|photo by Cottonbro from Pexels|



Summerfield Virginia is not a small town. I looked it up on the Internet. There are almost sixty thousand people living here. But the shopping center Noah drives me to has that small town feel. All the stores look like quaint colonial row houses. Except for Moby's Homemade Ice Cream, which is housed in a cottage with yellow and white awnings and a shamrock green door. I stop for half a moment at the foot of the brick staircase—more out of habit than actual intimidation because these steps are shallow and approachable.

Noah notices my hesitation, and his smile is identical to the one he gave me at Faircrest after he said he was familiar with the "nervous-talking thing." So. I guess he knows about my embarrassing little phobia.

Inside, the shamrock theme dominates. Noah finds a booth in the back and we slide onto the glittery-green vinyl seats—him on one side, me on the other. He plucks a menu out of the chrome...menu-holder thing and lays it open in front of me, tapping a finger above the words Milkshakes and Malts. "You usually get a medium vanilla," he says.

I nod and make a point of ignoring the ever-increasing tightness in my chest.

It's hot out, but a little overcast: the perfect kind of day to walk around a "shopping village" with an ice cream cone. And most of Moby's customers are doing just that—coming in and going right back out. So the youngish waitress approaches our table right away. "Long time no see," she says, looking from me to Noah and back again.

Her warm smile makes it pretty obvious that she knows who I am—and that she has no idea I can't return the favor.

"It's been a busy summer," Noah says.

"Boy don't I know it," she agrees, waving her order pad at the long line in front of the take-out counter. "You kids having the usual?"

The phrase "you kids" prompts me to take a closer look at her face—which is not as young as I first thought. She's not high-school age. So she probably doesn't know-me know me.

"Ally?" Noah's arched eyebrows repeat the question. Do I want my usual—a medium vanilla milkshake?

"Yes," I tell the waitress. "Please."

Noah produces the movie-theatre-sized box of Raisinets he extracted from his glove box as we were getting out of the car. The candy rattles as he displays it, standing on end in the center of our table. Our waitress winks before she turns away. Apparently she's familiar with our ritual.

"Have you thought anymore about school?" he asks. "About me showing you around, I mean. It might help you make a decision."

Whoa, that reminds me. Last night I dreamed I was standing in the front of a classroom. Science, I guess, because there were lit Bunsen burners on every desk. The teacher was a shorter, hairier version of Dr. Dabney and he was smoking a pipe, but not the grandfatherly kind. His was alien and strange—like something you might see in a Star Wars movie. He pointed a stubby finger and this plastic model of the human brain appeared out of nowhere. It was disturbingly realistic, except that it was the size of a beach ball. The doctor didn't say anything, but I knew he wanted me to identify the lobes—and I could. I could see the words in my head: Frontal, Parietal, Occipital, Temporal. But they wouldn't come out of my mouth. Dr. Dabney gave me a look I've never seen on his face in real life, because as far as I know, he's never been disappointed in me. And then he asked me to write my name on the board, and I totally blanked. I had no idea who I was.

"Or not," Noah says. "I'm not trying to like, pressure you or anything." He takes a breath, like he's getting ready to say something else but then his lips press together and that patch of worry-wrinkles burrows in above his eyebrows.

"What?" I ask. But not because I'm confused. I want to know what he's not telling me.

"Uh, I was just thinking. Did I make a face or something?"

I nod. Noah makes a lot of faces.

"I was thinking it might be good for you to see the school while it's empty, you know? Like before everybody gets there."

"Everybody?" I ask, because of the way his voice changed on the word.

"All the people who know about your circumstances."

Heat surges up my neck. I pick up the menu, pretending I have a sudden interest in something other than hiding my face. How many of those people know I kissed some random boy from New Jersey instead of Noah—and what other things do they know about me that I don't know about myself?

"I've been wondering," Noah says, extra hesitant. But he doesn't finish his thought—until I drop the menu back in its holder. "Did you decide to text me because of those IM conversations?"

"Oh. Um." I guess it might seem odd to him that I felt comfortable reaching out to a complete stranger.

"At first, I figured your mom had something to do with it," he says. "But then you asked me to visit—and now, it seems like—uh, how 'bout I just shut up and let you answer the question."

"I don't have...like...an easy answer. And. It's probably going to sound weird to you."

Or worse. He's going to think I've lost my mind.

"That would be sort of good, actually," he says. "I figure you thought it was pretty weird that I drove up to Faircrest all those times and didn't get out of the car."

I wasn't thinking that before—I was too busy being embarrassed, because he saw me acting like an idiot. But yeah, now I'm curious. I don't ask because Noah's smiling The Smile from my dream.

And it's a very different experience, seeing that smile, live and in person.

One time, when I was having a sleepover at Kara's house, we snuck down to her TV room after everyone else was asleep. We were determined to finish some romantic movie her older sister had made fun of us for watching—she called it "patriarchal bullshit." I can't say I knew what she meant, but as we watched, I kept expecting to see or hear something that would make me feel as angry as Kara's sister sounded. But all I ended up with was this...ache. I wanted to be the lady in that movie. And ever since, Kara and I both have been dying for someone to look at us that way.

The way Noah is looking at me right now.

Our waitress comes back with two of those iconically curved and footed milkshake glasses. The one she slides in front of me is topped with whipped cream but no cherry, just the way I like it. Noah chews on his cherry while he plucks out his neon green straw and uses the long-handled spoon to hollow out the center of his thick shake. Then he tears, ceremoniously, into the yellow and red box and pours a batch of chocolate raisins into the void, pushing them down as he adds—too much, obviously, because a glob of whipped cream surges over the rim.

