Something in Kane’s eyes tells me he knows it. He pushes a stray lock of hair behind my ear, then walks to the side of the road, leans over a pair of scrubby evergreen bushes, and vomits. I think about rubbing his back, telling him it’s okay, but before I can, he wipes his chin and jogs off toward home, arms over his head like a triumphant prizefighter, as if nothing in the world can touch him.

352 Days Before

“Come on, Hail,” Declan said as he settled his strong hands around my waist and lifted me up the climbing wall to the top of the playhouse. “This is going to be incredible.”

I shivered as I scooted into the playhouse and pulled the blanket I’d brought up to my shoulders. He’d set up what looked like a telescope, sort of. It was made with a cereal box and an old Eight O’Clock coffee can and some other household items. That was Declan. He’d work on his car with his stepfather, but then get these brilliant ideas and build gadgets in his room too. Those gentle Californian hands of his never sat idle.

“I thought they said we could see this with the naked eye.”

It was a cold and silent February night. He fussed with his contraption as I pulled the furry blanket tighter over my shivering shoulders. “They did, but why see something naked when you could see it clothed?” he murmured, then smacked the side of his head. “Scratch that. Some things I would much rather see naked.”

I grinned. “I don’t think I want to know what.”

Somewhere along the line, all the time I’d been spending with Kane became eclipsed by time spent with Declan. Before long, being alone with Declan felt natural. But there was no denying it was different. The way he looked at me. The way he talked to me.

And he touched me. At first, innocently: a finger on my arm, or holding my hand to guide me somewhere. Now he held my hand all the time. Now my hand expected it, wanted it, wasn’t complete without his.

He gazed through the eyepiece, as I stared at the full moon rising in the sky. I could see the objects of this expedition pretty clearly. Small, clear, glowing Venus beside the moon and the red dot above, Mars, in a picture-postcard tableau. I’d never cared much for astronomy, but this was cool.

“Look,” he said, motioning me toward the eyepiece. I stooped and squinted at it.

Yep, there they were, the planets, only slightly larger. “It’s amazing,” I breathed.

He looked up, then slid beside me under the blanket. “I think this piece of crap is pretty useless. It looks better naked.”