‘You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?’

‘I’ve seen this plenty of times,’ he says. ‘You just sort of have to …’ He sticks his tongue out with concentration as he tries to get the boat to move, and eventually, with great difficulty, he finally pushes us out from the boathouse on to the water.

‘See?’ he says. ‘It’s easy!’

‘And yet you make it look so difficult,’ I tease as we begin to glide over the water, sunshine dappling across the rippled surface, reeds swaying in the gentle wash of the boat. I hate to admit it, but Kellen is right: it would have been a shame to leave school having never done this.

‘It’s hot out here,’ he says, pausing to take off his shirt. Beads of sweat glisten on his skin, and I feel myself staring. As annoying as Kellen is, he’s cute. You’d have to be blind not to see that. Maybe if him and Rhys hadn’t ended up together …?

I watch as he fiddles with his phone for a moment before sighing and shoving it back in his pocket.

‘Everything OK?’

‘It’s nothing,’ he says.

What is he hiding?

‘I’m so sick of these nails,’ he says, changing the subject. ‘If I’d known I was gonna be stuck with them forever, I’d have done a better job. See?’ He holds his hand up so I can get a better look. ‘This one’s already chipped.’

I take his hand in mine as I study it. We make eye contact for a moment before I quickly pull away. Get it together, Zach. He has a boyfriend.

‘So what do we do now?’ I say as we reach the other side of the lake. There’s a little wooden platform that juts out over the water from the edge of the woodland, the trees swaying gently in the breeze.

‘Nothing,’ he says, tying up the boat and climbing out. ‘We do absolutely nothing.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Kellen sighs. ‘I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I’m starting to suspect that us being at prom just makes everything worse.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Think about it. Everything bad that’s happened has happened because of one of us. The pig’s blood on the yearbook. Ethan in the lake. That embarrassing proposal. We’re the reason everything keeps going to shit. I think we just need to stay out of the way. Stop messing everything up. It’s like the butterfly effect. One tiny change can completely alter the course of history! You go back in time, tread on the wrong leaf, and suddenly humans have three eyes and can breathe underwater.’

‘Why would we have three eyes just because you trod on a leaf?’

Kellen sighs. ‘I think you’re missing the point.’