Sarah Dessen Read Online Free PDF

lifted her chin, and then, in one smooth movement, threw her arm up and released the Zip Coke, sending it arcing over our heads and the car. We watched as it turned end over end in the air, a perfect spiral, before disappearing with a crash, top still on and straw engaged, in the trash can.
    “Amazing,” I said to Jess. She smiled at me. “I never have been able to figure out how you do that.”
    “Can we go now?” Chloe asked.
    “Like everything else,” Jess said, turning out into traffic, “it’s all in the wrist.”
    The Spot, where we always started our night, really belonged to Chloe. When her dad and mom divorced back in the third grade, he’d left town with his new girlfriend, selling off most of the property he’d amassed in town while working as a developer. He only kept one lot, out in the country past our high school, a grassy field with nothing on it but a trampoline he’d bought for Chloe on her seventh birthday. Chloe’s mom had banished it quick from the backyard—it didn’t match her English garden decor, all sculpted hedges and stone benches—and it ended up out on the land, forgotten until we were all old enough to drive and needed someplace of our own.
    We always sat on the trampoline, which was set up in the middle of the pasture, with the best view of the stars and sky. It still had some good bounce to it, enough so that any sudden movement by anybody jostled the rest. Which was good to remember whenever you were pouring something.
    “Watch it,” Chloe said to Jess, her arm jerking as she poured some rum into my Zip Coke. It was one of those little airplane bottles, which her mom regularly brought home from work. Their liquor cabinet looked like it was designed for munchkins.
    “Oh, settle down,” Jess replied, crossing her legs and leaning back on her palms.
    “It’s always like this when Lissa isn’t here,” Chloe grumbled, opening up another bottle for herself. “The balance of weight gets all out of whack.”
    “Chloe,” I said. “Give it a rest.” I took a sip of my Zip Coke, now spiked, tasting the rum, and offered it to Jess purely out of politeness. She never drank, never smoked. Always drove. Being a mom for so long to her brothers made it a given she’d be the same to us.
    “Nice night,” I said to her now, and she nodded. “Hard to believe it’s all over.”
    “Thank God,” Chloe said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Not a second too soon, either.”
    “Let’s drink to that,” I said, and leaned forward to press my cup against her tiny bottle. Then we just sat there, suddenly quiet, no noise except the cicadas starting up in the trees all around us.
    “It’s so weird,” Chloe said finally, “that it doesn’t feel different now.”
    “What?” I asked her.
    “Everything,” she said. “I mean, this is what we’ve been waiting for, right? High school’s over. It’s a whole new thing but it feels exactly the same.”
    “That’s because nothing new has started yet,” Jess told her. She had her face tipped up, eyes on the sky above us. “By the end of the summer, then things will feel new. Because they will be.”
    Chloe pulled another tiny bottle—this time gin—out of her jacket pocket and popped the top. “It sucks to wait, though,” she said, taking a sip of it. “I mean, for everything to begin.”
    There was the sound of a horn beeping, loud and then fading out as it passed on the road behind us. That was the nice thing about the Spot: you could hear everything, but no one could see you.
    “This is just the in-between time,” I said. “It goes faster than you think.”
    “I hope so,” Chloe said, and I eased back on my elbows, tilting my head back to look up at the sky, which was pinkish, streaked with red. This was the time we knew best, that stretch of day going from dusk to dark. It seemed like we were always waiting for nighttime here. I could feel the trampoline easing up and down, moved by our own breathing,