Chapter 29

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2

I have no clue why Luis and four others from his physics class have dragged me into one of Valentine’s campus gazebos—the Aguilar Piano Gazebo—during STRIP Time, but at least they’re keeping my mind off Jasper.

After last night’s delivery, I went straight to bed. Now that it’s the weekend, I won’t have to worry about seeing him in class for two more days. At first, distance sounds good. I need a chance to think. But my memory of telling Jasper I’ll never forgive him keeps replaying, forcing me to see him in my mind’s eye regardless.

An icy wind blows from Au Sable Forks Lake. I lift my scarf up my face, shoving aside the guilt hanging over me. “Wait, did you just say eggs?”

Squatting on the grass, Luis opens his backpack full of raw eggs wrapped in a plaid blazer. Everyone else came dressed for the outdoors, but Luis took things to the next level: a puffy parka falling to his boots, fuzzy pink earmuffs, and matching fuzzy gloves. I’ve locked in my final answer that Luis is popular, but for a special reason—he says and wears whatever he wants, and that translates into a confidence that pulls people in. I wish I knew how to do that. “Thirteen eggs, bro.”

“From Dix?”

“Yup. Asked a chef. We tossed eggs in physics yesterday, and all of us sucked.”

“ Dropped them,” Michael corrects him, nudging Luis with his shoe.

A single touch from Michael’s foot turns Luis’s face red. Definitely his crush.

“The force equals mass times acceleration thing,” Emilio says. “We have to keep a raw egg from cracking when dropped from ‘ever-increasing elevations.’ Ms. Andrew offered us plastic bags and stuff, but I couldn’t even figure out round one. Which was, like, two feet.”

“I think I know this,” I say, sparking back alive. “David Donoghue threw an egg out of a helicopter and onto a golf course in the UK from seven hundred feet. That was considered an egg drop toss.”

“How’d you know that?” Luis asks.

“It just came to me.”

“Jesus, you’re smart.”

My chest warms, but not fully from the compliment. More knowing that I’ll be able to help them. I grab an egg from Luis’s backpack. “Think about—”

Luis points toward the gazebo roof. “Not here. Up there. If I can make a raw egg survive that, I can handle anything.”

“My feet stay on the ground,” Jackson says, shaking his head.

“Agreed,” Michael says.

I clasp Luis’s arm. “I’ll go with Luis. The rest of you, split into pairs and see what you come up with. Hint: Think about your plastic bags.”

While the others wander deeper into the trees, Luis and I climb the gazebo, which isn’t as hard as expected when the vine trellises work as ladders. Soon enough, I’m sitting on the roof, looking out at everything that makes me never want to leave Valentine despite its flaws—the marble cupid fountain and tight-knit academic buildings to my right, the lake to my left, and the woods that stretch for miles.

“These are the only materials we got,” Luis says, sitting beside me. He sets out the plastic bag, string, scissors, and a raw egg, then slings an arm over my shoulder.

“Mhm. What can be made with a plastic bag and string?”

“Another bag.”

“No. What can get trapped inside that bag?”

“Air?”

“Yes. When considering force equaling mass times acceleration, what do you need to do to the acceleration, specifically, while the egg falls?”

That’s all I have to say before Luis connects the dots. He lifts his arm off me to cut four pieces of yarn. He feeds them through the bag, then stands, holding the egg attached to his makeshift parachute over the roof. “This better work.”

I rise to my feet too. “It’ll work—”

My left shoe hooks in Luis’s backpack strap, and then my balance is shaking, and my body is tilting, and I’m slipping off the roof on a yelp.

Luis snatches my arm and yanks me back, pulling me against his chest. “Bro, you’re not an egg!”

My heart hammers as I clutch harder to Luis’s coat. “It’s not like I meant to be!”

Clunking comes from our feet. Twelve eggs, rolling out of Luis’s backpack and off the gazebo.

Then cracking.

“AUGUH—?!”

Furrowing my brow, I peek over the roof. The shattered eggs aren’t on the grass, nor the gazebo steps, but on a blond head of hair and a cross-body bag with a JFG emblem.

Just when I thought my heart couldn’t race faster. “Jasper?”

Jasper outstretches his coat sleeves drenched in translucent goop. His fingers are taut and curled, and his mouth wriggles in revulsion. “What is on me right now.”

“What are you doing out here?”

He rakes a hand through his soaked bangs. “Eggs?”

“They look good on you,” Luis says.

I elbow Luis, and he winces. “I’m coming down.”

