“The whole summer we’d been close, and I knew how young she was, but … then there she was—coming on to me. I think we both were so messed up.” He dropped his eyes, unable to look at me as he said the rest. “We understood each other; we were friends. I should’ve realized, known what she was thinking. But by the time I understood, it was too late. It just really freaked me out. I’d crossed a line.”

“What do you mean—you crossed a line?”

“The guy who attacked Kori didn’t just get all handsy; he really did a number on her. It scared her pretty bad that another person could have that much power over her. She couldn’t let something like that ever happen to her again. So she decided to never give someone else the chance. When she was with me, it wasn’t because she was ready or even because she wanted to. She felt she had to do it to protect herself.” He shoved his hands through his hair, still upset at himself. “God … I’d like to think I wouldn’t have gone there with her if I’d known her reasoning. But, fuck, I was a just a punk kid.”

His eyes darted to mine. Sadness obscured their denim color. His jaw had this odd, wired-shut look to it, and I wanted to reach out and run my fingers along its strong edge. But he seemed so distant, so remote. When I looked into his eyes, I couldn’t feel that lightning anymore. And I knew that on some level, I’d imagined it all along. He wasn’t here for me, he was here for Kori.

“Before, when you said you were here because of me, because of fate … I don’t understand.”

Shay stood up. “Serena, Kori didn’t want to meet me at the motel in Golden for sex.”

I took a steadying breath. The barn’s dark interior shadowed his eyes, but there was pain there. At least they didn’t look like walls this time.

“I think one day very soon, you’re going to ask me to take you there too.”

twenty-eight

Okay,” Doc said after the bell rang. “It’s been one month since we tried to tempt fate. Raise your hand if one of the things on your list has happened.”

I looked around the classroom and every hand was raised.

“Two things?”

Almost everybody still had their hand up.

“So can anybody explain it? No? Well, let’s see what some of the great thinkers of our time say on the subject, shall we?”

Doc began writing quotes on the dry erase board. When he was finished he had no more white board and everything from It is choice, not chance, that determines your destiny to some long diatribe about seafarers and stars.