Cassandra stood silent for a moment, looking at Kai’s face dripping with rain. If he really could do what he said he could, perhaps Kai would be able to help Bard in a way Cassandra couldn’t. And all of that Kai said, about being guided to be somewhere where Bard was—that was all part of that feeling when you have it bad for someone, right? Cassandra had never been in love, but it’s how she imagined it was. She clenched her hands and then released them.

“Look, if I help you, you can’t let Bard know,” she said.

His eyes registered surprise. “You’re going to help me? How?”

Cassandra twisted her mouth. “Simmer down, keen boy,” she said. “I only just decided to do it. I haven’t had time to figure out how yet.”

Kai’s cheeks pinked. “OK. Then how—how will w—”

“I’ll find you,” she said. “In the meantime, lie low. None of this feelings rubbish, all right? If Bard thinks you’re following him about—well, honestly, knowing him, he’d probably secretly enjoy the intrigue of it, even though it would scare him off, too. It’s the kind of thing he writes songs about.”

Kai’s expression lit up. “Bard writes songs?”

“Hm? Yes, I told you—he wants to be a star. But—”

“Does he play them anywhere? Or has he recorded them? Does he—”

“Mary and Joseph, Kai!” Cassandra exclaimed. “Focus! How you can be this far gone over my brother already, I can’t fathom. Anyway, best to keep a distance, all right?” She hoisted her school satchel higher on her shoulder. “Right. It’s going start pissing down soon. I need to catch the bus. Remember what I said.”

Cassandra quite liked that last sentence, she thought as she trotted back across the street. Something a spy might say to an informant after a clandestine—

She heard ploshing footsteps behind her. Kai was following her.

“Oy, what are you doing?” she said, turning.

He bit his lip. “Uh, it’s just that —“

“What?”

“I take the same bus.”

Cassandra sighed and they walked together to the stop. 

“I’ve been trying to avoid you, you know,” Kai said as they closed their umbrellas and boarded the bus. “But then Uncle Jude sent me out to get this weird milk—goat milk? And that’s the closest shop that has it. A Pakistani family owns it, really nice people. So you see?”

She sat down. Nothing worse than a damp bus seat. The air inside was heavy, humid, too warm after being in the chilly rain. 

“See what?” she said.

Kai set down the sodden grocery bag and sat across the aisle from her, his feet tucked under the seat, knees pointed down and angled toward her. He folded his hands and rested them on his thigh. 

“Even if I try to avoid something, the universe has a way of making it happen if it’s supposed to happen,” he said. He squeezed his own hands as he spoke and bounced them against his leg.

Cassandra quickly averted her eyes from his hands back up at his face, but that was no good either. Here was, really and truly, a boy seemed made to twine his way around her ridiculous brother’s heart. But he could probably break it just as easily, even if he didn’t mean to. He was like an overgrown puppy with big paws that knocked people down and a wagging tail that swept things off the coffee table.

“So, what, all this is your destiny or something? Meeting me, meeting Bard, then... what?”

He shrugged and rain that had fallen on his hair dripped down his neck into the collar of his shirt.

“I can’t predict the future, only sense the present. Maybe someday, if I learn how to really see my thoughts, my uncle says, but….” He stopped talking, seeing her expression.

Cassandra sat back into her seat with a sigh. “Well, whatever it was that made you go to the cemetery and your uncle need goat milk should have made you keep your silly trap bloody shut when you asked Bard to write about you.”

He looked struck for a moment and then laughed, a little huff in his throat as he tucked in his chin in and scrunched up his whole face.

“If only it kept me from screwing up,” he said. “But then I wouldn’t be in Milton at all, and I wouldn’t have met you, and then I wouldn’t have met Bard, so maybe I have to screw up for things to work out.”

“They still haven’t worked out,” Cassandra said, looking at him curiously.

He nodded slowly and rubbed his palms against his thighs. “They will. Now that I have you helping me.”

His belief was something Cassandra had never seen in anyone before, not even at church, where everyone just seemed to be going through the motions of the Mass without ever penetrating into the invisible realm that Kai was so sure of. She studied his profile, the dark, damp hair hanging over the angular shape of his brow. Bard had probably studied him like this, when they were talking that night at New World. She had seen them, speaking as if sharing secrets, sitting close each other at the bar. And she had been happy for her brother, so happy. Now—she almost felt the pain of betrayal and loneliness along with him, even if he was wrong about what was hurting him.

Maybe what Kai was saying made sense. But then she shook that thought off. She glanced at him. There were still a few minutes before her stop, and it would be too awkward to sit here in silence the whole time.

So she asked, “What is your uncle doing with it?”

Kai looked at her questioningly.

“What is your uncle using the goat milk for? Dare I ask?”

“He’s going to make cheese,” Kai said.

“Oh. Was he the one who taught you to play guitar, then? Was he one of those protest singers in the sixties, like, what’s-his-name, Bob Dylan?”

Kai chuckled. “Not quite like Bob Dylan, but yeah. I taught myself to play—it just kinda seemed to come naturally to me—but Uncle Jude studied classical guitar and ukulele, so he’s helping me improve my technique.”

“It must be nice to have someone like that,” Cassandra said. “Who understands what you like, helps you get better at it.”

Kai looked at her as if realizing this for the first time. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

“Bard and I both like books, reading, that kind of thing—but what he does with his songs, he’s alone. Like an island.”

“Oh, I know that one,” Kai said, grinning. “No man is an island, right?”

“John Donne, very impressive.”

He shrugged again and laughed self-consciously. “I don’t know what it’s from.”

Cassandra imagined Kai and Bard together, Kai looking over Bard’s shoulder as he read, Bard talking about literary allusions. It would be so nice to see him like that. Happy. How could she want so much for another person?

Across the aisle, Kai’s eyes had grown soft and reflected the dull light coming through the rain-spattered windows. “That would be nice,” he said.

Cassandra started, and then a shiver ran through her limbs, tingled at the base of her skull, and she sucked in her breath. “Don’t do that. It’s no wonder Bard ran from you if you did that to him.”

“Sorry,” Kai said, dropping his gaze. “I can’t help it.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Learn to help it.”

He nodded, licked his lips. “Sorry,” he said again.

“Oh, next stop is mine,” Cass said, pulling the cord. “Like I said, I’ll be in touch.” She gave him a wobbly smile, as if to reassure him that he hadn’t scared her away. She was Miss Cassandra Eugenie Fitzfox, and she was indomitable. The bus stopped. 

“Well.... Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee and all that,” she said, standing and giving a little wave.

She wondered what Kai was thinking as she stepped off the bus. Looking up, she saw his dark-featured face in the window, distorted by the rain. He raised his hand at her, palm out.