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the size of her stars?”
    “Right. And besides the bodacious and boastful Cassiopeia,
    anything else drawing your attention to the big black yonder?”
    Wilder’s teasing tone weakened. “I get bored easily. But
    I can’t know space, so it keeps me wondering. Maybe there’s something worth finding out there, something that’s missing
    down here. Life feels like half of itself.”
    “‘A dream within a dream.’”
    “And I want to wake up.”
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    For the first time, I felt like Wilder was saying something
    he really believed. But I couldn’t think of anything to say back
    that wouldn’t sound nerdy.
    “Maybe this is stupid, but do you ever feel like you’re
    doomed?” He laughed. “Nevermind, anytime the word doomed
    is involved, it’s definitely stupid. But it’s like I’m chasing noth-
    ing, and I can’t stop until . . .”
    “Until what?” I said.
    His gaze was up, almost as if he’s forgotten I was there.
    “Till the stars run away, and the shadows eat the moon.”
    I knew that line. He was quoting William Butler Yeats.
    “‘Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,’” I finished the
    poem, “‘One cannot begin it too soon.’”
    He looked at me. His lips parted. Then he studied my face
    as he quoted, “‘Oh, love is the crooked thing.’”
    For the barest moment, I became aware of every part of my
    body. Not only the pressure of my legs on the roof, the wishy
    breeze tickling the hairs on my arm, the rise of my chest as I in-
    haled, the click of my eyelids as I blinked. Not just those places
    of touch and motion, but all of it. Everything. Everywhere. I
    thrilled with life. And I looked at Wilder.
    “I said I didn’t want you to woo me.” My voice sounded
    foreign to my own ears.
    “I wasn’t.”
    “Oh. So . . . what does that mean, ‘love is the crooked
    thing’?”
    “I don’t know.” He was still looking at me. “I just like the
    way it sounds.”
    I looked down, twisting a loose thread on my T-shirt.
    “Poetry kind of reminds me of looking at things through a
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    microscope.” I didn’t know what I was saying—I just started to
    talk. “I got a microscope when I turned six. You know, physi-
    cist mom, biologist dad. I examined things I thought I knew—a
    strand of my hair, a feather, an onion peel. Seeing them up
    close, they changed. I started to guess how, you know, things are
    more complicated than they seem, but that they have patterns,
    and the patterns are beautiful. Space has all those patterns and
    intricacies and mysteries, but not tiny under a microscope. So
    big, so expansive, when I think about it, I feel like the solid parts
    of me are dissolving and I’m out there in the blackness and light,
    moving with the whole universe.”
    I glanced up to see if he was bored. Instead I felt his hand
    on my cheek and his lips on mine. Just a touch, a softness, a
    greeting. One kiss that lasted seven rapid heartbeats. His other
    hand lifted, both holding my face. A second kiss—one, two,
    three, four, five beats. It was easy to count by my heart. I could
    feel it thud through my whole body. My left hand clutched my
    right arm, afraid to touch him or to not. His lips moved again
    (how did mine know how to move with his?). A third kiss—one,
    two, three, four. Only four beats before the fourth kiss. Either
    the kisses were speeding up or my heart was. A fifth kiss, a sixth,
    and I counted each beat. It seemed the only way to keep from
    drowning. Numbers were solid things I could grip, a buoy in a
    flood.
    Seventh, eighth, one beat, two beats, three—
    He pulled back (or I did?) but his right thumb stayed on
    my cheek, his fingers on my jaw. His eyes were still closed.
    “You’d better not talk about microscopes anymore,” he
    whispered, “or I don’t know if I can control myself.”
    I laughed. It was good to end a kiss (my first kiss—my first
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    Shannon Hale
    eight kisses) with a laugh, because I didn’t know what I was