“Delaney!” I picked up the pace. “Goddamnit, Delaney, stop!”

I spun around to face Decker as he came down the hill, moving much more gracefully than I had done. He was faster than me, so he would’ve caught up if he wanted to. He slowed down when he reached the path. “You don’t get to be mad about that,” he said quietly. “Not after Carson.”

I hated myself that I was so obvious. Then it finally seemed to register with him. I was upset. His mouth fell open and he closed his eyes for a second and he reached toward me. “Delaney,” he said as he wrapped his hand around my wrist. His hand that had been in her hair and on her face and on her back.

I jerked back. “Don’t touch me.”

He balled up his fists at his side. “Unbelievable. So tell me. How was it? How was being with Carson? I mean, was it like every other girl in the school says?”

I narrowed my eyes at him and took two giant steps backward. “Yes, Decker, it was. It was everything my first kiss should’ve been.”

His face dropped. I broke him a little with that, and it felt better than I thought it world. Because Carson wasn’t my first kiss. And we both knew it.

Freshman year, two years ago, we were playing manhunt. Same place, same group, apart from a few random faces. But mostly the same because nothing much changes around here. We had just finished up, and I was sitting on a rock brushing the snow from my coat. Decker left his group of guys and walked over to me, a small smile on his face. He held a hand out for me. I took it and pulled myself upright, and he didn’t let go. He pulled me closer, leaned down, and kissed me.

Three and a half seconds, that’s how long it lasted. I kissed him back for three and a half seconds. And then I heard the clapping. “Didn’t think you had it in you, Decker.” Carson came over and put his arm around Decker’s shoulder. I pulled my hand back.

Decker didn’t take his eyes off me. He was trying to say so many things but I refused to look at him. “Guess it’s time to pay up,” Carson said. Decker earned fifteen dollars for taking the dare.

The money hovered between us in Carson’s hand. I looked directly in Decker’s eyes as I brought my sleeve to my mouth and dragged the back of my hand across my lips.

Decker took the money. And the next day, he came over like nothing had happened and put seven crumpled dollar bills and two quarters on top of my desk. “I owe you this,” he said. Which was his own version of wiping his mouth clean.

He never did it again.

Now Decker hung his head down and started walking toward our side of the lake. “Come on,” he put his hand on my back. “I told your mom I’d get you home safe.”

I spun away from him. From his hands that had been all over her. “I said don’t touch me.”

He turned and stared at me. “What do you want from me, Delaney?”

I wanted not to feel sick when I saw him kiss someone else. I wanted not to see it, and I wanted not to care. I shouldn’t have cared.

“I want you to leave me alone.”

He stepped closer and lowered his head so we were level and asked me again, speaking slower so I’d get the full meaning of his question. “What do you want from me?”

But he was too close and all I could smell was her—her detergent, her soap, her shampoo. So I stepped back and said, “I want you to get the fuck out of my face.”

Decker flinched like I had slapped him. He blinked heavily and started walking backward. It’s not like he’d never heard me curse before. And it’s not like I’d never directed my curses at him. I’d just never meant it before. So he left me. He left me standing on the edge of the lake. He smacked at the tree trunks with his closed fist as he stomped up the hill with an anger that even Mom’s fear couldn’t pierce. An anger that made him leave me again. He left me for her, ready to put his hands God knows where.

I turned for home and started walking, eyes on the path in front of me. I could’ve recited my life history up to this second as a series of moments.

First day of preschool, some girl dipped my pigtail in blue paint. Traumatic. I became decidedly unfriendly to my classmates.

A brown-and-yellow moving truck pulling into the empty house next door. A boy with black hair cut too short walked across the yard and said, “I’m Decker.” But I had entered my unfriendly stage already so I just crossed my arms over my chest. And Decker said, “Tomorrow I’ll make you smile.”

Running in the house when I was not supposed to be running and knocking over a crystal vase, glass slicing into my leg as it shattered on the floor. I was so terrified Mom would be furious. But she wasn’t. She ran me out of the house in her arms, leaving shards of glass on her spotless floor.