Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan Read Free Book Online Page A

keep the kiss alive. First for minutes. Then for hours. The hardest thing, when kissing for hours, was staying awake. Focusing. To be connected to someone else, but to be retreating entirely into yourself. Because when you kiss someone, you can’t really see them. They become a blur. You must use touch as your touchstone, breath as your conversation. After many attempts, they found their rhythm. They made it to ten hours one Sunday. That was as far as they’d gotten. And now here they were, trying for more than three times as long. All to prove a point. And maybe it’s all of the hours and maybe it’s the point that’s making this kiss much more intense than Harry had thought it would be. Their lips make contact and Harry feels a charge. It doesn’t rise from the past as much as it’s created in the present. Even though it isn’t what they hadplanned, he finds himself putting his arm around Craig’s waist, finds himself drawing Craig a little closer, kissing him a little more than the rehearsal kisses. The small crowd cheers for them, and Harry can feel Craig smile underneath their contact. He can feel that smile in Craig’s breathing, in his lips, in his body. Harry wants to smile back, but is gripped by something more profound than a smile, something vast and inarticulate that fills his lungs, fills his head. He has no idea what he’s gotten into, no idea what this all means. He thought he knew. He’d thought it out so many times. But what use is abstraction when it comes to a kiss? What use is planning? Harry kisses Craig and feels there is something bigger than the two of them just outside the kiss. He doesn’t reach out to it—not yet. But he knows it’s there. And that makes this unlike any other kiss they’ve ever shared before. Immediately, he knows this.
    Craig is still thrown by the
I love you
that Harry whispered to him. That is what he’s thinking about when the kiss begins.
    Tariq makes sure all the cameras and the computers are working. He makes sure the live feed is working.
    Right now, Tariq is the only viewer online.

     
    We settle in. We watch.
    Ryan doesn’t invite Avery inside his house, and Avery doesn’t ask why.
    “Where are we headed?” Avery asks once they’re both strapped into their seats. “What’s the best Kindling has to offer?”
    Ryan is torn. The Kindling Café is easily the best Kindling has to offer. But because of that, most of his school will be there on a Saturday, using the wi-fi and hanging out. If he takes Avery there, it will become a group event, and he doesn’t want it to become a group event, not yet.
    So there’s only one destination that makes any kind of sense.
    “The river,” he tells Avery. “How do you feel about heading to the river?”
    “I feel great about heading to the river,” Avery replies.
    Exactly what Ryan wants to hear.
    One of the many horrible things about dying the way we died was the way it robbed us of the outdoor world and trapped us in the indoor world. For every one of us who was able to die peacefully on a deck chair, blanket pulled high, as the wind stirred his hair and the sun warmed his face, there were hundreds of us whose last glimpse of the world was white walls and metal machinery,the tease of a window, the inadequate flowers in a vase, elected representatives from the wilds we had lost. Our last breaths were of climate-controlled air. We died under ceilings.
    Either the wallpaper goes, or I do
.
    It makes us more grateful now for rivers, more grateful for sky.
    Avery figures they’ll just sit by the river and talk. But Ryan has grander plans than that; he calls his aunt and asks if they can park in her yard and borrow her canoe. She says sure. So instead of heading by the river, they head right into it. It’s a boat big enough for two—one in front, one in back. The current isn’t very strong, and the space between the shores isn’t very wide. They head upstream, not talking much, just a running commentary on the