I thought Kane was bringing me inside to meet the new wife, which I didn’t really want to do, but supposed it was polite. I followed him inside, doing what I usually did around him those days: trying my damnedest to force away the memory of that day in January. He brought me upstairs and stopped at the third bedroom at the end of the hall, which is my bedroom in my house, but in Kane’s house had always been his dad’s office. The door was open. Someone was strumming a guitar.

I looked at the person holding the guitar, and my heart stopped.

Everything stopped. I couldn’t move in, out, anywhere.

He took his time raising his eyes to me. Time seemed to be slowing down. I’d find out later that was the Declan Effect. He prided himself on doing everything carefully, slowly—on being the tortoise while everyone else was trying to be the hare. He wore thick-rimmed, geeky glasses. He had on a white T-shirt under a loose bowling shirt, the colors contrasting nicely with his deep brown skin. Tight blue jeans. White socks and sneakers. All those things that, packaged together, you’d think would be quite goofy, and yet…it was hipster cool. No kid at our school dressed like that. They were all lemmings, too afraid to stand out. But this kid had style; he had a personality. I knew that much, and he hadn’t even opened his mouth.

Me? I couldn’t close my gulpy fish mouth.

“Hi,” he said first.

Kane leaned against the door. “This is Hailey Ward. She lives across the street.”

“Hailey, like the comet?” he asked.

My mouth had done half the work by opening, but words failed me.

Then he started to strum his guitar. He looked up at me and sang in a strong voice—something about a girl wearing a dress, her hair done up so nice. My hair was falling in my face. It was not done up nice at all. No dress, either. I’d come from Lazy Dazy Camp, where I’d spent eight hours teaching second-graders how to make bottle-cap ornaments in the hot sun. I was sweaty and probably smelled bad.

When he sang about my heart being cold as ice, I realized it wasn’t an original work. Then he hit the guitar and broke into the chorus, which I’d heard before. “Shake, Rattle, and Roll.” He stopped and grinned, and that’s when I figured out who he looked like: one of those old-time dudes from the early days of rock ‘n’ roll. It was like he was caught in the fifties.

“Buddy Holly?” I murmured, not really sure, but I’d seen a movie on him. I think he died in a plane crash at the end.

“Bill Haley and the Comets,” he said, breaking into another song, one I’d never heard before.