back as I head to the parking lot.

“Hey!” Chris runs to catch me. “What’s your deal, dawg?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t give me that shit,” he yells over the rain. “You’ve been a walking mood for two weeks.”

I open the door to my Jeep and toss my bag into the back. Beth. That’s what happened, but I can’t tell Chris that. I’m ending my losing streak tomorrow when the rain moves out and Beth comes with me to the party.

“Maybe he’ll tell me.” Standing next to

Chris, Lacy looks like a drowned rat with her hair plastered to her face. When the rain began an hour ago, she sought shelter in Chris’s car.

“Take me home, Ryan.”

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The last thing I want is to be trapped in a car with her. “I’m not your boyfriend.”

“No,” she yells as another clap of thunder vibrates in the sky. “You’re my friend.”

Lacy kisses Chris’s cheek and runs to the passenger side. I glance at Chris and he nods.

“She doesn’t want to be mad at you anymore.”

I hop into the Jeep and start it up. In Lacy-like style, she goes to work turning on the heat and switching the radio to her favorite country station before lowering the sound. “Did you and Beth have a fight?”

The windshield wipers whine at a fast rate as I pull out of the parking lot. I wonder what Lacy knows. I didn’t tell anyone that Beth and I went into Louisville. “Is that what she said?”

“No. I finally scored her home number the other week and her uncle told me you guys were out.”

I calculate how this affects the dare. “Did you tell Chris?”

“It’s not my business to tell. Did you take her into Louisville because of the dare?”

“Yes.”

“So the dare’s done. That’s why you’ve been ignoring her?”

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Silence. Why is Lacy making me feel

like a dick? Beth’s the one that screwed me over. She owes me this. “She treats you like crap, Lace. Why do you care?”

Lacy doesn’t live far from the community

ballpark. I ease into her drive and watch the hanging ferns on the front porch blowing in the wind.

“She was my friend.”

“Was! She was…”

Lacy holds both her hands out. “Stop. Listen to me. I’m not you. I’ve never been you. You walk into any situation and it’s automatically perfect. I’m not perfect. I never have been.”

What is she talking about? If Lace only

knew how broken my family is; how since

Mark left we’re slowing dying. “I’m not

perfect.”

“Will you shut up?! God, I can’t get you

guys to say crap half the time and then anytime I try to actually SAY something worth saying, one of you interrupts me. So shut up!”

I gesture with my hand for her to continue.

“No one liked me, Ryan. Daddy moved us to Groveton when I was four and I knew then

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playdate and put me in preschool and no

matter what, I was considered the outsider. I’m not you. I’m not Logan. I’m not Chris. I can’t trace my roots to the founding fathers. I can’t eat Sunday chicken with my grandma after

church because she doesn’t live on the next property over, but three states away.”

I rub the back of my head, unsure if I should speak and if I do, what to say. Lacy never seemed to care what people thought of her.

“We never treated you different.”

She sighs heavily. “Why do you think I’ve hung out with you since sixth grade? Do you think I love baseball that much?”

I chuckle. “Don’t let Chris hear you say you aren’t a diehard fan.”

“I love him,” she says, and I understand that means that she also loves anything he loves.

“Anyway, the whole point is, Beth liked me.

When Gwen was mean to me…”

My mouth opens to protest. She points at me and narrows her eyes. “Don’t say a word. One, I told you to shut up. Two, this is my

monologue and not yours. Three, she’s a bitch.

As I was saying, when Gwen played to her true self and dropped the I’m-pretending-to-be-HC TITLE-AUTHOR

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perfect-so-the-whole-world-will-love-me

act, she made my life hell. I was labeled weird before I entered kindergarten, yet Beth liked me.

“When Gwen made me cry, Beth held my

hand and told me that she loved me. When

Gwen’s friends told me I couldn’t play on the swings, Beth pushed them off and told me the swings were mine. Beth taught me what it

meant to have friends. I don’t know what the hell happened to her between third grade and now, but I owe her. Here’s the thing—I love you and I love her, but I swear to God I’ll kick your ass if you hurt her.”

Lacy has thrown out too much to process, so I focus on what I know. “You’ll kick my ass?”

She cracks a smile. “Okay, maybe not, but I will be pissed off and I don’t like being pissed off at you.”

I don’t like her being pissed off at me either.

“She’s coming with me to the party.”

Disappointment clouds her face. “Dare or

date?”

“Dare.” I don’t lie to friends. “But Beth knows it.”

“If she knows, doesn’t that break the rules?”

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I shrug. “We don’t have a rule book.”

The porch light flips on and the front door opens. Through the pouring rain, I barely see Lacy’s mom. I wave at her. A second later, she waves back.

“She thinks all Chris and I do is make out in cars.” Lacy’s hand flutters away any further discussion about her and Chris making out in cars, which is fine by me.

I’d rather think about Beth. Who is she? The girl Lacy swears is a true friend? The girl with blond hair who loved ribbons and fancy

dresses? The girl who crawls underneath my skin and stays? The girl strong enough to tell me what she really thinks of me? The girl who looks so small and defenseless at times that I wonder if she can survive in the world on her own? Lacy may hate me for these words, but they have to be said. “Maybe Beth isn’t who you think she is.”

“Funny,” Lacy says. “I was about to say the same thing to you.”

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Beth

RYAN SWITCHES GEARS when the pavement

ends and the Jeep’s wheels hit gravel. The wind whips my hair into my face and neck, stinging me like the tiny tentacles of a jellyfish.

He turns on the headlights when the sun sets lower in the west, causing the woods

surrounding us to fall into shadows.

Besides the forced happy hellos we

exchanged under my aunt’s watchful eye, Ryan and I have said nothing to each other since he picked me up. The things he uttered to me two weeks ago still hurt—I was nothing more than a dare.

The offers of friendship, the smiles, the nice words—all games. Deep down I always knew

it, but part of me hoped for more. I allowed hope. Stupid Beth making another stupid

mistake. Story of my life.

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“You know, it’s rude to text while you’re out with someone else.” Ryan rests one hand on top of the steering wheel and leans cockily toward the door. “Especially when I saved you.”

I ignore Ryan and stare at my cell. Owing him, I agreed to spend one hour with him at the party. I never agreed to conversation.

The constant dipping and bobbing in his

Jeep makes reading Isaiah’s texts nearly

impossible. It’s the first time I’ve had the courage to open them. Every message says the same thing: I’m sorry.

So am I. I’m sorry I trusted him. I’m sorry he betrayed me. I’m sorry I thought I could read his texts without my heart throbbing as if a swarm of bees attacked it. I want the

heaviness to go away. I want the hurt to go away. How can I forgive him for telling Ryan my secret? How can I forgive him for forcing me to leave my mom?

And even worse, how can I talk to him now that I know he loves me and I know, beyond words, that I don’t feel the same way? My throat tightens. Isaiah’s my safe. He always has been. He’s that place where I fall when the HC TITLE-AUTHOR