Perfect Fifths (34 page)

"That banner is just like us," he says.

"I was thinking the same thing," she says.

And these two—Jessica Darling and Marcus Flutie—nod in wordless affinity, both knowing that this is the perfect ending for the story they'll tell time and again, year after year, decade after decade, whenever anyone asks, "How did you know?"

And so it is.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks go out to:

Everyone I've ever acknowledged before. You were there when I needed you then.

Heather Schroder at International Creative Management and Tina Constable, Suzanne O'Neill, Sarah Breivogel, Annsley Rosner, Mary Choteborsky, Patty Berg, and Heather Proulx at Crown, for being here now.

Rachel Cohn, Patty McCormick, and Carolyn Mackler, who wanted more for me.

Puthea Chea at UCLA, Samantha Keefe and Zeta Gamma at Wellesley College, Kelli Plasket and everyone from ED2010 at the College of New Jersey for letting me entertain you. Callie Freitag, Maggie R. Borders, Rachel Simon, Kathryn Gaglione, Ariel Reinish, Casey Freedman, Georgia Wei, Rhoda Feng, Colleen Conedy, Vania

Xu, Stella Deng, Samantha Wildfong, Allyson Townsend, Megan Wible, Tara Turley-Dean, Camille Hamilton, Maniza Ahmed, Tanya Seal, Sophie Sumrall, Hannah Tennant, Rachel Lamar, Tatiana Christian, Heather Taylor, Brittany Lewis, Rochella Villamil, Caroline Donnelly, Mallory Tuckey, Whitney Moon, Rebecca Prowler,

Justine Anne DeAngelis, Jessica McKeever, Anna Ssemuyaba, Tiana Sidawi, Jordan "Butch" Sondler, Elaine Chau, Madeleine Douglass, Aimy Tien, Mallory Carra, Amy Bydlon, Sara DiSalvo, Jenna Zenk, Annie Shields, Cassandra Leveille, Brianne Kennedy, Errin

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Mitchell, Tara Powers, Anna Najduch, Stephanie Thomson, Sandy Cox, Audrey Barlow, Jessica Tackett, Sara Blaney, Elissa Shortridge, Zoe Vrabel, Kailey Bennett, Samar Khan, Erica Michelle Vona, Sara Wegman, Jaclyn Rapadas, Sara Blaney, Kelsey Light, Natalie Reed, Leigh Purtill, Caitlin Yates, Katherine Blaney, Megan Mihans, Lynn Rickert, Christi Cook, Andrea Sanow, Zhenzhen Gong,

Sharon Hoffman, Alexa Laudenslager, Alisa McQuaid, Tiffany Medeck, Connie Bisesi, Sarah Nishanian, Jessie Schuster, Lauren Brignone, Britni Puccio, Cecilia

Rahme, Jodi Lehman, and Madeline Jones, for sharing your stories.

Yaz, W. Somerset Maugham, and Sir Winston Churchill, for providing quotes embedded in chapter twenty-three.

Alastair Gordon, author of Naked Airport, for providing the inspiration for the "EXCUSE OUR

APPEARANCES ..." quotation.

Barry Manilow, because he is the Showman of Our Time.

And last—but never least—my two favorite nerds. I love you always. And forever. And whatever.

MEGAN McCAFFERTY is the author of the hit novels Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings, and the New York Times bestsellers Charmed Thirds and Fourth Comings. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and son. To find out more about Megan and the Jessica Darling series, visitwww.MeqanMcCafferty.com .

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishinq.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McCafferty, Megan.

Perfect fifths / Megan McCafferty—1st ed.

p. cm.

1. Darling, Jessica (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Young women—Fiction.

I. Title.

PS3613.C34P47 2009

813'.6—dc22 2008050525

elSBN: 978-0-307-45267-2