Tropesick

Prologue

Katie

July, Eleven Years Ago

Long Island

The high afternoon sun glinted off the ocean. The sky, blue. The air, thick. The seagulls, raucous. Between Tyler and me,

as usual, was a foot of easy distance—plus a few pens and pencils and two bags of stale salt-and-vinegar chips.

I closed my notebook and, for a moment, glanced over at him. At the line of his jaw, the brim of his ball cap, the way the

tendons in his forearm tightened when he scribbled in his journal. It was black, of course—and college-lined.

“You good?” he said. “You stuck on that chapter again?”

“No, I’m fine, I . . .” I sifted a few fingers through the hot, grainy sand. “I just really like doing this. That’s all.”

“Writing?”

“Yeah. No. Well, yes, but it’s more than that.” I bit down on my bottom lip. “I really like doing this . . . well, with you.”

He threw a chip at me. “Okay, weirdo. Get back to work.”

I threw the chip right back. “I’m not a weirdo! I’m just saying it’s nice! Can’t I just say something’s nice if I think it’s

nice? Is that against your tortured boy code or something?”

He chuckled, shaking his head as he cracked open his soda. Both of us, now, were looking straight out toward the horizon. He took a long sip from his can, then another. We must have sat there for a whole minute, completely silent. When he finally spoke, he didn’t turn to me.

“Fine,” he said.

“Fine? Fine, what?”

“Fine, it’s nice, okay? You’re right. This is nice. This is nice, and I like doing it. Are you happy? Is that what you wanted,

Katie?”

I grinned, then clicked my pen twice and—eyes crinkling—got back to my notebook. Got back to writing my story. But when he

did the same, I swear, he shifted just a bit so that we were ten inches apart instead of twelve. So that when he reached for

his next chip, when he turned to me a little more to tell me all about the very important scene he’d just drafted, his knee

finally, finally grazed mine.