I must have heard the exact colors of Kate’s and Rachel’s dresses a thousand times. I knew what shoes they were going to wear. I knew what shades of makeup and nail polish they’d get done at the salon. Of course Kate was going with Marcus and Rachel was going with Evan. Of course they’d harassed the guys into matching the colors of their dresses. Prom was going to be perfect.

For them.

I wasn’t going. I’d been gone too long, and I was too exhausted from struggling with catching up in school so I could graduate with my friends, too absorbed with things that actually mattered to have gone out and looked for dresses. Not that prom didn’t matter to me at one time, but I supposed it didn’t matter anymore. The plan had always been for Kate and me to pick out dresses together, but she had to get one while I was AWOL, before the selection at the mall was picked clean.

My grumpiness had not gone unnoticed by Will. I had snapped at him a few times that week, though I hadn’t meant to. My agitation had caused my temper to be short, and I hated that I kept taking it out on him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as we sat in his living room watching TV after I’d done a load of homework. I had been lying across his lap for a little while, but something he’d said had annoyed me for no reason and I’d grumbled slightly nasty things at him and shoved myself to the other end of the couch like a brat.

“Nothing,” I replied sharply.

He let out an aggravated sigh. “It’s not nothing. Frankly, you’ve been on edge for days. I don’t even know what I just said a minute ago to make you mad at me.”

I laid my head back against the couch. “Sorry. I’m just in a bad mood.”

“For days?”

“It’s been a bad week, okay?” I tried to keep my voice even, but I doubted my success at doing so.

“Well, tell me about it,” he offered. “Maybe I can help.”

“You really can’t.” The snark was back. I wanted to smack myself. He didn’t deserve this.

“Let me try.”

I took a long, deep breath and let it out slowly, forcing the tension from my body and the snap from my voice. “I’m just tired of hearing about prom from my friends. It’s all they talk about, and I wish this week would go by faster so it’d be over with. But of course next week, prom will still be the only thing anyone will talk about, and I can’t escape it.”

He looked around thoughtfully, his boy brain visibly struggling to solve my predicament. “It’s this weekend?”

“Saturday.”

“Why don’t you just go then?” he offered foolishly. “That way you can talk about it with your friends instead of being left out.”

I sighed. “It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

“I think you’re the one making it complicated.”

I glared at him from across the couch. “Thanks. You’re so helpful.”

“I mean it,” he said gently. “I don’t see why there’s any reason you can’t go.”

“It’s too late, Will. I don’t have a ticket or a dress or anything. Prom isn’t something you can just throw together at the last second. No one can pull that off.”

“You have three days left, not one second.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass.”

“Don’t be so stubborn.”

My glare got darker. “You don’t get it.”

He let out a small laugh and a shrug. “No, I really don’t. I know how much you want to go. You wouldn’t want to miss out on this. You’ve worked so hard to get yourself through your last couple months of high school, so I’m not buying it. You deserve to go.”

“Why do you even care?” I asked. “You’re centuries old. Prom is a silly high school thing to you.”

“I don’t think it’s silly,” he said with a frown. “Especially since it’s important to you. Nothing that’s important to you is silly to me.”

I watched him, the sincerity in his eyes, and I crawled back across the couch toward him and rested my head on his shoulder. He kissed the top of my head. I was being ridiculous toward him, but I honestly couldn’t bring myself to go to prom. I didn’t want to go alone, even though I’d be with all of my friends, and there was only one person I’d want for my date and he would never agree to it. I wasn’t even going to ask him. Marcus might have been going with Kate, but he seemed to enjoy parading around pretending to be a perfect human boyfriend like it was a game to him to see how good he was at it. He was the weirdest person I’d ever met. Will was weird, too, but at least he made sense. Kind of.

“Marcus asked me something strange awhile ago,” I said.

“What was that?” he asked into my hair.

“He asked me what Heaven is like,” I said. “I have no idea. I don’t remember what Heaven is like, but I remember missing being human. I missed feeling—feeling anything, feeling happiness, sadness … I missed touching, being close to others. I missed you, Will. I don’t really want to go back there. To Heaven. I want to stay here.”

He paused for a few moments, as if digesting what I had just said. “I want you to stay here, too.”

“But I’ll have to go,” I said gently. “Eventually.”

He didn’t respond to that. The voices from the TV show we weren’t watching filled the silence between us.