We’re free to go.

“I’d suggest we go get pancakes,” says Quint, “but most diners probably require pants.”

I break into giggles and collapse into him, burying my face into his shoulder. If we’d been thinking last night, we would have hung our clothes up. They’d probably be dry by now, or close to it. But they’re still in the dryer, lying in a sopping-wet clump.

“Pancakes sound so good, too,” I say.

His arms encircle me. His lips press against my neck, right below my ear.

Pancakes are forgotten, along with everything else.

Until a few seconds later, when a door slams downstairs.

We both jump.

The sound must have awoken some of the animals downstairs, because there’s a short round of barks from the seals, squeaks from the otters.

Then we hear Rosa, yelling. “Quint?”

Quint and I exchange looks. A brief but deep disappointment passes between us before we disentangle our arms from each other.

“Up here, Mom,” Quint calls back as we both stand up and straighten our T-shirts and check the knots on our towel-kilt and blanket-gown, as we dubbed our makeshift clothing around three o’clock in the morning.

We hear Rosa jogging up the stairs. A bouncing white light precedes her, and when she arrives in the break room, she swings her cell phone so fast in our direction, it blinds us both. Quint and I throw up our arms, shrieking. We could be vampires faced with a sudden deluge of sunlight.

Rosa lowers her phone. “A tree took down some power lines up the road. I saw crews working to get it fixed. Has the power been out all night?”

“Yeah,” says Quint. “Went out not long after we got here.”

Rosa makes a sympathetic noise in her throat. “You poor kids! If I’d known…” She trails off, because, what would she have done differently? Sent out a search party for us?

“We’re okay.” Quint rubs his eyes. “Though we didn’t get a whole lot of sleep.”

“No sleep,” I amend. “We got exactly negative amounts of sleep.”

Quint snickers at this, which makes me giggle, too. Our sleepy minds finding something hilarious in this sentence.

Rosa looks between us, a little concerned.

“We’re fine,” Quint says emphatically this time.

“We’re great,” I say. And then I blush, wondering how much the word great implies about the night we spent together. Does great automatically suggest seven straight hours of confessions and truths and kisses? So. Many. Kisses.

And yet, somehow …

Not.

Enough.

Kisses.

“Have you been to check on the animals?” asks Quint, even though we both just heard her come in.

“No. I thought I’d better make sure you were both okay first.”

“Do you have a portable phone charger?” I ask, holding up my dead phone. “I should call my parents.”

“Afraid not. But you can use the phone downstairs.”

I frown. “The power is out.”

Rosa looks like she’s trying not to laugh at me. “Yes, honey. Landline phones still work, even when the power goes out.”

“What? How?” My mouth drops open and I turn to Quint. “Did you know that?”

He shakes his head, looking as bewildered as I am. “I had no idea. It seems like—”

“Sorcery!”

He throws his arms into the air, howling, “Sorcery!”

I burst into giggles again.

Rosa clears her throat. “All right. Prudence, you go call your parents. Quint … why are you wearing a towel?”

“Our clothes were drenched from the storm. They’re down in the dryer, but it’s not working.”

“Unless!” I gasp. “Can dryers work without power, too?”

“No,” says Rosa.

I snap my fingers, bummed.

I go down to the lobby and call my parents to let them know I’m all right and will be heading home soon, and that my phone is dead. Mom reminds me to be careful riding my bike—there’s standing water all over the roads—but beyond that, they don’t sound too concerned. I sometimes think this is the plight of the oldest child, or children, in the case of twins like me and Jude. There’s no babying, no helicopter parenting, no late-night pacing after curfew. We’re the ones who can take care of ourselves. I’m extra grateful for that autonomy now. If Mom had insisted that she come get me last night, when the storm was raging, I would have missed out on the most amazing night of my life.

As I hang up the phone, I hear clumsy footsteps on the stairs. Quint is hauling our massive pile of blankets back to the laundry room. He pauses when he sees me. His hair mussed, his face a little puffy from our sleepless night.

I smile at him, suddenly bashful. He smiles back, just as shy, just as eager.

It takes everything in me not to grab one of those blankets, throw it over both our heads, and …

His eyes darken, like maybe he knows what I’m thinking. Like maybe he’d be okay with it.

