(song: "Careless Whisper" - Pismo)

"Did you see that crazy meteor shower this morning?" Serena asks me as she flops down onto my living-room couch.

      I sit beside her and hand over a bowl of chips. "Yeah, it was insane. Usually, we get more of a heads-up with that kind of thing, but there wasn't any news about it until a few seconds before it started."

      Right, so in the course of three months, three things happened. Firstly, I asked Kaylee to be my girlfriend and she said yes. Secondly, Serena and I became friends. We have a surprising amount of things in common and borrowing DVDs turned into watching them together, which turned into a tri-weekly horror movie thing. Thirdly, Peter asked Serena out and she agreed, so I guess they're a couple now.

      Serena bounces her leg and stares anxiously at the TV screen. Technically, we've only been hanging out together for three months, but I think I can read her pretty well. We have similar ticks. I'm not sure if that's a good thing.

      "What's up?" I ask her.

      She chews at her lower lip and then groans heavily. "I don't understand why we can't just tell them. It's not like they don't know we watch movies together sometimes."

      "Yeah, sometimes, not three times a week. Kaylee won't understand." I say, and it sounds way more defensive than I mean to. I'm not intentionally trying to carry on secret movie nights with Serena, it just kind of morphed into that.

      Her hands rub against the sides of her neck and she is quiet for almost a full minute. "I don't like it."

      I put a little more distance between her and me on the couch to emphasize my lack of desire for her. "Serena, we aren't doing anything wrong, it's not like I have any kind of interest in you at all."

      "Wow, okay. Right back at you," she sounds a little stung.

      I sigh. "I'm sorry. You know what I mean. We're friends."

      "I know what you mean," she says softly. "Still, maybe the next time we do this movie night thing we should invite Peter and Kaylee."

      "Yeah . . . I mean, definitely. You're right it's just . . ." I want to admit to Serena that Kaylee doesn't actually like to watch any of the things that I do.

      Serena lifts one corner of her mouth into a cute smirk. "I know that look on your face, Logan. You want to say that she doesn't have the same interests as you."

      I'm amazed by her powers of deduction.

      "Am I that transparent?" I ask.

      She releases a laugh and shoves me playfully. "No, I just can relate to your situation. I don't have a lot in common with Kaylee either, but we're still friends. Kaylee is a good person a good friend and a great girlfriend. So suck it up and watch a rom-com with her once in a while, okay?"

      I nod. Serena has a way of making every solution seem so simple. "Okay, I'm going to try and bend a little for her."

      "Because you love her, right?" Her eyebrows raise up to gauge how quickly I respond to her question.

      "Yes," I blurt out. "Obviously."

      "Really now?" Her eyes thin out to dramatically accuse me. "Then why haven't you told her yet?"

      "I'm . . . working up to it," I say, but it isn't the truth. Kaylee confessed her love the third week of dating me. Every time I thought I could say it back to her I felt a crippling amount of "what ifs?"

      What if she changes her mind? What if she dumps me? What if we're not supposed to—

      "We start senior year on Monday, Logan." Serena's voice cuts off my thought process. "Not much time left before all four of us are separated. If you love her, don't waste time in telling her."

      "What about Peter?" I turn the tables on her. "Do you love him?"

      "No," she admits with casual honesty. "I like him a lot though, does that count?"

      Her eyes meet mine with a glint of hope in them. She's the only girl I can lock eyes with without feeling the need to look away.

      "I don't know if I'm capable of falling in love, Logan. Liking someone a lot is as good as it gets for me."

      "Why do you think that?" I ask, but don't expect a real answer. We're alike in that way too, there's a lot we'd rather not talk about.

      She smiles gently and reaches forward to grab the remote control from off the coffee table and place it in my hand. "One day I'll tell you. For now, let's watch these teens make stupid decisions while avoiding their almost certain demise."

      "We'd be so much wiser if we were in a dangerous situation."

      "Definitely, we're horror movie gurus."

It feels really weird to be back in school again. Kaylee and I had started dating over the summer and while she posted a few pictures of us together online, a lot of people didn't know we were together. Walking through the hallways Kaylee had to keep reaching for my arm and letting everyone know that she was off-limits now.

      Kaylee leaned against the space beside my locker and played with the ends of her hair. "It's important that everyone sees us together. Gregory and Evan have been bothering me all summer to date them. Maybe this will finally get them to stop."

      "They just can't believe you'd date me and not them," I explain to her while I place my books into my locker.

      Her fingertips draw imaginary lines against my skin and she leans in close to press a kiss against my cheek. I'm still not used to the public displays of affection, it catches me off guard.

      "You aren't like them, Logan. You're. . . deep. I really like that. Your sense of fashion is on the terrible side, but we can work on that."

