of hope slip out of him, making room for heavier emotions that tugged down the corners of his smile and pulled the color from his face. He was still angry with me, and it was a sour and metallic knot in my throat, but I made myself swallow it like medicine. I deserved it.

"It's okay," he said numbly. "I figured as much."

We lay quietly, hand in hand until his disappointment started tasting more like bitter determination.

"There's a rave on Friday night." His fingers twitched with an eager thrill that covered me in goose bumps.

I sat up, letting go of his hand. "You're not going, are you?"

"I thought it would make a really cool piece for my portfolio. It's kind of edgy. I thought a little grit might make me look more . . ." he paused, choosing his words carefully. "Might get more attention in a college application than something as lame as another canned food drive."