There is a knock at the door.
All three of them look at one another.
“Anyone expecting someone?” her dad says.
“No,” Nanette answers. “But Nanette will get it.”
When she opens the door, a tall, thin boy with a shaved head and dressed in a jacket and a tie appears and says, “I like your Jeep. But you might want to put the top up. It’s snowing a little out here.”
It takes her a moment to mentally add the weight and hair so that she can recognize him, but then she says, “Alex?”
“It’s the new slimmed-down, hairless, preppy, reformed version of me. The bastards make me run seven miles a day—and before six AM. It’s insane. And speaking of crazy, I only have fifteen minutes. My dad is watching me from the street.” Alex turns around and waves to his dad, who waves back from a black sedan. Alex is hugging a brown paper grocery bag to his chest. His fingers are clenched so tight they’re glowing white in the cold December air. “They gave me a choice once I earned it. Either I was allowed to make a ten-minute phone call once every ten days, or I was allowed to bank the time and leave for twenty-four hours on Christmas. I chose Christmas because it meant that I might get to see you for even a little bit. But my dad says it can only be fifteen minutes—no more—and he has to chaperone. He still thinks you’re a bad influence on me. I had to tell him I was officially breaking up with you today. I’m not. Duh. But I agreed to his terms just to get this chance, so the clock is ticking now.”
“Nanette?” her parents call from the other room. “Who is it?”
She is too shocked to speak.
“It’s weird,” Alex says. “My just showing up after so much silence. And today of all days. I know.”
Her parents are now standing behind her.
“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. O’Hare. Alex Redmer here. Merry Christmas!”
“Are you okay, Nanette?” her father asks.
She nods.
“We’ll be right in the other room,” her mom says, and then her parents leave them standing in the doorway.
“I write you poems every day,” Alex says, and then tries to hand Nanette the bag. “These explain everything. Will let you know exactly what I’ve been through these last few months. I still love you, Nanette. We can be together in the future. We just have to make it through this last bit of our childhoods.”
She doesn’t take the bag. She doesn’t know what to say.
“You’re mad at me,” Alex says. “I understand. It must have been quite a shock for you. I just saw Oliver earlier. He says you two have been hanging out. He says you’re best friends now. Made me a little jealous. Told him not to move in on my woman while I’m locked up.”
“You can’t do this,” Nanette says. “Just pop in and out of Nanette’s life. Go all vigilante and then leave Oliver and Nanette behind to pick up the fragments of their lives and then expect them to be okay with your coming back whenever you want.”
“I heard about the third-person thing. I think it’s kind of sexy.”
“Not sexy. Important. Part of her therapy.”
“Oliver says the pretty boys have completely—”
“But what about Nanette? And Oliver has no friends. He’d be all alone if it weren’t for Nanette visiting him every day. And Nanette is all alone since you got yourself in trouble. You were her rebel partner, helping her through her transition, but then you just vanished and now you’re gone! Not fair!”
“The poetry explains everything,” he says, and then offers her the bag once more. “Just read them. It’s pretty much my manifesto. If you disagree with what I’ve written, well, then I’ll just have to accept that. That’s what rebels do. But I think you’ll get it. Booker put us together because he knew—the part of him who was once Wrigley saw the parts of us who still are. I have to survive reform school for another six months, but then after that we could do amazing things together. If you can only wait for me. We have the rest of our lives! We can do whatever we want! We’ll be entirely free!”
“Theoretically speaking—what will Alex and Nanette specifically do?”
“Change the world!”
“How? Nanette and Alex are just teenagers living in average suburban towns. They have no power or influence.”
“Everyone who ever did anything revolutionary was just an eighteen-year-old kid once. George Washington, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela, Nigel Wrigley Booker. Social status is just a social construct, the primary function of which is to keep regular people oppressed and rebels in line. Read the poems and letters. You’ll understand.”
“And then? What should Nanette do after reading?”
“Wait for me. I’ll be in touch. Trust me.”
Alex’s father beeps the horn, and Nanette thinks there’s no way fifteen minutes could have possibly passed, although time always seems to speed up whenever Alex is around.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” he says, and then does exactly that before she can protest.
When his lips land on hers, electricity once again shoots through her entire body, short-circuiting every rational thought in her head, and before she knows what she’s doing, she’s kissing him back—rebelling against her own better judgment.
“I love you, Nanette O’Hare,” Alex says. “Someday you will love me, too—enough to say it back. Read the poems and letters.”
Alex winks at her and then he’s in his father’s car, and Nanette is looking at the taillights getting smaller and smaller down the road, wondering what the hell just happened.