      I smile at her stupidly because that's how I feel around her. She makes me happy and nervous at the same time, like a roller-coaster ride after eating three hot dogs.

      She links her fingers with mine and we walk together until we reach the classroom. I feel like everyone is watching me. With Kaylee at my side, I become very visible, where I was used to being mostly invisible.

      I take a seat in the very back of the classroom where I usually sit. I like sitting there because of the view I get from the window. I can see the red-brick courthouse my great grandfather built and the quaint little post office where my grandmother used to work. Across the street from that is the park I used to love going to when I was a kid. All of these places are attached to memories for me and above them is the gray sky with an ominous hue to it.

      Peter enters the classroom with his easy-going swagger. He slaps hands with a few guys he's friends with and Cory Kinner reminds him about a party on Friday. I call this side of Peter "Day Peter". Since Peter is popular in school he spends a majority of his social time talking to as many people as he can. In the evening when the day is finished, he'll return back to acknowledging my existence and being my friend Peter, or "Night Peter".

      It never bothered me that he was like that. Many people simply lose their best friend when they slip into different social circles, at least I still had mine.

      Serena walks into the room right after Peter. He reaches for her hand to hold it, and she looks embarrassed about it.

      I'm sure Peter forgot that this is technically her first day in a new school in a new town. She'd told me that her family was actually from the Dominican Republic and when her father became wealthy they moved to Florida where she went to an expensive private school. Though I wasn't clear on the details, somehow she ended up here in Fullerton after her dad lost everything. It was a lot of big changes.

      After a few minutes of Peter introducing Serena to Cory, she slips her hand away from him and retreats to a desk beside Kaylee.

      "Hey, Logan?" Peter stands beside my desk and looks down at me.

      "Everything okay?" I ask because I'm not used to him greeting me with a question mark.

      He leans in like he's about to tell me a secret that he doesn't want anyone else to hear. "Serena told me that you guys watch movies together and stuff. I won't tell Kaylee, but guy-to-guy, if she were watching movies with anyone else I'd be furious."

      "I swear it's totally platonic," I say, and try to diffuse any potential anger. "She's the only person in this town I can really nerd out with."

      Peter waves a relaxed hand to dismiss my nervousness. "I know and I get it. My girlfriend is a pretty bad-ass girl, but still, I'm not comfortable with you guys spending that much time alone together."

      His girlfriend? They'd been dating for two weeks. Were they really official already?

      "You're always welcome to join us. You and Kaylee."

      "Nah, you know I'm not really into the stuff you guys watch. I just want to have more alone time with Serena, and that's really hard to do if she's making plans with you three times a week. Understand?"

      "Loud and clear. No more movie nights."

      I look down at my notebook so Peter can't see how much it bothers me to cancel movie nights. It isn't just about the movies, Serena also gives me great advice for so many things, from how to cook tamales to how to improve things between Kaylee and me. Each suggestion she gave felt like it only made things better. Now I guess we'd resort to communication in direct messages instead. Though that was a common way to talk for our generation, I preferred face-to-face.

      The bell rings.

      Our teacher, Mrs. Gwen Redman, is a woman in her 40's with long black hair braided all the way down to her butt. She always dresses like she's Amish, but she's actually more of a hippy. She tried to herbal remedy away my grandmother's cancer once. It didn't work.

      She makes hand gestures to silence the room. "Alright class, settle down. We have a new student with us today, it's very exciting. We don't get too many new faces in town, so I'm going to ask her to stand up here and introduce herself."

      Serena reluctantly stands up and faces the classroom. She looks so nervous that I can't help feeling bad for her. She isn't the type of person who likes talking about herself and now this teacher was going to expect some serious prodding.

      "My name is Serena Martinez and I moved here from Florida."

      "Any interesting hobbies or places you've seen?" Mrs. Redman pushes.

      "I like swimming and inventing weird new ways to eat thin Oreos," Serena smiles apprehensively.

      "And she's Peter's hot new girlfriend!" Cory shouts out.

      The class all begins to wolf whistle and make various suggestive sounds. Peter doesn't do anything to stop them, in fact, he seems to enjoy the attention that they're receiving for being a couple.

      Just as I open my mouth to say something to get everyone to stop Mrs. Redman returns to her hand gestures. "Okay, that's enough of that—"

      A loud boom resounds throughout the classroom. It's so loud with a blast of bright light. It all happens so fast that none of us have any time to react. The window frames shake for a fraction of a second and then there are glass sharks spraying everywhere. A streak of puffy smoke marks up the skyline and the courthouse my grandfather built has a blast hole the size of a truck through the roof of it.

     Car alarms go off, vehicles twist into ditches, dogs bark, and then everyone starts to scream . . .