Okay. That felt more like Arthur.

I took the branch then turned to look back at the bee, whose movements were slowing. But there was still the matter of the slippery rocks beneath my bare and numbing feet.

“Give me your hand,” he said, as he reached out his own glove-covered right hand toward me. I took it and it did provide balance, even if he had to lean forward, because while seventeen-year-old Arthur wasn’t short, he also was never going to be the tallest member of anyone’s basketball team.

I focused on the bee in the pond, stretching out the stick until it was beneath the struggling insect, providing something solid on to which its pudgy legs could grab hold.

“Got him,” I said. Then I straightened, one hand holding the stick with the wobbly bee and the other still in Arthur’s grasp.

“I see that,” he said. “Perhaps you’d like to step back? Onto land, if I’m in any way being vague.”

It took every ounce of self-restraint to not hit him with an equally snarky comeback, but since he was my main source of stability, I bit my tongue.

I tightened my hold on his hand then brought the stick with our rescued bee over for him to take. Once done, I leapt back in the same direction.

My landing was . . . inelegant. I hit the ground on my ass and my red cap slipped off my head, but I didn’t take out Arthur or the bee and I didn’t fall backward into the pond, so, all things considered, I counted it as a win.

Arthur barely spared me a glance. He was focused on the bee. Of course.

The cool, damp earth seeped into my favorite jeans and I knew I’d be spending a couple of dollars’ worth of quarters in the laundry room later tonight.

Which was also not how I’d always envisioned my sixteenth birthday.

None of this was.

And then it got worse.

The laughter reached me first and I immediately thought it was aimed at me.

It wasn’t.

Instead, it came from four classmates headed along the path in the direction of the stone bridge. The shadows hid Arthur and me from them, which was good since the chief giggler was my roommate, Thea Selsky, who only a half hour earlier had told me she couldn’t hang out tonight for my birthday because she was studying with her boyfriend, Beaux. I’d assumed “study” was a euphemism, but I did think they’d be hanging out in his dorm room. Clearly that wasn’t true, either. But where were—

“They’re probably going to Bronwyn’s party,” Arthur said, as if reading my thoughts.

I looked from Thea and Beaux—whom I now recognized was one of the four—back to Arthur, who had transferred the bee from the stick to a sturdy leaf.