I’d brought my sketchbook with me, even though I sucked at drawing. I wasn’t good at anything, sadly—not even dance, though I’d done that after gymnastics, which I started when I was three. I’d also tried softball, clarinet, soccer… None of it stuck. Kane said the same thing my parents said: that I got bored with things too easily. But after working so hard with dance only to constantly lag behind the other girls, I wanted to be a natural at something.

I wanted a talent.

I leaned back against the ship’s wheel, stretched out my black-and-blue legs, and swept the pencil over the paper, liking the scratchy sound it made.

“Hey,” a voice said.

Startled, I dropped my pencil. His black hair was wet, as if he’d just gone swimming, and he was barefoot, wearing nothing but shorts. He’d already started climbing up the rock-wall rope toward me. I pulled my knees up to my chest as he reached me. He slid in easily and draped his long legs over the side.

“You writing?”

I clutched the notebook to my chest and wiped a stray hair from my braid over my head. I’d slept in that braid, which meant my hair had to be a horror. “Just drawing.”

I hadn’t seen Declan since he’d moved in earlier that summer. He’d started his junior year of high school in a completely different world from the freshmen and sophomore building. His arrival at Kane’s house had come with a tarp-covered something—a truck, I’d guessed by the shape, which took up much of the one-car driveway. Sometimes I’d see a set of big feet poking out from under the chassis.

His arrival also meant that Kane was at my house a whole lot more. Well, at first. In the beginning, Kane did nothing but complain. He eats all the food in the house. His mom makes me do shit, like make my bed. They act like they own the place. But as Declan climbed up, I realized I hadn’t seen Kane much in the past week. When I had seen him, he’d been so tired from baseball practice that he hadn’t complained once.

“Can I see?” he asked.

My heart thrummed. I buried the sketchbook in my lap. “No.”

He looked out over the retention pond, which was dry, baring its pasty bottom. A couple of geese plodded along the bank, oblivious to us. He watched them, and I used the time to study his profile. Luisa was definitely right. He had a strong jaw, a little bit of uneven, dark stubble too. There was a small scar over his eye, like a little red star. His arms were muscular, his chest dark and lean, with awkward angles that showed the promise of more. He was almost seventeen. Older. The only older boy I knew.