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There are fewer than a hundred people watching the’s friends, too lazy or too far to come see it in person A few of those friends forward the link to other friends This you have to see, they say A fewYou knohat this esture Secret because ere afraid Secret because ere asha

But what power it had Whether we cloaked it in the guise of You be the boy and I’ll be the girl, or whether we defiantly called it by its name, e kissed, we kneerful it was Our kisses were seis person, they could destroy us When shared with the right person, they had the power of confirether, you have enough space for a rooether, you have space for a house If you put enough houses together, you have space for a town, then a city, then a nation, then a world

We knew the private power of our kisses Then came the first time itnesses, the first timeit happen out in the open For some of us, it was before we ourselves had ever been kissed We fled our towns, came to the city, and there on the streets o boys kissing for the first time And the power noas the power of possibility Over time, it wasn’t just on the street or in the clubs or at the parties we threw It was in the newspaper On television Inlike that, the power grew And now--oh, now There are millions of kisses to be seen,about sex We are talking about seeing two boys who love one another kiss one another That has so much more power than sex And even as it becomes commonplace, the power is still there Every time two boys kiss, it opens up the world a little bit more Your world The world we left The world we left you

This is the power of a kiss:

It does not have the power to kill you But it has the power to bring you to life

Nobody is watching as Peter and Neil kiss It is just a quick kiss as they leave the IHOP, before they head home It is a syrupy kiss, a buttery kiss It is a kiss with nothing to prove They don’t worry about whoabout anyone but theht It is just a part of who they are together, so that they do

Walking through the aisles of Wal through his app, chatting with strangers, and kissing isn’t on any of theirsick of the inside of his car, was feeling stupid just sitting there in the parking lot as mo carts Noalks around as his mented into screens and s, torsos and couys on here are older--sonores the much older ones, but that still leaves him plenty to choose fronize his nas he wants to do with his mouth, and all Cooper has to do is type Yeah and Wow and Oh o on

"Cooper?"

It’s the second tiirl Sloan fro the phone into his pocket

Sloan laughs "You were pretty intense there Don’t let me interrupt you"

Cooper wonders what she saw It was just a chat screen No photos She’s not close enough to have read it, right?

"It’s nothing," he mumbles

"Oh, I know all about your secret life, Cooper"

Cooper feels like he’s going to drop so Sloan is in a few of his classes Sometimes they’re at the same lunch table He never sees her outside of school How could she know anything?

"You’re an undercover Wal delinquent teens likethreat I know the profiling that goes on here"

Cooper doesn’t knohat to say

"I take your silence as complicity" Sloan puts up her hands "Check o away? Cooper’s phone is vibrating like crazy in his pocket, and he iines she can hear it every tie that Cooper isn’t playing along

"But really," she says "What are you up to?"

He really wants her to go away He keeps his answer as short as possible

"Shopping"

"For what?"

"Gas"