He removes the excess with his tongue and pushes the box to my side of the table. I take a long, brain-freezing pull on my straw to make room in my glass before I copy him. "Did you not answer my question on purpose?" he asks.

"Um, which question?"

"Did you text me because of the IM conversations?"

"Oh, right—no. My mom told me about you before I started reading them. She said you helped me get the lifeguarding job?"

"Yeah," he says. "I uh..."

I empty the candy box and take my time making sure every chocolate raisin is buried—giving Noah time to decide if he's going to finish his thought before I look up.

He's still stuck in that "uh" moment.

Maybe the thing he's thinking about not telling me is even worse than the summer before tenth grade. Like maybe the war between me and Lindsay got so bad Mom had to beg Noah to...

No. Do not borrow trouble.

"Okay," I say. "This is..." I stop for a breath. But it's a rush-job so it doesn't really help.

I hold up my hand, signaling him to wait, so I can do the breathing thing right this time. In. Out. Okay. "It would be better if you could not start to say a thing before you decide if it's something you want to say. Because when you do that, I try to finish it in my head and it's..."

"I'm making things worse."

"Yeah."

"Sorry," he says, grimacing. "I was gonna give you a heads-up about something that might be in those conversations. But then I remembered that you recovered your password, so you probably already know we weren't friends for awhile—before you started the lifeguarding job."

It's not quite a question, and I'm relieved because I'm definitely not ready to talk to him about what I know. Not until I finish reading the information—on my own like he said.

"It was all good by then," he says, stabbing his spoon into his milkshake. "We were friends when we worked together at the pool. But our relationship has always been complicated."

Complicated.

"That's the word Samantha used," I say. "It was in a text message—a conversation that's different, like a lot more recent that the ones on the IM app. She said something about me being in a relationship. With um, a man-whore?"

"Yeah," he says, and his cheeks go splotchy red. "I think it's safe to say she was talking about me—but that's an exaggeration. Samantha doesn't like me very much."

"Why not?"

"She got pissed at me." He squints at his curvy glass and digs out a brown glob. "You probably know more about it than me if you've read all those conversations."

"I haven't," I confess.

Noah nods. Then he delivers a huge frozen cluster of raisins to his mouth. Meaning he's not going to tell me why Samantha was pissed?

Okay. "Well she told me—in the newer message—that she had information that would complicate our relationship. Do you know what that means?"

"No," he says. Kind of adamant. Like maybe he doesn't believe it's true. He chews a couple of times and then swallows. Too soon, judging by the painful wince. "Are you going to ask her about it?"

"Um, no. It's not...she's..." I shake my head. "I'm not ready to meet her."

"Whatever it is," he says. "It's not something I need to know. If you decide to let it stay in the past that would be all right with me. More than all right."

"Really? You're not...like...curious or anything?"

He slumps back against the seat, shaking his head—but I don't think he's saying no. Because he looks like I feel sometimes, when there's too much information, too many emotions, and my brain can't keep up.

"That's all ancient history," he says. "And I don't have a problem with it staying that way. I'd rather keep things moving forward."

"So. You don't think I should keep reading the IM conversations."

"No, that's not what I'm saying. The thing I said earlier—when I realized you might need information from your past?—that's how I feel, Ally. If you need answers, I'll do anything I can to help."

My entire body responds to Noah's pledge. But not in that stomach-shifting way—or not just that way. It's like all of a sudden, my dream makes perfect sense. It was some kind of...cosmic message, I guess. Except I know cosmic is the wrong word because I sent this message to myself: You can trust the boy with the beautiful smile.

"That's the reason I asked you to come to Faircrest," I say. "Because I needed to see you, too. In person."

"Uh, I'm not following. Did you see a photo of me somewhere?"

"No. I mean, yes, I've seen photographs of you. But this was different. I've been using the word dream because I didn't know what else to call it."

Noah stops. His spoon, loaded with a smaller lump of frozen chocolate, hovers just outside of his gaping mouth. "You saw me in a dream?"

I nod because there's no way I'm going to say the phrase cosmic message out loud. "I saw your face, but I didn't understand the significance until Mom gave me the yearbook and I picked you. Out of all the other boys on the page. I recognized your face the way it is now."

"What does that mean—my face now?"

"Older memories tend to be the strongest; that's why my doctor asked Mom for an older photo—meaning you and I were younger—for the recognition test. But it was the seventeen-year-old you that I recognized. Because of the dream. I saw your face against a blue sky. There was water all around, and a tall black fence."

"You saw me at the pool?"

"That's what my mom thinks too," I say, nodding. "You were smiling, like you were happy to see me."

Noah mouths the word, "Wow."

Mom did that, too. But it's better coming from him. It makes the whole thing feel kind of...magical.

His entire face melts into a frown and he drops the still-loaded spoon back into his glass. "I think you're gonna want to read all the information on that app before you go back to school," he says. "And you might want to think about meeting Samantha."

I can only shrug, because right now, I don't want to meet Samantha or go to high school. I spoon out some of the Raisinets. They're hard to chew—which I was expecting. What surprises me is how very much I don't like them frozen. They're so much better soft and a little bit warm from being in Noah's car.

"What do you think?" he asks. Meaning the raisins—I'm pretty sure.

"Mm hm," I say, nodding and chewing. Which is not quite a lie. Noah gives me this pallid smile—that's every bit as evasive as my non-answer. But I can't tell if he's feeling awkward because he's picking up on the fact that my taste buds have changed, or if he's still thinking about me seeing his face in my dream.

Either way, that magical feeling is gone.