Stunned, I gaped back at him. He speaks! Josh actually broke the seal of silence and spoke words to me? I must have loosened something when I smacked into him.

“Um … your … um, n-necklace?”

My fingers touched the key that hung around my neck.

“Yes! The um, k-key? Oh, um, y-yes, what’s it … um … t-t-to?”

It was hard to believe this was the same guy who wrote witty IM repartee with me under the egotistical yet well-earned pseudonym King-O-Ding.

Before I could answer, Kori was suddenly standing in front of me. “Yeah, Serena. What is the key to?” I jerked at the sound of her throaty voice, bolting to my feet as if Josh and I had been doing something illicit in the grass.

If anyone had something to hide, it was her, I thought watching Parker Walsh’s blue Mazda peel out. Parker Walsh, whose crowning achievement is coming up with 360 different ways to smoke a bowl, was the last person I wanted to see her catching a ride—of any kind—with.

Kori circled behind me and tucked her chin onto my shoulder. “Is it the key to your heart?” she asked in a husky whisper—like she was the one in love.

Poor Josh’s cheeks turned all blotchy like raw sausage, an interesting complement to his pork chop sideburns.

Even though his crush annoys the hell out of me, I wasn’t at all cool with Kori embarrassing him. Probably because I felt guilty about knocking him down. I tried to deflect the embarrassment of crushdom with an evil cackle: “Muuaaahh. It’s the key to the gates of hell.”

Kori lifted her chin off my shoulder and mimicked my evil tone. “It’s the key to the crypt.”

“It’s the key to my cage.” I liked that; a puppy kenneled while the master was away.

Josh was too busy staring at the point where my bare thighs emerged out of my plaid kilt mini to come up with anything of his own, but managed to make a strange sound I hoped was laughter.

Luckily Kori didn’t capitalize on it but instead exclaimed, rather loudly, “The key to success!”

“Yeah! There are ten of them!” It was kind of an inside joke.