Free Summer Days and Summer Nights by Stephanie Perkins Page A

kissing Mimi Park, two years after I met her. I am kissing her even though I often told myself that I would probably never see her again. At night, sometimes, when I was awake and thinking of her, I told myself that maybe we weren’t supposed to be together. Maybe, somehow, I got confused. Just because a person reveals something to you about yourself doesn’t mean they’re meant to do more than that. So just because catching a glimpse of Mimi that first time—and then each time after—made every part of me glow, made me want to press against her, didn’t mean she was the one for me. Maybe all it meant was that I needed something different from what I was getting. I needed a girl .
    But I’m three years older than I was then. I’ve kissed a few girls by now. I think I’ve even been in love. But nothing has ever felt like this.
    I’m up against the trunk now, her hands on my face, in my hair, along my ribs, and then on the small of my back. I’m holding on to a smaller branch, afraid to let go.
    â€œWe’re gonna fall out of this tree,” I murmur, her mouth on my neck.
    She pulls away. I want her back. She drops onto the grass, and I drop down after her. The ocean glitters below us. The sky is blue and clear. The tree is still magic. She pulls me down to the earth, and she kisses me again, and again, and I shift my body until she’s under me, her hair against the moss, her eyes open wide, her lips still wet and smiling.
    â€œI don’t feel sad,” I say.
    She laughs and says, “Good. That’s good. I don’t, either.”
    *   *   *
    â€œIt’s Flora and Mimi,” Travis calls out when we get back, and just that sentence—just our names, joined by and —it floods me with happiness all over again.
    â€œIt’s hiking time,” Hope says.
    Mimi kicks up her foot. “I only brought my sandals!”
    â€œOh, please,” Travis says. “It’s not that kind of hike.”
    We walk into redwood groves, where it’s almost as dark as night, where the air is so much cooler, and then out of them again, into the sun. We walk cliffside with the ocean crashing below us, wildflowers growing between rocks, and into the tiniest meadow I’ve ever seen, where we sit in a circle to rest.
    I discover a cluster of California poppies next to me.
    â€œI would pick you one,” I tell Mimi, “if it wasn’t illegal.”
    â€œLaws are for breaking.” She leans over my lap and snaps a stem, weaves the poppy into my hair.
    She looks at me.
    â€œPerfect,” she says, and Hope agrees, but Travis squints and shakes his head.
    â€œShe needs a second one for symmetry.”
    He plucks another and hands it to Mimi, and I don’t know how I got so lucky, to be here with the three of them. It makes no sense that we would meet again the way we did, in a summer school class, us the only rising seniors in a classroom full of fifteen-year-olds.
    â€œI have a question,” I say.
    â€œTell us,” Hope says.
    â€œWhy— how —are you all in geometry?”
    â€œWe’re doomed when it comes to math,” Hope says. “We’ve always been behind.”
    Mimi says, “It was the only class we had together last semester. First the teacher separated us because we couldn’t stop talking to each other—”
    â€œNo exaggeration,” Travis says. “It was, like, physically impossible for us to stop talking.”
    â€œAnd then we spent the whole time texting.”
    Hope shakes her head. “It was terrible. I tried to ignore my phone, but they kept shooting me meaningful looks. We all got Ds! And now here we are in summer school and we’re all together again .”
    Travis says, “It’s our second time through, and none of us are learning anything.”
    â€œYou guys,” I say. “What you need to understand is that geometry is the best