‘You’re late!’ Connor said, a little too loudly.
‘Sorry. I got caught up in the bookshop,’ I said.
I’d gone to the bookshop to get away from Amy and Megan. Dress shopping had been horrible. It wasn’t the dresses themselves or the fact it took Amy nearly three hours to choose one. It was Megan.
First, she’d refused to buy a dress because she didn’t want to waste money on one if she didn’t have a date. Then she’d confessed that the person she really wanted to go with was Connor. Finally, she decided she was going to ask him and wanted all sorts of advice from me. Did he prefer long dresses or short? Hair up or down? What was his favourite colour?
‘I didn’t want to say before,’ she’d told me. ‘Not when there was a chance that you might go with him.’
I couldn’t tell her. She was smiling and trying on dresses and Amy was encouraging her. And all the time I knew that I’d promised Ryan I would go with Connor.
I ordered a Coke. Connor swigged from his bottle again and then burped. Amy, Matt and Megan were also halfway through their large bottles of Kingfisher beer, but Ryan’s was untouched.
‘How was your day?’ I asked Connor.
‘Awesome,’ he said, pausing to burp again. ‘Stellar Optics had sold out of the telescope I wanted, but I bought an Xbox instead. And Matt and Ryan both bought me a game for it. And guess what?’ Connor lowered his voice to a stage whisper. ‘Ryan has fake ID. He bought us beers.’
‘That sounds great,’ I said, catching Ryan’s eye.
The flicker of a smile crossed his face.
‘So what did you buy?’ Connor asked. ‘Megan and Amy already showed us their dresses and stuff.’
‘I bought a dress and a couple of other things,’ I said.
Connor swigged his beer and eyed me thoughtfully. ‘Why did you buy a dress?’
‘For the ball.’
‘You said you weren’t going.’
‘And you told me I would regret it for the rest of my life. Miranda said the same thing this morning. So I changed my mind.’
Connor drained his beer. ‘Who are you going with?’
‘I don’t know.’
There was a silence around the table. I could feel everyone looking at me.
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Connor. ‘I’m not taking you. I already have a date.’
‘You do?’
Connor beamed across the table at Megan. ‘I’m going with Megan.’
I looked at Megan. She gave me a tiny, uncertain smile.
‘That’s great,’ I said brightly.
Connor was still beaming at her.
‘Ryan,’ said Matt. ‘You’re gonna have to go to the ball, mate. Eden has a dress and no Prince Charming.’
‘I don’t need a pity date, thanks,’ I said.
Ryan smiled at me. ‘So how about it, Eden,’ he said. ‘Will you go to the ball with me?’
Everyone fell silent again.
‘OK,’ I said.
Ryan grinned. ‘Control your enthusiasm, Eden. Or I might start to think you have a crush on me.’
Connor banged his empty bottle on the table just a little too heavily. ‘Perfect,’ he said.
Ryan drove me home that evening. Connor was too nauseous to notice what anyone else was doing. Matt had promised to take him around the block a few times to walk it off.
‘That was a successful day’s work.’
Ryan nodded. ‘I wish I could have enlisted your help earlier.’
‘You should have. But you didn’t trust me.’
‘It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you. It’s forbidden by the Temporal Laws for me to tell anyone. You shouldn’t know any of this.’
‘S’pose not.’
He glanced at me. ‘I do trust you, Eden. I’ve told you lots of things I shouldn’t have.’
‘Not really. You just confirmed things I’d figured out for myself. You don’t trust me enough to tell me something you don’t have to.’
He sighed and shifted down to take the sharp bend in the road above Lucky Cove.
‘I owe you,’ he said. ‘Not only have we successfully prevented Connor from buying a telescope, but we have him going to the ball with Megan. Now I know where he’ll be the night of the twenty-third. If there’s anything I can do for you . . .’
‘You already have,’ I said. ‘You’re taking me to the ball. One minute I didn’t have a date, the next minute you stepped in and saved the day. My hero.’
My tone was much more sarcastic than I’d intended. But my feelings were such a jumble – I was both thrilled and mortified by the turn of events – that I had no idea how to express myself.
Ryan glanced at me. ‘I hope you don’t mind. It was a bit awkward. I felt that I had to ask you.’
I ignored the slight contraction of my heart and shrugged. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t hold you to it. Although I have to admit, I was rather looking forward to going to the ball with some freak from the future.’
Ryan whistled through his teeth. ‘I do understand if the whole time travel thing is too weird for you.’
‘It has nothing to do with that,’ I said. ‘Strangely enough, I’ve got used to the whole idea. And it is weird, but not too weird, not like it would be if you turned out to be an alien or something.’
‘So that would be too weird,’ Ryan said slowly, looking sidelong at me through his long dark lashes.
‘Ryan?’
He slowed down as we approached the street next to my house. ‘How would you define “alien”?’
I backed up against the car door, not exactly scared, but definitely anxious. ‘You have got to be kidding me.’
‘Don’t panic,’ he said with a grin. ‘I’m human. Completely human.’
‘So what are you saying?’
He pulled the car to the kerb and switched off the engine. ‘I wasn’t born on Earth. I was born on Eden. Which means I’m technically an alien. But both my parents were born on Earth. I’m as human as you are.’
I looked at him carefully, wondering if he was holding back information he ought to be sharing. ‘So you don’t have two hearts or a tail?’
He shook his head. ‘Unfortunately not. No special powers. Just a regular human with a regular human body. I could take off my clothes and show you if you want.’
‘Don’t ask me again,’ I said, reaching for the door handle. ‘I might not be able to answer responsibly.’
Ryan insisted on walking me the thirty-second walk between his car and my house. The air was cold and the sky clear and brightly starlit.
‘Seriously,’ he said. ‘You were a big help today. I wish I could repay you in some way.’
‘You can,’ I said, stopping.
‘How?’
‘By trusting me.’
‘I do trust you.’ He ran his hand through his hair and gazed up at the sky. ‘Do you remember any of the constellations I showed you after Amy’s party?’
I stopped and craned my neck skyward. ‘That’s Cassiopeia,’ I said, pointing at the w-shaped constellation high in the sky.
‘You remember.’
‘Of course I remember.’ I searched the sky for Orion.
‘It’s the wrong time of year for Orion,’ he said. ‘Winter is the best season. But now I’m going to show you another constellation.’
He turned me towards a different section of the sky and held out my hand as a pointer. High in the sky, he traced the shape of a letter ‘y’.
