You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

Chap­ter Six­ty-Six

“I HEARD YOUR DAD TRIED TO kill your mom.”

And there goes that per­fect moment.

Liam and I turn to face Brody, who is grin­ning at me.

The police blot­ter.

Liam takes a step toward him, and I grab his arm. “Let’s go,” I say.

“Leighton.” Liam’s arm is tight and tense under my fin­gers.

“Let’s just leave.”

“But they haven’t even announced the Win­ter For­mal Ice King and Queen,” Brody says. “I hear you two are the favorites.”

“Jesus, Brody, how much of a jack­ass can you be?” Liam asks.

“Ignore him,” I say. “C’mon.”

“Brody, you have to leave,” says a voice behind me. It’s Amelia. Per­fect hair, per­fect dress . . . per­fect­ly cold glare in her eyes as she faces Brody. “As stu­dent coun­cil pres­i­dent, I’m telling you to leave the dance.”

“What­ev­er,” he says. “Lame-ass dance any­way.”

“Go,” she says again. Just like at the foot­ball game, I’m sur­prised by how force­ful her voice is for some­one so small.

Brody flips her off before turn­ing away, but he does leave the gym.

“Thank you, Amelia.” My hand falls onto her arm. I’m so grate­ful, I don’t even know how to say it.

“Don’t let him ruin your night,” Amelia says. “Oh, damn, someone’s putting the bas­ket­ball nets down. They’re going to wreck my bal­loon arch. I’ve got­ta go.”

She waves good­bye.

Sofia is on the oth­er side of the gym, already yelling at the kid who is low­er­ing the bas­ket­ball nets and ges­tur­ing wild­ly at the bal­loons. I laugh, but when I turn back to Liam, he’s still angry.

“Wan­na get out of here?” I ask.

“Real­ly? Where do you want to go?”

“New York City,” I say. “Cal­i­for­nia. The moon.”

Final­ly, he laughs.

“First, the news­room. I need to check my email.”

“Lead the way,” he says.

The news­room is pitch-black, and we stum­ble our way through it, unwill­ing to turn on lights and attract a teacher’s atten­tion.

“It’s gonna take a lit­tle while to warm up,” I whis­per, turn­ing on my dinosaur com­put­er.

“Mmmh­mm. Did you bring me here under false pre­tens­es, Barnes?” Liam asks, his hands find­ing me in the dark.

“Maybe,” I gig­gle. The com­put­er starts up, and I click on the email icon.

“You know, this takes a while to open, too,” I tell him.

He turns me in his arms and lifts me up onto my desk. He kiss­es me slow­ly, his hands tan­gling in the teased curls of my eight­ies-styled hair. I laugh when he fails for the fourth time to move my hair. “What exact­ly are you try­ing to do?” I ask, my eyes on the ceil­ing.

“Kiss your neck. It’s like a lion’s mane.”

“I am woman,” I say. “Hear me roar.”

He laughs, and then he is kiss­ing me again. I can feel his smile against my lips, and there’s no place in the world I’d rather be than in the school news­room, mak­ing out with Liam McNa­ma­ra.

The rus­tle of my dress sends a chill across my skin. I’m glad we are alone. This feels like how real­ly well-writ­ten words make me feel. Not like an arti­cle for the paper or an essay for lit class. More like a son­net. My legs are paren­the­ses around his waist. When I sigh against his neck, it’s an apostrophe—in the pos­ses­sive. And every word of it is famil­iar already—I’ve been mem­o­riz­ing them for months. Liam’s arms come around me and pull me in tighter, he kiss­es me deep­er, and I won­der where this is going—

My email dings.

He pulls back, tilts his head. “Prob­a­bly not the place.”

“Def­i­nite­ly not the place.”

I hop off the desk and turn to check my email. I scroll through the dozens of junk emails and col­lege emails that have clut­tered my inbox in the last week. And then one catch­es my eyes: Ear­ly Admis­sion Appli­ca­tion Update.

“It’s from NYU,” I say.

“You don’t think?”

“I don’t know,” I whis­per, and we both turn to look at the screen.

“Oh, look. This one’s from my ornithol­o­gist.”

I click on that email first.

“Wimp,” Liam whis­pers, his hands try­ing in vain to gath­er up my wild hair so he can look over my shoul­der. I read the first email out loud.

“‘As promised, I’ve enclosed the sec­ond ther­mal-imag­ing map of the crow roost­ing habits in Auburn, Penn­syl­va­nia . . .’” I trail off and open the attach­ment. Like the first ther­mal map he sent me a few weeks ago, anoth­er bril­liant­ly col­ored map fills the screen. Yel­low and orange on the out­skirts of town, where there are few­er crows. Red and maroon where their con­cen­tra­tion is high­er. But this map looks dif­fer­ent from the first. There’s a lot more dark red, and now there is one patch of black—the high­est concentration—and the entire thing is shaped like a storm, with an epi­cen­ter where the most crows have gath­ered.

I look at the street out­lines on the map, and my breath catch­es. The black spot falls almost per­fect­ly over my home.

“Liam . . .” I click to enlarge the map. “What the hell do you think that means?”

“Leighton.”

“It’s strange, right?”

“Leighton,” he says again. “You opened the oth­er one.”

He’s right. I clicked the wrong but­ton. Instead of enlarg­ing the map, I closed it.

And opened the email from NYU.

“Lay-TON!” Liam shouts. He lifts me up in my shiny black dress and spins me around.

I got in.