The gym was so silent I could hear the string lights hum.
“Yes,” I said. “A thousand times, yes.”
The place came apart.
I have never heard a sound like two hundred teenagers losing their minds at once.
And across the floor, standing where he’d positioned me “at exactly the right moment,” a thirteen-year-old boy in a suit two sizes too big was crying and cheering harder than anyone in that gym — because he’d pulled it off, the mission his big brother trusted him with, and he’d done it perfectly.
Logan and I got our dance.
But halfway through our song, Logan stopped, and he walked over to Ollie, and he pinned something to his little brother’s too-big lapel — his own jump wings, off his own uniform.
“You stood your post,” Logan told him, and saluted him, this serious little salute, and Ollie saluted back and absolutely dissolved.
Then Logan made me dance the second half of our song with Ollie, because, he said, “He earned that dance more than I did tonight.”