But then I hear Rosa coming down the steps behind him and we both shrink away from each other.

“Want help?” I ask.

“There were a couple more blankets up there still.”

I’m passing Rosa on the stairs when the lights suddenly flicker on above us, and the perpetual hum of technology returns to the walls, the air conditioner, the refrigerator in the break room.

“Ah,” says Rosa, smiling brightly. “That’s better.”

No, I want to tell her. This isn’t better at all.

But I just return her smile and go to collect the blankets. When I catch up with Quint in the laundry room, the dryer is running again, and he’s busying his hands by folding all the blankets we used. They’re not really dirty, so there’s no need to wash them. I drop my blankets into a pile on the floor and start helping him, all while our eyes perform a complicated tango I didn’t know they knew. I look up, he looks away. He looks up. Our eyes meet. We both scurry back.

He swallows. “So. Any plans for today?”

I want to say: I plan to spend the rest of my day going over last night with a fine-tooth comb, analyzing every word you said, remembering every touch, swooning over every kiss, until I’ve melted into a pile of Prudence-shaped goo.

What I actually say is “Go home and take a shower, then probably try to get a few hours of sleep.”

“Good plan,” he replies, even though he’s looking at me like he knows the truth. I don’t want to sleep. I never want to sleep again. What if sleep washes away every blissful thing that’s happened between us?

Once we’ve put the blankets away, we head out to the yard to see how the animals fared last night. It’s still early enough that none of the volunteers have started to arrive for their shifts, so it’s just us and Rosa. She’s already hard at work, using a push broom to shove puddles of water into the in-ground pools.

The yard is a mess, especially where the concrete flooded. The seals could be swimming laps in all this water, if it wasn’t for the debris floating around. Sticks and tree branches and leaves and palm fronds, and even some trash from one of the garbage cans that got blown over by the wind. One section of the chain-link fence has been squashed by a particularly huge branch.

“This will take a few days to clean up,” says Rosa, pausing to lean against the broom handle. “And that fence … hopefully insurance will pay to have it fixed.”

“Is there any other damage?” asks Quint.

“Not that I’ve found so far. And no one seems hurt, which is the most important thing.” She turns to us, taking us in with a worried-mom look. “You’re both exhausted. I’ll call around to some of the volunteers and see who can come in today. You should go home, get some rest.”

“I’m fine,” says Quint, flopping his arms as if the ability to move his limbs proved his ability to work.

“Me too.” I copy the movement.

Rosa is unimpressed. “Go home,” she says sternly. Then her eyes drop down to our legs. “Put on some pants, first.”

We both start to giggle. It’s almost uncontrollable. Rosa rolls her eyes and waves us away.

We’re just turning to head back inside when Quint grabs my hand. “Look.”

I follow his look. A group of sea lions have discovered a new game—paddling full-speed toward an enormous puddle, sliding across it on their bellies, and landing in their pool with a massive splash. They’ve created their own Slip ’n Slide.

We all start to laugh. The game is so human it catches me off-guard.

“Well,” says Quint, “at least they’re having a good time. I guess the storm was good for something.”

I glance his way, startled to find him grinning at me. My stomach flutters.

“I guess it was,” I say, squeezing his hand.

We stumble back to the laundry room. Our pants are still a little damp, but I figure I can suffer for one bike ride. Quint takes his clothes to the bathroom to change.

The sun has peeked over the horizon by the time I’m dressed and strapping on my bike helmet. I linger in the parking lot. I can’t leave without saying goodbye. Without, perhaps, just one more kiss before I go.

A second later, Quint comes charging out, carrying my backpack. “You almost forgot this.”

My eyes widen as I remember that it has not only my Very Important Gala notebook … but also my parents’ money from the pawnshop. I’m momentarily ashamed to have been so careless with it, but with everything that’s happened, I’m not sure I’m entirely to blame.

“Thanks,” I say, taking the bag and threading my arms through the straps.

Our bikes are wet and splattered with mud, having been dropped unceremoniously the night before. Quint uses the hem of his shirt to dry off my bike seat, despite my wet pants.

“What a gentleman,” I say.

Grinning, he hands the bike to me. I put up the kickstand. He picks up his bike and does the same.