Page 1 of Again with Feeling

Chapter 1

“You’re leaving?” I straightened in my seat so fast that my knee jarred the table. “You can’t abandon me!”

“I’m not abandoning you,” Bobby said as he collected his trash.

Up until that moment, it had been a beautiful day. It was June, and the sun was shining. Don’t get me wrong—it wasn’t warm by any stretch of the imagination. But a year into my time in Hastings Rock, I’d finally figured out that jeans and a hoodie werede rigueur(I learned that word from an Ian Fleming novel about a gala!). The sky was a deep blue, empty of clouds, and from where we sat on the pier at our table in the Fishermen’s Market, the glittering, restless waves seemed to go on forever. Mixed in with the smell of the ocean was the delicious fragrance of fried food—people didn’t come to Fishermen’s Market to go on a diet.

“But we’ve got to practice,” I said, looking from Bobby to Fox, then to Millie, then to Indira, and even (God help me) to Keme for backup. “The sandcastle building contest is—”

I cut off because my phone buzzed. The message was from Hugo—most of my messages these days were from Hugo. Ever since we’d reconnected a few weeks before—purely from a professional standpoint—we’d been messaging a lot. About a project, if you need to know. A novel we were planning on coauthoring. Like I said, purely professional.

All his text said wasMidpoint twist: he’s been dead the whole time.

I messaged back,You want to use that one every time.

Because it’s the best possible twist.

The intense silence, more than anything, reminded me where I was, and I was surprised to catch myself grinning.

When I looked up, Bobby asked, in a tone that could have meant anything, “How’s Hugo?”

“Fine, I guess.” There was no reason for my face to feel hot, but it did. “He just had an idea for the book—” I took a breath. “The sandcastle building contest is this weekend, Bobby. That’s the whole point of coming out here today, to practice.”

“Oh,” Bobby said, “I meant to tell you. Kiefer asked me to enter the contest with him.” If you didn’t know Bobby, you would have thought the lack of eye contact was just an accident—that he really was too busy picking up his trash to glance over at me. “That’s okay, right?”

I stared at him, unable to summon words. He still wouldn’t look at me.

“It’ll be fine, Bobby,” Indira said. She looked particularly lovely today, that white lock of witch hair blowing in the wind, wearing a smart jumper and jeans that she insisted she didn’t mind getting sandy.

Fox nodded agreement so enthusiastically that their derby hat almost slid off their head. They’d pinned a little dragon on a spring to the front, and now the dragon wobbled wildly on its perch. “Dash can be on our team.”

Finally, I managed to ask, “Who?”

“Or he can be on OUR TEAM!” Millie said. In her leggings and Hastings Rock sweatshirt, and sitting as close to Keme as she was, it would have been easy to mistake them for the same age—and for a couple. Which, I’m sure, would have made Keme die from happiness.

Right then, though, the boy was scowling at me from inside his ancient hoodie (so old that the Ketling Beach Surf Shop logo had flaked away into near illegibility). He was the only one of us not wearing pants—his board shorts looked as old as his hoodie,and I didn’t have to see his flip-flops to know they were cracked and splitting. He had his long, dark hair up in a bun, which had the disturbing effect of making him look almost like an adult. “No,” he said, giving me a warning look. “He can’t.”

Millie laughed like Keme had made a joke.

“Kiefer,” Bobby said, and now his eyes did come up. His tone suggested he was prompting me. “I’ve told you about him. He’s the guy I’ve been going out with.”

I almost said,Which one?

Fortunately, with the Last Picks around, I didn’t have to.

“Is he the one with the squint?” Fox said.

Indira shook her head. “He’s the one who owns a go-kart.”

“It wasn’t a go-kart,” Millie said. “It was a dune buggy. But I thought Kiefer was the one who had all the tattoos.”

“He has TATTOOS?” My volume verged on Millie levels for a moment.

“He’s an artist,” Keme said.

Bobby gave him a grateful look. “Yeah—”

“Oh,” Fox said, “the one who works on the boardwalk. He does those cute little caricatures.”

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