Excerpt from The Last Boy and Girl in the World by Siobhan Vivian, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Morgan quickly pushed my hood off my head and mussed my hair, pulling out a few stray pieces from the little nubby ponytail I had at the nape of my neck so they wisped around my face. She unzipped my hoodie ever so slightly, and pushed up my sleeves so they were at my elbows. She took a step back and smiled, pleased, and then beckoned to me to stand up.

I did, but only for a second, because as soon as I got to my feet, I pretended to faint dead away from happiness, flopping trust-fall style into Morgan's arms when I knew for sure that Jesse's back was still turned. Morgan barely managed to keep me upright. We both busted up laughing.

"What's so funny?" Elise called out from Morgan's other side.

Morgan pushed me off her and her cheeks turned rose-petal pink. It didn't matter that I was the one embarrassing myself. Morgan always blushed by proxy. She leaned over and said quietly to Elise, "Nothing. Just Keeley being Keeley."

I watched nonchalantly as Jesse and some of the other guys on the soccer team kicked an empty Gatorade bottle across the ground. I guess they'd been asked to volunteer too. After fifteen minutes or so, the chitchat hushed and the sandbags started to come down the human chain.

Jesse shot me a quick smile as he turned to pass me the first one. Aberdeen High was small, with only about fifty kids in each grade. I'd had a class with him last year, Spanish II, but we'd never had an actual conversation before. Not in English, anyway. Still, I couldn't tell if he recognized me, or if he smiled because everyone knew who he was.

All the volunteers worked in painful silence for the first half hour.

"Do you think we're almost done?" I joke-whispered to Morgan as I heaped the next sandbag into her arms. The first few hadn't been so bad, but I swore they were getting heavier and heavier.

"Don't make me laugh, Keeley!" Morgan panted as she twisted toward Elise and passed the sandbag on. "My abs already hurt."

I gasped. "Oh my God, what if we're both so out of shape that we end up getting totally ripped from doing this, like two professional—"

"Hey! Watch out!"

I whipped around to Jesse lobbing his sandbag into my not-waiting, not-ready arms. I screeched and jumped out of the way because if that thing had hit my toes, it would have killed. Everyone around us turned to look. But his sandbag didn't land on my feet.

It was never going to. Jesse had a hold on it the whole time, and he pulled it back at the last second, a perfect fake-out.

He doubled over laughing at how I spazzed, and I felt queasy as I stepped back into line. But then, when Jesse looked up at me, he winked. I realized he wasn't making fun of me, he was teasing me.

There is a difference.

"Hardy har har" was the first thing I thought to say. I groaned the words like an annoyed older sister, but really, inside I was all fireworks.

I let the next few sandbags come down the line, still sort of stunned that Jesse and I'd even had that much of an interaction. At some point, Morgan gave me a raised eyebrow and mouthed, Talk to him!

I ran through a hundred flirty conversation starters I'd overheard Elise coach Morgan to say to Wes or the boys before Wes, but imagining them coming from me, out of my dumb mouth, each one sounded like a nauseatingly transparent cover for Hello, Jesse Ford, please talk to me, boy I've loved forever.

But a few minutes later, as Jesse turned to pass another bag into my arms, I had an idea. I pulled out my phone from my hoodie pocket and pretended to text someone. "Sorry," I singsonged, holding up a hand to Jesse. "This'll just take a sec." This forced Jesse to hold on to his sandbag until I finished. He knew I was joking, of course, and he played right along without missing a beat. He grunted like it was killing him to keep holding the sandbag, but I think he liked showing off how strong he was.

Excerpted from The Last Boy and Girl in the World by Siobhan Vivian. Copyright © 2016 by Siobhan Vivian. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.