“How did you know?” I ask the room at large, but it’s Macy who answers with a roll of her eyes.

“I’m your cousin. You think I don’t know when you were born?” she asks. “Besides, I marked it on my calendar the week you got here so I wouldn’t forget.”

It’s definitely not what I expect her to say, and I have to look down and blink the tears out of my eyes. Because sometimes when I’m sad about my parents, I focus only on what I’ve lost and forget how much I’ve gained. And how lucky I am, after everything, to have been able to land at a place that has given me friends—and a family—like this.

“Are you just going to stand there staring at us all night or are we going to throw some axes?” Flint teases.

“Is that what you want to do?” I ask. “Throw axes?”

“Umm, yeah.” He glances at Luca. “Unwind me, will you?”

Luca shakes his head and takes a more direct approach, simply shredding through the streamers with a hand. Hudson sets the cake down on his desk and turns on Rihanna’s “Birthday Cake” and cranks it up, while Macy makes a run for the axes, spilling confetti and glitter in a trail behind her.

I follow her at a more sedate pace, but I can’t keep the grin off my face. This is so not the way I’ve spent any birthday before this one, and maybe that’s what makes it so perfect.

“The birthday girl goes first,” Flint says as he shoves an ax in my hand. “Do you know how to throw these?”

“Are you kidding me? I have absolutely no idea how to even hold one.”

He laughs. “Yeah, me neither. Guess we’ll have to learn how to do it together.”

“And here I thought I wanted to play pin the tail on the donkey,” I tease as Hudson comes up to give us a few pointers.

He gives me a mild look. “How about you play throw the ax at the dragon instead?”

“Hey now,” Flint yelps. “No need to get violent. I mean, I know Eden is a lot, but she’s still a person.”

“Yeah, because I’m the one he’s talking about there, Fire Boy,” she says as she shoulder-checks him. But she grins as she turns to Hudson. “I say we go for it. I think he’d look great with a target painted right over his mouth.”

Flint gives her a mock-wounded look. “You know what, Grace? I’m totally ready to play pin the ax on the dragon ass. Turn around, will you, Eden?”

She flips him off but gives her hips a little wiggle for good measure.

I start laughing, and I don’t think I stop the entire rest of the night. I can’t. My friends are entirely too ridiculous, and I’m having entirely too good of a time.

Hudson apparently made a whole birthday playlist for Macy and me, and I spend half the night dancing around to everything from Jeremih’s “Birthday Sex” to “Best Day of My Life” by American Authors. The rest of the time we spend ax throwing, playing Cards Against Humanity, and falling all over ourselves and one another in a supernatural game of Twister that ends up with all of us in a giant heap in the middle of Hudson’s floor…with him on top, which is absolutely no surprise to anyone.

I also introduce them to Heads Up! which no one here has ever played. Jaxon—“we used to call this game charades”—ends up kicking everybody’s ass, so Flint decides it’s time to sing “Happy Birthday.”

It’s the best night I’ve had in a really long time, maybe ever, and as my friends finally gather round to cut my birthday cake, I can’t help thinking that I don’t want this to end. Not just this night—though I’m okay with it going on forever despite my earlier thoughts—but all of this. We graduate in a couple of weeks, and yeah, we’ve got a prison to go to (and get out of) and maybe even a war to fight, but after we leave Katmere, all of that will be different. All of this will be different.

We’ll scatter all over the world, and this perfect-for-me blend of people will be no more. Maybe that’s why not a single person has ever mentioned what they plan to do after graduation. I think we all know we’re living on borrowed time. The rest of our lives is coming for us, whether we’re ready for it or not.

It’s an awful thought, one I shove down deep—at least for tonight. And then I make the most important wish of my life right before I blow my candles out.

We eat the cake—or at least four of us do—while I open up my presents. Sparkly earrings from Macy, nunchucks along with a promise to teach me how to use them from Eden, a giant bouquet of flowers from Mekhi, and a Harry Styles body pillow from Flint and Luca.

Hudson gives me a book of poetry from Pablo Neruda, which is incredibly sweet. I start to get up to thank him, but he shakes his head.

“That’s just the socially acceptable public gift.” He winks at me. “There’s another gift I’ll give you when we’re alone.”

Everyone in the room starts teasing him, shouting out guesses, everything from Victoria’s Secret (Mekhi) to handcuffs (Flint) to a gag for him (Eden).

I can’t help the blush creeping up my cheeks, nor my heart pounding in my chest, imagining what gift Hudson would want to give me…privately. Sure, we both know there is a furnace of heat between us every time we get within touching distance, but what no one else knows is that besides a little hand-holding, Hudson and I haven’t even kissed yet. So that takes every gift my friends are suggesting off the table, thank God. But what does that leave?

My eyebrows shoot up as I ask him with my eyes what it could possibly be, but he just chuckles and tells me I’ll have to wait to see.

I’m about to start begging for a hint when Jaxon walks up to me, a small square present wrapped in delicate pink tissue paper in his hands.

I open his present and gasp in shock. Our gazes collide, and for a moment—just a moment—I see a flare of warmth in the depths of his black-ice eyes. But then he blinks, and it’s gone, and in its place is nothing but the same emptiness I’ve seen from him for days. The same emptiness that is echoing inside me.

“I can’t—” I look down at the Klimt sketch I saw in his room that very first day. “I can’t take this,” I tell him, shoving it back toward him as my stomach begins to churn.

“Why not?” he answers with a shrug. “It’s not like I’ve got a use for it anymore.”

His words cut like knives. It feels like he’s trying to exorcise us, what we had, from his life. Yes, it’s painful to think of everything we lost, but I wouldn’t trade a single memory for all the money in the world—even knowing it would all end. Usually he seems to have moved on, found peace with what happened and that I’ve moved on, too, but it’s moments like this, I wonder if he really has.

“What is it?” Macy asks, leaning forward to see. “Oh my gosh! It’s beautiful, Jaxon!”

“And you should totally accept it,” Mekhi says. “It’s not like it fits in Jaxon’s room anymore—have you seen the dungeon he’s turned it into lately?”

I have, and I hate it so, so much. “I just don’t—”

“Take it,” Jaxon tells me. “It’s a gift. And it was always meant for you anyway.”

I don’t know what to say to that—don’t know if there’s even anything to say. Besides, things are starting to get awkward, our friends looking between us like they know this is about more than an expensive sketch. Plus, Hudson has moved away completely, looking at anything and everything but Jaxon or me.

“Okay,” I whisper, because it’s all I can do. “Thank you.”

He nods, but like Hudson, he’s not looking at me when he answers, “You’re welcome.”

An awkward silence starts to descend, but God bless Macy, because she says, “Come on, Hudson. Put on one more birthday song before we go.”

He shrugs but walks over to his sound system. And seconds later, “Birthday” by The Beatles blasts through the room, complete with all the warm pops and crackles that come from listening to it on vinyl.

And fuck it. Just fuck it. I drop my presents next to my backpack, grab Macy, and dance around the room with her like it’s the end of the fucking world.

It isn’t until much later, back in my own room with Macy, that I realize Hudson never gave me my second present.

65

A Little Less Talk,

a Lot More Action

The first two days of finals go better than expected—at least by me. I get an A on my case defense in Ethics of Power and a B on my Physics of Flight test, so I’m feeling pretty good about this whole graduation thing after all. Or at least I would be if my history test didn’t loom over me like a too-full snowbank, just waiting for something to kick off an avalanche and bury me alive.

To combat the whole death-by-history-final thing, I’ve arranged for one last study session with Hudson. Jaxon promised he’d tutor me, but I haven’t felt like asking him for anything lately.