Oliver is looking at me just like the last time a thermometer showed I had a fever. Baffled. Scared. The temperature had to have been a mistake. The thermometer has been wrong before. Granted, I made it wrong before. But still. The things aren’t error-proof. Mistakes happen in hospitals all the time. People get gloves left in their stomachs after surgery; lab results get lost; babies get switched and go home with the wrong families.

“I’m sure it’s a mistake,” Oliver says. “A faulty reading.” But I can tell he doesn’t believe what he’s saying.

“I don’t understand. They said it was passed only through direct contact with someone. Kissing someone. I haven’t kissed anyone. Except you. Did you get it from someone and give it to me? How many girls did you make out with on spring break?” Even as I’m saying the words, I’m not sure I believe them. But I’m scared, and I don’t get scared—I get mad.

“What? None!” Oliver sputters.

“Have you just been stringing me along? Pretending you need my help when you don’t? A girl handbook, I’m such an idiot. You don’t need any help from me at all. You’re doing just fine on your own.” I know I’m grasping at straws, but I hear the punk song starting in my head again. I get up, and Oliver crosses over to my side of the room.

“Flora, listen to me.”

He’s standing in my way, and I just need him to move so I can punch a wall, kick a door. I try to push past him but he’s too fast and he’s still blocking me. “Flora, please listen to me,” he says again.

“Why? So you can tell me all the names of the girls you kissed? Have you told Kelsey about all of them?”

“Flora, please,” he begs.

I keep thinking of the way he looked at me after I kissed him, and for some reason I’m crying, and I just want to hit something, but he still won’t get out of my way, so I beat my arms against his chest.

He gently grabs my arms. “You’re even stronger than you look.”

Which makes me really cry, and I want to stop touching him, especially since I really am diseased, but I can’t make myself pull away from him. I rest my arms against his chest, then my head. I feel his hand on my head, his fingers running through my hair. How did I forget to tell him that girls love having their hair played with? Or, at least, this one does.

“You’re the only one,” he says quickly.

“What?” I pull away, look up at him, but he’s looking at the ceiling and won’t make eye contact with me, like he’s embarrassed.

“It’s only you,” he says.

“Only me what?”

“You’re the only girl I’ve kissed—the first girl I’ve kissed. No one else. Just you.”

“So you haven’t been kissing random girls on spring break?”

“No. Definitely not. Well, it was pretty random that we sat next to each other on the plane. I mean, literally speaking and all.” He finally looks down at me and grins.

I sniffle, the tears drying on my face. And just like that I’m looking out the window on a cool spring day, and even if I have a fever caused by a potentially serious disease, I feel like everything is going to be okay somehow.