Since You've Been Gone

by Morgan Matson

It was like she knew a secret, a good one, and if you got close enough, maybe she’d tell you, too.

1. Kiss a stranger. 2. Go skinny-dipping. 3. Steal something. 4. Break something. 5. Penelope.

“Nothing worth doing is easy,” Frank said. “Especially not in the beginning. But I’m not about to give up.”

“Do you not like the Beatles?” Frank asked, sounding shocked, as we finished our cool-down and started walking back toward my house. “Do you also not like sunshine and laughter and puppies?”

“I don’t think you have to do something so big to be brave. And it’s the little things that are harder anyway.”

“You’re the brightest thing in the room,” he said. He lifted his hand from my waist, and slowly, carefully brushed a stray lock of hair from my cheek. “You shine.”

It was like hitting the snooze button on your alarm—your sleep in that window is never very good, since you know it’s borrowed time, and that it will be over all too soon.

He kissed me back. It lasted just a moment, but he kissed me back, right away, without hesitation, as though we’d always been doing it.

“I know things might not work,” I said. “And I know it’s scary, but the things that are worth it are.

It was like swimming under the stars, like sleeping outside, like climbing a tree in the dark and seeing the view. It was scary and safe and peaceful and exciting, all at the same time. It was the way I felt when I was with him. “Like a well-ordered universe.”