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Back in my room, I went straight to reading. In the small hours, I finished reading and slept through the day, waking up past sunset to four missed calls from Gigi. That was when I remembered I promised to call her at noon. I called her back, and she yelled at me for the first time since the funeral. “Don’t do that,” she snapped, and started crying. “Don’t shut me out.”

“I’m not,” I insisted, and believed myself. “There’s nothing to say.”

An hour later, by the swings at the park where we met in middle school, we kissed for the first time.