‘I know you’ve known him for a long time, and I know I just got here, but we’re not playing around, it’s real-world stuff, and it puts you under an obligation to someone, Peyton. I …’

Suddenly I want to lay it all out for her, everything Ellis and I already know, how far we’ve come already. If she tasted what I do right now, if her insides felt like mine, all rioting and magnetic, moving towards something instead of away, finally – maybe she’d understand then.

‘Some things aren’t worth knowing,’ she says.

‘You’re misunderstanding all of this.’

‘You know, sometimes, when people get shot – OK, firstly, I watch a lot of those ER shows. Right?’

‘Yep.’

‘And sometimes, when people get shot, the bullet will still be lodged in them in a sort of sensitive place. Like, I saw an episode about this guy who got shot in the back. Of his neck. And if it had gone a millimetre left or right, he would have died, right?’

‘Sure,’ I say, already arriving at the point of all this, but not minding the intense gush of the diatribe.

‘And once they treated the wound, they decided it’d be way more traumatic to his body to take the bullet out rather than leave it in.’

‘Yeah, I get what you’re –’

‘They left the bullet in.’

‘Peyton …’

She swivels round and grips my biceps. The way she’s staring shuts me up, with these bright and pleading philosopher’s eyes. ‘They just left it.’

I hope for an earthquake, a sinkhole, any natural intervention to force the moment to end, but nothing comes, so I finally nod to get her off me.

‘I like you,’ Peyton says.

‘Yeah, I like you too.’

‘I want to have a summer with you.’

I look up at her. ‘What?’

‘I like you and I want to have a normal, non-mystery-plagued time with you. It’s Saturday. I’m meeting Liam and some of the guys at Indigo. Come with me. I’m a second away from begging you.’

‘I –’

‘Please, Mona.’

This, I realize, is a moment of choice. She’s saying drop it, now. Let’s have a normal time. Let’s be teenagers in a lazy almost-paradise where there’s nothing to do besides populate your coming life with memories. But you have to decide.

She’s too close. No one’s ever been closer, I keep repeating, and I don’t know why. I want to kiss her and I want to throttle her and I want to do neither; I don’t want to touch her at all, I don’t even want to look at her; I wish I’d never met her, I wish I’d never come here, and I tell her to fuck off.

‘What?’

‘Fuck off, Peyton.’