Kill Switch by Penelope Douglas

He looks down at me, smiling and excited again. He takes
my hand and we run for the ladder, him letting me step up first,
the boards still looking new and nailed in tight. My heart
starts to pound, because if I slip or lose my grip, I’ll fall.
But I feel him right behind me, and I swallow the lump in
my throat and start to climb.
One step after the other, one at a time, I scale the tree,
refusing to look down and keeping my eyes above me on the
door in the floor of the treehouse that I can spot through the
leaves.
My tutu brushes against the trunk, the netting getting stuck
on the bark, and I tighten my hands on each board as I pull it
off and keep going.
A breeze blows across my legs, chilling my wet clothes
even more, and before I can stop myself, I glance down, seeing
how high we are. I gasp and wrap my arms around the board
in front of me.
“I’m scared,” I tell him. “It’s high.”
He climbs up behind me, setting his feet outside of mine
and his hands on the boards around me.
“It’s okay. I have you,” he says. “I promise.”
I squeeze my fists one time and then start to pull away from
the tree a little. I look over my shoulder, meeting his eyes, and
he’s right there, staring at me, almost nose to nose.
Something fills my chest, and he’s so close, it makes me
feel so weird. Like something is pulling me.
I can’t look away, and he holds my eyes, too, and it’s like I
can’t stop it. The pull.
His lips touch mine, and I feel like I’m on a roller coaster.
It makes me stop breathing as tickles hit me everywhere,
and then I pull away.
I clutch the board tighter, heat rising to my face. “Why did
you do that?”
“I didn’t do it. You did it,” he charges.