I shouldn’t want the song to end. I always think of each night as a song. Or each moment as a song. But now I’m seeing we don’t live in a single song. We move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending here. It’s an Infinite Playlist.

—Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

My heartbeat accelerates. I am in the here, in the now. I can also in the future. I am holding her and wanting and knowing and hoping all at once. We are the ones who take this thing called music and line it up with this thing called time. We are the ticking, we are the pulsing, we are underneath every part of this moment. And by making the moment our own, we are rendering it timeless. There is no audience. There are no instruments. There are only bodies and thoughts and murmurs and looks. It’s the concert rush to end all concert rushes, because this is what matters. When the heart races, this is what it’s racing toward.

—Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Her hand finds my hand and immediately I’m being led away. We are piercing through the rumbling and tumbling crowd and our arms are like the most precarious bridge, held together by that single, pulling clasp. I think, If she lets go, it’s all over. If I let go, it’s all over. And because she is holding on so tight, I hold on so tight. I am being jostled from all sides—I know there will be bruises tomorrow—but somehow this hand-hold is immune. Somehow we stay together. We are graced, and we are together, and the twoliness is trumping the loneliness and doubt and the fear. We are making it through. Thank you, music. Damn you, memories. Thank you, present.

—NICK, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan