"Have fun, boys!" the woman says as she gives the Jet Ski a little shove so we move away from the dock.

I look back at her and she's still waving. I wave too.

Mason steers it out of the bay and we putt along like we're in a golf cart. I put my hands behind me, wrapping my fingers around the sides of the seat so I won't topple off into the lake if a wave comes our way.

Then, as if the last of the NO WAKE signs is a checkered flag, Mason guns the engine. The Jet Ski lunges forward and I shoot backward. I catch myself before I splash into the lake. Glad to have an excuse, I wrap my arms around Mason and hang on tight.

"Slow down!" I shout in his ear as I grip his life jacket.

"Why?" His question is torn to shreds by the wind.

"You're going too fast!"

So Mason slows down. Not golf-cart slow, but to something more tolerable, like a Volkswagen bus. And I slowly peel my arms from around him. The buckles of his life jacket have etched squares in my skin. "Better?" he asks.

"Yes."

He slows down even more, taking a route along the shore like we are on a tour. "You gave me the Heimlich maneuver there."

"Sorry. I didn't want to fall in."

"It's witch-tit cold!" he agrees. Then after a few more minutes of scenery and watching other boats, he asks, "Can we go fast again?"

This time, I wrap my arms around his waist and get good grip before he guns the motor. But I still close my eyes when he crosses through the wake of a big boat and we shoot into the air. I think I count the seconds before we land-and my heart is pounding triple time.

"You see that?" Mason asks, cranking the handlebars and aiming back toward the wake. The Jet Ski slides into a steep turn, and the cold lake water splashes up our legs.

"No. I had my eyes closed."

He slows the Jet Ski, turns to look at me. His eyes are sad and serious. "Jamie, this is supposed to be fun."

I shrug. "I'm just not used to it." A half truth. The rest of which is I'm scared out of my skull of landing in the lake-my body instantly becoming frozen fish food.

"It's probably because you're not driving," he reasons. We slow even more, and he cuts the engine. "Switch with me."

I don't know what bothers me more: that we might drop the key into the water and have to swim after it, that I might fall in, or that Mason and I will, um, brush against each other in such a way that renders me speechless. Okay, well, that one wouldn't be too bad.

I step onto one running board and he steps on the other. The Jet Ski wobbles, reminding me of a soon-to-capsize canoe. When I sit down, Mason sits behind me, close enough that I can feel how warm he is compared to my own damp skin. My brain empties of all other thoughts.

". . . the throttle, and that's the gas." Mason is reaching around me and pointing to things on the handlebars.

Oh, God, he's explaining something. And I missed it.

"Got it?"

"Yeah," I say, although the only throttle I'm familiar with is on a lawn mower.

He pulls the strap from his wrist and hands me the key. His arm brushes mine, and I close my fingers too soon. They close on air. My heart leaps at the thought of dropping the key.

"Here," Mason says, pressing it into my fingers and practically closing them over it.

I get the strap over my wrist and the key in the ignition. Then I ease the Jet Ski forward, putter it up to golf cart, and once I get the hang of the steering, I go to Volkswagen bus.

"Good job," Mason says with a reassuring squeeze.

So I push it a little faster and a little faster still. The choppy waves are slapping up under us, slamming the Jet Ski up and down. My muscles jerk and twist with the motion and my stomach lurches.

"There you go. A little faster and you won't feel those."

I squeeze for more gas and it rockets ahead. The wind whips my face, but the choppy ride smooths out as we skim over the surface.

"Awesome!" Mason shouts in my ear. "Woo-hoo, Jamie!"

I let a whoop fly into the wind.

And I'm pretty sure I feel Mason hug me tighter.

TWENTY-SEVEN.

"It's good to go outside your comfort zone," Mason says, getting all philosophical on me as we lie in the grass at the edge of a little beach, letting the sun dry our clothes.

"Yeah," I agree. "That was friggin' awesome!"

"I told you. McCall's great without Frank."

"No canoe," I say.

"And just us."

My skin goes cold, as if I weren't sprawled on the warm ground in the warm sun. He said this earlier, in relation to Eden. But now I'm not sure I understand. I want to ask him to translate, but don't know how. "You're going all nostalgic on me," I accuse instead. "It's not like we won't see each other at college." WSU and the University of Idaho are only eight miles apart.

"Not nostalgic," Mason says, turning his head to look at me. His glasses are resting on his chest, drying like the rest of us.

I study his bare face, his chocolate eyes, and boy-long lashes. His straight nose and his lips, dusky pink, shapely and-I so wish I was Bahti and he was buzzed-kissable.

It's hopeless.

I'm hopeless.

