In a city where pretty much nothing cool ever happens, I guess good news flies fast.

“Hudson!” Will shouts from his perch on the kitchen counter and waves me over. I turn back to Dani, but she’s already engrossed in an animated discussion with her photo club friends. I grab a can of orange soda from a cooler on the floor and wander over to Will, hoping he might … I don’t know … explain why he half kissed me on the ice?

“Hudson, you know what you are?” He leans in close. Oh boy—here comes that expensive eau de Harper, trailed by a faint whiff of whatever liquor he’s working on.

“What am I?” I ask playfully, knocking into his shoulder. He wobbles before sitting up straight again, bracing himself against the cupboard behind his head. Honestly. This boy probably doesn’t even remember what happened on the ice tonight, let alone why it happened.

“You,” he whispers, “are truly a secret weapon. A force to be wrecked with.”

“Looks like one of us is a little more wrecked than the other.” Will laughs as I clink his plastic cup with my soda, and Josh smiles at me from the other side of the kitchen, raising an eyebrow when I meet his eyes. “Be right back.”

I cross over to Josh. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself.”

“Did—”

“I—”

“You go.” I nod toward the monstrous speakers in the other room. “I can’t think straight with the music, anyway.”

“I made something for you.” He presses a black USB drive into my hand. I close my fingers around the device and my heartbeat picks up the pace. How is it that such a little thing can hold so much mystery, so much potential? Anything and everything, or nothing at all. Hope or disappointment. Elation or dread.

“There’s some Addicts on there,” he says, “but I found some other stuff I think you’ll like, too.”

“Really?” I so want to say something crazy, like how I can’t wait to go home and listen, memorizing lyrics and dancing with him in my head. But as a general rule, I try to keep my creeper vibe in check, so I slip the drive into my pocket and stay cool. “Awesome. Thanks.”

“Ever hear Undead Wedding’s ‘Freaktown’?” he asks, leaning in closer so we can talk above the noise. “It’s on there.”

“No way! I thought that song was an urban legend. Where did you find it?”

“My cousin has this deejay friend in LA who hooks us up. That song reminds me of Watonka. You’ll see. The part with the paper birds? I always think of those dumb seagulls.”

“I like that Undead Wedding one about the girl in the window.”

“‘Good-bye, Ghost Girl’!” He turns to face me now, inching even closer as the crowd continues to squeeze in behind him. “You know that part near the end, when he’s talking about—”

“The building where they used to live?”

“Totally!” His eyes light up in response, but I keep watching his lips, wondering what it would feel like to kiss them. Soft, I think. Incredible.

“Have you ever—”

“Fifty-six.” Will appears beside us and gives Josh a sloppy punch in the arm. “Abby let you out alone tonight, huh?”

Abby? My insides feel like the soda in my hand, bubbling up and then going flat. I take another sip to hide the shock that’s probably all over my face. There’s no Abby in our class. If he has a girlfriend from another school, why doesn’t he talk about her? Why wasn’t she at the game tonight? And more importantly, why does she exist in the first place?

Josh looks at me a moment longer, then stares into his drink, ears turning red. “Something like that.”

“She here?”

“Not this time.” Josh’s face changes slightly, his jaw muscles tightening for just a second, and then he smiles. “I told you, she doesn’t like you, seventy-seven.”

Will strikes a pose, eyelashes fluttering in mock innocence. “What’s not to like?”

“I can think of at least eight things.” Josh catches my eye and we both smile. “And you know Abby. She’s … particular.”

“I know. Just bustin’ your balls, man. Nice pass tonight.” Will gives Josh a fist-bump and I go at my soda like Dani on corned beef hash. So Will knows Abby? I don’t know Abby. I don’t want to know Abby. Right now I pretty much hate Abby. And I’d love to say as much for the benefit of the group, but that whole anti-creeper code of ethics gets in the way, so I just stand here like a mime and groove to the nineties rap pounding through the house.

“I can’t believe we were so tight out there,” Will says, still a little wobbly.

“They get it on film?” Josh asks. “Maybe we dreamed the whole thing.”

“No dream. We did it. Thanks mostly to this girl right here.” Well I guess we’re just the Musketeers now, because Will throws his arms around us and squeezes tight, and our little threesome gets a whole lot cozier.

“How come you never came around before, Hudson?” Will asks, slurring the last part so it’s more like Hud-shon.

“What do you mean?”

“That day at Baylor’s was the first time we really hung out.”

“Pretty much.” Other than those intimate seven minutes in the closet a few years back, but who’s counting?

“Where did you learn how to skate like that?” Josh asks.

“Yeah, why aren’t you at the Olympics or something?” Will asks, a baffled expression frozen on his face. Or maybe that’s just the alcohol messing with his reflexes. Either way, he and Josh watch me intently, waiting for my final answer. Where’s my phone-a-friend? I finger the cell in my pocket, but there’s no way I can text Dani without looking like a total clown.

“I’m definitely not Olympics material. Just took some lessons when I was a kid.”

“I guess you could teach them now, right?” Josh says.

“It’s not like that. I just …” I shift my soda to the other hand and take another drink, wondering how much Kara told Will about our on-ice history. Wondering if any of the guys know about my once infamous choke-artistry. “I got busy with stuff. Didn’t really have time for training.”

Will cocks his head skeptically and I rush to add more. “My parents split up, so priorities changed.”

“But you’re seriously good,” Josh says. “I don’t know much about figure skating, but whenever I see you at Fillmore … and everything with the team … wow. You’re amazing out there.”

“Thanks.”

“What the hell are you still doing in Watonka?” Will asks.

This makes me laugh, and I take another sip of Orange Crush to hide it. What am I still doing here? Like I’m just waiting around for my scheduled departure, itinerary planned, English-to-French phrase book and first-class ticket to Paris stowed securely in my Louis Vuitton carry-on? S’il vous plaît.

“Me? What about you guys?”

“I’m leaving for sure,” Will says. “Right after grad, I’m out.”

Josh shrugs. “Me too. For real.”

For sure. For real. Everyone talks about leaving here, for sure and for real. My father used to say it, too—way before the divorce, he was talking about bigger cities, better opportunities. Even the old people who sit at the counter at Hurley’s complain about this place, every day dunking bits of bread into black coffee for a thousand years before now and a thousand years after. We’re all gonna leave, right? Today, tomorrow, the next day, one day. Sometimes I imagine the great and final exodus, all of us wrapped in scarves and mittens and puffy coats, piling onto the Erie Atlantic with two suitcases apiece, dousing the place in gasoline and tossing a match, hitting the tracks and never looking back.

But there’s something about Watonka, they say. Something that pulls us back, the electromagnet that holds all the metal in place. It’s the food, they say, or the chicken wings or the sports teams or the people or the way the air over the Skyway smells like Cheerios on account of the old General Mills plant. None of that stuff brought my father back. And what good are all of those bits of nostalgia when your family—the one thing that truly holds you to a place, the one thing that really makes it home over any other dot on the map—crumbles?