June ignored the bad joke. ‘Let me give you a ride.’

‘Uh,’ I said, eloquent. She was looking at me so expectantly, with this glint in her eyes, that all possible answers seemed to be expelled from my head. But I couldn’t. I hadn’t been in a car since … And I had no intention of changing that. ‘It’s fine. Really.’

‘It’s the least I can do. And, hey,’ she said, smiling, ‘it’s not like I don’t know where you live.’

What was my excuse? I actually enjoyed riding a bike in the pouring rain? I decided to opt for aggressively declining instead of explaining. ‘I don’t – really. I’m OK. Thanks, though.’

June looked somewhat taken aback, and seemed to search my eyes for something. ‘Well, either way, I’m getting out of here. You coming?’

She jumped up, I followed, and we ran between the grave plots, icy wetness inching itself underneath the collar of my sweater. I pretended we were being chased, that we were running from something but we were fine and happy because we knew it wouldn’t catch us, and ahead of me, June moved like her body had a whole world in it.

See ya later, Dad.

I hopped on my bike without bothering to wipe off the seat, and June stopped outside her car for a second too long, like she wanted to say something. ‘Hey!’ she said, needing to shout to be heard over the rain. I turned to her. ‘I’ll see you around, OK?’

‘Yeah, see you around!’

She smiled, I waved, and she drove out of the parking lot.

I stayed there for a bit. Let the rainclouds swallow me up.

After I’d made it home, peeled off my wet clothes and wrung out my hair, Olivia texted me.

It took me a second to remember what she was talking about. Oh, yeah. Farr-gate. This, of course, had been eclipsed by June-gate.

It wasn’t really a lie. I did have a fucking tome’s worth of worksheets I needed to start on. But mainly I was planning to sit in bed and stare at the wall and think about whatever the hell just happened to me.

That was weird, right? That was weird.