I roll over onto my stomach, prop my chin on my hand. I lean closer, watch a smile tug the corners of his lips up. I imagine this is an invitation, imagine closing the gap between his lips and mine. My head spins, dizzy from lack of oxygen, and I remember to breathe. I pull back, gulp down a breath.

". . . things change. New place. New friends," Mason says.

And, damn it. I missed something. Again. Something important. "Sure," I say.

"It's not like I'm not looking forward to college. I need to get away, out from under my father's thumb, but I-I don't want to lose you in the process."

It seems like he says this in slow motion, because a million thoughts pop into my head in the time it takes for the words to form on his lips, starting with, You lose me all the time-I get lost in my fantasies for seconds, minutes, hell, I don't know. And I'm so glad I didn't come out to you-then I might lose you for good. And God, I love you. You won't ever lose me.

I don't say any of those things. "We won't lose each other. I'm taking my Honda to college, and if you want a ride back to Boise, you're gonna have to call me."

"And if your Honda needs an oil change, you'll have to call me."

"I can change the oil," I say, lying through my teeth.

"Yeah, right." Mason laughs. "And I can play the trumpet."

"Can too."

He gives me a shove, and his glasses slide off his chest and land in the grass. "Like, when?"

I shrug. "Dunno."

"You're such a dork," Mason says. "You probably never change the oil in your car."

"And you're a brainiac," I retaliate, not wanting to admit that he's right.

"Am not," he says, moving his glasses out of the way.

And I know I'm in for it.

I duck from his reach as he aims to mess up my hair, and I get a good shove in. He falls onto his back in the grass, momentarily defeated, but he recovers and rolls back my way. I hold him off, my long arms an advantage. "What is it, Mason? A four-point-two GPA?" I tease.

"Hell, no," he says, twisting out of my grip and pressing me back into the grass with a shoulder in my ribs.

"Four-point-five?" I taunt, his weight heavy on my ribcage.

A flicker of recognition crosses his face. His rather close face.

I know I'm onto something. "It is, isn't it?"

Mason sits up, no longer wrestling.

"Impressive," I say.

"Boatload of work," he says.

"So you're runner-up."

"Yeah," he says.

"Who's valedictorian anyway?"

"Juliet."

"No way!" I say. "She doesn't talk. How can she possibly give a speech?"

"She better give a speech," he says.

"Oh my God, if she doesn't, you'll have to." I sit up.

"She'll do it," he says, more convinced this time.

"It was the best of times," I say, holding my fist like a microphone and pretending to give a speech. "It was the worst of times-"

"It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness," Mason continues.

"And now that we are all headed our separate ways," I say in my microphone voice, deviating from Dickens because I don't know the next line.

"We had everything before us," he says.

"Freedom, college, the future . . ."

"The whole effin' world!" Mason says with a whoop. He jumps to his feet, then reaches down for my hands and pulls me up.

I'm barely standing when he bounds down the beach and into the water.

I follow like an excited puppy on a leash, dizzy and dancing like the sunlight and shadows over Mason's white T-shirt. Until the cold of the lake water grabs my ankles and pain rockets up my legs. "Holy-" I exclaim.

Mason's in up to the hem of his shorts, still whooping and splashing.

I'm swearing at the water.

And, when a wave splashes higher, I switch to praying. Which Mason finds funny. He wades back to me, holding an arm over his stomach as if to hold the laugh in. "I love you, man," he says, propping himself up on my shoulder.

The heat radiates from his hand, down my body. And I half expect the lake to begin to boil.

The pine trees swallow up the last shred of daylight as we leave McCall and begin the trip back to Boise. We'd spent the evening lingering over burgers and fries, drinking refills, and talking about all the stuff we've done over the years-from replacing Londa's hamsters with toads we found in the sprinkler box to floating the river in inner tubes and freezing our behinds off while the rest of me blistered with sunburn (Mason got a tan) to watching all the Jason Bourne movies in a row when Brodie was all bummed about losing the homecoming game-so it's later than it should be. We're crossing the vast spread of valley floor when the radio station goes to static. Mason adjusts the dial only to find eerie silence.

"Do, do, do, doo," I sing what I imagine the theme to The Twilight Zone might be.

"Ha-ha," Mason says, and turns the stereo off.

A huge pair of headlights illuminates the interior of the car as an eighteen-wheeler comes up behind us.

Mason turns in his seat, looks over his shoulder. "He's really moving."

I scan the road ahead as the headlights get bigger, brighter. There are a few cars in the other lane, driving toward me, so there's no way the rig can pass. I flip the rearview mirror to dim, but it doesn't help. It's as bright as noon in August in here. I can't see a thing.

Mason stays turned in his seat, as if he wants to watch the end of the world barreling down upon us.