According to the theory of relativity, venturing back down the gazebo vine trellis should take as long as it did going up, yet the trip feels endless as my countless thoughts fight for attention. What is Jasper doing here? How am I supposed to look him in the eye after refusing to forgive him last night? He must be angrier at me than the eggs.

My feet hit the grass. I snatch his gooey hand and lead him toward the lake, our dress shoes clumsily sinking into the sand. Once we reach the shore, I unwrap my scarf and dip it in the water. “Use this.”

“N-no, it’ll get dirty.”

Did he stutter? Jasper stuttered?

Maybe he was chattering. His thin Valentine-branded excuse for a peacoat can’t be fighting off the cold when he’s definitely only wearing a dress shirt underneath. “What are you going to use, then? Your coat caked with more egg?”

“Perhaps.”

I roll my eyes. “Come on, Jasper.”

He huffs and closes his eyes. “Thank you.”

I step closer, and his body stiffens way too much to just be from the cold. Like I’m making him nervous.

His nerves spread to me as the sound of waves fills the uncomfortable silence. I wipe his forehead, and his face contorts from the near-freezing water. Inspecting him this closely, all I can think about is the dejected face I saw after he’d apologized for not realizing how I felt. How, eventually, he realized how he felt. How he’s been sleeping on Xavier’s floor since.

I bite the inside of my cheek. “I’m sorry.”

Jasper’s eyes flutter back open, blue and shining.

“About what I said last night,” I say.

“What… specifically?” His voice is breathier, dazed, like he’s in disbelief. Does our past mean this much to him? “You said a lot.”

I hesitate. I hate that I do. I’m in high school—an Excellence Scholar—and still don’t know how to express how I feel? “Specifically, about never wanting to forgive you.”

“What did you want to say?”

“That I think I need time. I believed you left me behind on purpose for so long. And if I’m being honest, that summer shaped a lot of who I am today. So.”

A pained expression crosses his face. “Like how you feel about romance.”

“I guess.”

“Right.”

The vulnerability becomes too much, and the need to puff up my shoulders and stop anything more from leaking out of my mouth consumes me. “Romance is a scam whether or not that summer happened. But. You know.”

“Of course.” It’s obvious Jasper is holding back a grin, but I prefer that over how he looked before. “I’ll be honest with you too. About why I came over here.”

“Yeah, why were you at the piano gazebo? You play the piano?”

“No, I was just walking by. I saw you slip off that roof, so I rushed over. But I suppose I saw you and Luis before that.”

“You were watching us?”

“You guys seemed alone, and together, and close, and I thought you two were, perhaps—” He shakes his head, stuffing his hands in his peacoat and staring at the sand.

“What?” My logic kicks in. “Oh.”

“Which is fine.”

“We weren’t. He likes someone else, I think.” But Jasper shouldn’t care.

Jasper smiles. “I see.”

It’s not like I’m his long-lost love anymore. That’s impossible. I’m not who I used to be.

My brain sparks with confusion as I bend over to wash the raw egg out of my blazer, then move on to his rosy cheeks. The curve of his chin. “Sorry for the cold. And the eggs.”

“It’s all right. I probably needed to be humbled after last night.”

My laugh morphs into a humiliating snort. I cover my face, which reminds me that I should’ve probably been standing farther away. Jasper has been able to pick apart the intricacies of my face this whole time. How didn’t I realize?

Jasper’s upper lip hitches. “Do you find me that much of a comedian?”

“No. Please don’t get a bigger head.”

Jasper laughs. He leans forward. Closes the distance.

My body stills as his hand lifts toward my face. His thumb drags across my forehead. “Sorry,” he mutters. “I got some egg on you.”

My face flares so hot, it’s dizzying.

He doesn’t like me anymore. I don’t like him anymore. Yet I thought he was doing something else. Something he never, ever will again.

So why didn’t I move?

Why do I feel so strangely empty now that he’s no longer touching me?

“No problemo!” I take a jerky step back, then forward again to hand him my scarf, and trip on my own foot. My palm slaps his chest. “Ah—sorry!”

“Don’t be, Charlie,” he says, holding my forearm. Smiling.

It makes my head spin. Forces me to feel every conflicting emotion of the incurable sickness that I thought was cured.

I walk away as fast as I can, but a nagging voice in my head tells me to wait, to do Xavier a favor and tell Jasper to get off his floor.

“Oh, and Charlie?!” Jasper calls.

I spin around. “Yes?”

“My aunt changed her office back into my room. No need to worry. We’re officially no longer roommates.”