“That kind of thinking is not fair on either Ava or James,” Kate tells her sharply. “It’ll only end in hurt.” She squeezes my hand gently. “You have us. We love you. Do you really need anything else right now?”

I smile softly and squeeze her hand back. “You know I love you guys. And I’m so grateful to have you in my life, because I need you more than I ever have before. But this is different. This…feeling I get when I’m with James, it’s something I haven’t felt in a long time, if ever. I never expected this to happen, but he makes me feel alive. And I need that right now.”

She sighs. “I guess I can understand that.”

“I don’t want to hurt him, though.”

“He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself,” Amanda scoffs.

We all jump at a loud knock on the front door of the house.

“He’s here.” Kate gets up, stating the obvious. “It’s not too late to change your mind.” She gives me a pointed look. “For his sake as much as your own.”

I feel a brief surge of panic inside. What am I doing? Why did I think this was a good idea?

“Ava,” Amanda says gently. I look at her familiar, comforting face. It grounds me, and the panic begins to recede. “You don’t know what he wants, or where he’s taking you. For all we know you could be worrying about something, or nothing at all. Don’t overthink it. Just follow your instincts like you’ve always told us to do.”

I nod. “OK.”

Standing up, I take a deep breath, then I walk to the front door and open it. When I see him, I know what to do.

“Hey.” He smiles. “You ready?”

I step outside, aware that Kate and Amanda are lurking inside, within earshot but out of sight.

I stop in front of him. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t going to work.”

He frowns. “Sorry?”

I smile. “I forgot my case. I can’t go anywhere without that now, can I?”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

We are all dying. Every day, a little bit more.

When I was younger I watched a movie with Kate and Amanda, about a group of six teenage friends who, while giddy under the influence of beer and marijuana and caught up in the delirium that is living life as a teenager, went to see a fortune-teller in a spooky booth at a fairground at midnight. She saw them each individually, and gave them all the chance to decide if they wanted to know the date they would die. They all, apart from one girl, chose to find out.

The next day, unsure if it was all just a bad dream and determined to find the old witch and give her a piece of their minds, they went back. But (cue ghostly, unnerving music) the fair was GONE.

So they carried on living their lives with this fear hanging over their heads. Was she legit? Did she really have some kind of crystal ball that showed her the future? Or was she simply an opportunist out to make a quick buck and who got off on scaring the living daylights out of kids? A few years later, unable to cope with the insanity and determined to prove her wrong, one of the boys committed suicide. The fact that he did this on a date that was not the date the fortune-teller gave him should have gone some way toward calming the minds of the others. But no, alas, as we found out, they never told each other what date they were given. (Cue mild hysteria.) I can’t remember much of the rest of it. It was pretty rubbish cinematography and the actors D-grade enough that I never saw any of them in anything else.