“I’d read the fine print on that deal if I were you,” Josh says.

Dani taps my foot under the table. “We were gonna check out that ballerina movie Friday night.”

“We’ll see it over break.” I pop one of Josh’s fries into my mouth. Yum. Boycott of all things French officially over.

“No ladies’ night, then?”

“Hold up,” Amir says. “You guys have ladies’ night?”

Dani shoots me a look. “We used to have them. Then you guys came around and started hijacking all the Fridays.”

“How do I score an invite?”

“I don’t know,” she teases. “We may have a spot opening up soon.”

“I’ll see the movie with you,” Frankie says. “Ballerinas are hot.”

Dani smiles. “You’re on.”

Something buzzes next to my right leg, and Josh digs the phone from his pocket. The caller ID confirms my suspicions: Abby’s cell. Josh sighs and pushes out his chair.

“I’ll catch up with you guys later. Hud, eat the rest of those fries. Seriously. Oh, and let me know what you thought of the music mix.” He wriggles his thumbs in the international sign for “text me later” and ducks out into the windowed hallway that branches off from the cafeteria, taking my fizzy stomach with him.

Who is this Abby girl, and why is she always calling him during school? Doesn’t she have her own classes to go to? Or is she in college? Out of college? Or … oh no! What if she’s some kind of dyed-blond middle-aged cougar ex-stripper nympho with a smoker’s cough who wants to teach him a thing or two about—

“See, this is why I never answer my phone.” Frankie reaches for Josh’s abandoned fries. “It’s like she’s got the boy LoJacked.”

Rowan punches him in the arm. “You don’t answer your phone because no one ever calls your broke fugly ass.”

“It’s better that way, trust me.” Amir nods at Dani and me. “No offense, you two, but females are trouble. Uh, don’t tell Ellie I said that.”

“I don’t know, ninety-nine. Some of them are worth it.” Will stares at me from across the table, Mr. Razzle-Dazzle himself.

“Oh, barf.” Dani piles her lunch scraps onto a spent tray. “I’ll see you guys later. I have to check on some stuff for photo class. Text me about Friday,” she says to Frankie. “You better not stand me up. I’ll LoJack you for real.”

She waves bye and joins one of her photography friends at a nearby table, leaving me alone with the partial wolf pack. The boys trade insults and jokes and food for the rest of the period, but Josh doesn’t return. He’s still on the phone, still pacing the windowed hallway. I can’t hear their conversation, but I watch him through the glass; his face is tight, the lines of his jaw set. He runs a hand over his hair and looks up at the ceiling, as if to ask some unnamed god for intervention.

I look across the room at Dani, but she’s already got me in her sights, totally busting me for spying on Josh. I shrug and give her a half smile, but she turns away, folding herself back into the conversation at her table as if I’m not even here.

Amir is totally right. High school girls, French girls, dye-job cougars, adulteresses from the Puritan days—the lot of us are nothing but trouble.

With the promise of a free cupcake at Hurley’s every Saturday for the rest of the year, I secure permission from Principal Ramirez to hang a few of those cupcake ads around school. After my government class at the end of the day, I stop by my locker for the flyers and the masking tape Mom shoved in my bag this morning.

But before Operation Mortification commences, someone taps my shoulder, and not all that gently, either.

“Hey,” Kara says when I turn around. “We really need to talk.”

Perfect. Apparently, since she ran out of the party after catching me and Will together, she’s miraculously rediscovered her vocal cords. Judging by the crazed look in her eyes, she spent the rest of the weekend prepping for this confrontation.

I loop the roll of tape over my wrist and hug the flyers to my chest. “I’m kind of busy right now, so—”

“I’m serious,” she says. “I wanted to call you this weekend, but I don’t have your cell number anymore, and …” She trails off.

I turn away from her to close my locker, but she beats me to it, hand slamming against the door. Kara’s got me locked down, her arms framing my head, our noses almost touching when I face her again. Some dude in the hallway holds up his cell camera and asks if we’re gonna kiss.

“We need to straighten out a few things about you and Will,” she says, ignoring our audience.

The presumption shakes me out of my stupor. “First of all, there is no ‘me and Will,’” I say with more confidence than I feel. “And last I heard, there was no ‘you and Will,’ either. So remind me why you’re all up in my face?”

“Kiss her!” Someone shouts from the steadily gathering crowd.

She drops her arms and sighs, but doesn’t put any space between us. “I don’t think you realize what you’re—”

“Kara, unless you guys got back together in the last hour, this conversation is over.”

The muscles in her jaw clench, her face turning red and blotchy. I’ve never thought of Kara as a bruiser, but other than Friday night at the concessions stand, we haven’t spoken in three years. What do I know about her anymore? That her best friend bailed on her and never explained or apologized? That a few months later she caught said best friend making out with her soon-to-be boyfriend in the closet at some stupid party? And that three nights ago a near-identical scenario played itself out in Luke’s living room?

Shared history and risk of suspension aside, I know what I’d want to do.

“I have to go.” I look down, unable to meet her eyes again.

“I can’t believe you!” She swipes the flyers from my arms. A snowbank of white papers slips across the hall, lost in the boot-slush undertow of the crowd. “Whatever you think you’re doing with the Wolves, you better forget—”

“I know you didn’t just threaten my best friend.” Dani appears at my side, calm and quiet, steady, her eyebrows raised in defiance as she takes another step toward Kara. “Because I don’t think you’re that kind of girl, so I probably misunderstood you. Right?”

Kara looks from Dani to me and back again, eyes glazed with the same tears gathering in mine. She shakes her head and slinks away, and when the crowd finally scatters, Dani scoops up the cupcake flyers, takes my hand, and leads me to the exit.

Dani passes me a cinnamon-smelling Mocha Morris from Sharon’s Café, the cat-themed coffeehouse near school, and leans against the bench at Bluebird Park. On this cheery, once-a-decade winter anomaly, the sky is the color of sapphires and the entire world is covered in diamond dust, snow sparkling under the rare, white sun. A yellow lab bounds toward us and I lean forward to scratch behind his ears; I have to hold my drink above his head to keep him from slobbering it all up.

“Feel better?” Dani asks.

“A little.” I sip the mocha and let the hot liquid coat my insides. “I don’t know why Kara still gets to me.”

“I don’t know why she’s being such a bitch. No offense, but was she always so … you know.” Dani swipes the air with a cat-claw motion. “Rawr! No wonder you ditched her.”

“It wasn’t like that. I … it was all my fault.” I take a deep, icy breath. There’s something about Bluebird that forces me to tell the truth. Maybe it’s the trees, stripped of their leafy coats, naked and gray as bone. Or the dogs, living only for right now, running when they feel like running, chasing one another when they’re in the mood for company, no thought wasted on drama and cover-ups. Maybe it’s just this place, made sacred by our regular picnic pilgrimages in the summer, a safe haven whose hills I wouldn’t dare pollute with lies and schemes.

I tell Dani the whole story about the Empire Games and the party with me and Will, how Kara liked him first, how I was more excited about finally getting my first kiss than I was about staying behind that unspoken line that best friends—even ex–best friends—are never supposed to cross.