At the high school graduation ceremony they stand shoulder to shoulder, and she thinks Nineteen, nineteen, over and over again, because it's his birthday tomorrow and nineteen seems awfully old. She watches him and the mirrors carefully, to make sure he doesn't develop some sort of cancer or walk into a meat grinder. Whenever he catches her she has to lie and say she's just fixing her make-up, or admiring her new hair cut.

Her ears ring with ticking. Her fingers falter around her diploma and she nearly drops it, walking to the side of the stage, where he's lagged enough to walk beside her. She hears her heart beating, can only think that high school's over and she's an adult now, and that she kept her school-issued copy of Romeo and Juliet. And she doesn't even like the play that much.

After the ceremony they stand together, a little frightened, (she is, he isn't,) until their families drag them separate ways.

She meets him later with a bottle of vodka they can only tap into, they're both such feather weights, and with one drink she can already see his doppelganger dying. She doesn't tell him this, just lies back in the grass with him so their sides are touching, and they look up at the stars, the summer air smelling like yellow flowers. He sits up at midnight and looks down at her, and in the darkness, she can't see his face.

"Happy birthday," she says, at the same time he asks, "Would you marry me?"

She splutters. He says, "Please?" and traces a ring of imaginary lines around her left hand's ring finger. Her breath hitches.

She says, "We're just kids."

He says, "Yes, but I keep picturing you as a widow, and you look great in black."

She says, "Don't joke about that."

He says, "If I die before I marry you my entire life will have been pointless."

She does not blush. "Now you're just extorting me."

He kisses her. "I really want you to say yes."

She says, "My parents will kill you," and then they both laugh.