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“Mia says she’ll die if we don’t go to USC together Don’t get o to school with her, too, and I want to be a doctor like the old hed

“But what?”

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He turned to her, caught her looking at him “What if I can’t cut it?” he said so quietly she barely heard his voice above the distant drone of highway noise

She had known Zach forhiist, culling through his words for hiddenlike this to her He sounded vulnerable and confused

The night seemed to fall quiet; the buzz of the cars faded All Lexi could hear was the beating of her heart and the even strains of their breathing She was reminded of all the times she’d waited for her mother’s return, only to be disappointed, discarded If there was one emotion she understood profoundly, it was uncertainty Never in her wildest dreained that Zach could feel the same way It made her feel connected to him, in tune For one split second, he wasn’t Mia’s brother; he was the boy she’d seen on that first day of school, the one who’d made her heart speed up “I didn’t think you were ever afraid ”

“Oh, I’htest bit toward her Maybe he was just shifting his seat on the hard dirt; she didn’t know—she just kne it felt to be afraid, and the way he was looking at her , she leaned toward him for a kiss

She was just about to close her eyes when he jerked back “What are you doing?”

The nitude of what she’d almost done knocked the breath from her He didn’t even like her, and, worse than that, he wasn’t available for her Jude had made that clear; so had Mia And Mia hat mattered, not some useless, baseless crush on a boy who fell in love with a different girl every week

Horrified, shethrough the brambles and bushes for the relative safety of her mobile home

“Lexi, wait!”

She ran into the mobile home and sla a song from The Little Mermaid

Lexi stepped over her best friend and peeked out from between the curtains

Zach stood there a long ti at the closed door Then he finally went back to his car and started it up

It wasn’t until Lexi had brushed her teeth and put on her pajamas and crawled into bed with Mia that she let herself really think about what she’d almost done