Conrad and I spent the rest of that day together but not together. He started a fire, and then he read at the kitchen table while I watched It’s a Wonderful Life. For lunch, we had canned tomato soup and the rest of my chocolate-covered pretzels. Then he went for a run on the beach and I settled in for Casablanca. I was wiping tears from the corners of my eyes with my T-shirt sleeve when he came back. “This movie makes my heart hurt,” I croaked.

Taking off his fleece, Conrad said, “Why? It had a happy ending. She was better off with Laszlo.”

I looked at him in surprise. “You’ve seen Casablanca?”

“Of course. It’s a classic.”

“Well, obviously you weren’t paying that close of attention, because Rick and Ilsa are meant for each other.”

Conrad snorted. “Their little love story is nothing compared to the work Laszlo is doing for the Resistance.”

Blowing my nose with a napkin, I said, “For a young guy, you’re way too cynical.”

He rolled his eyes. “And for a supposedly grown girl, you’re way too emotional.” He headed for the stairs.

“Robot!” I yelled at his back. “Tin man!”

I heard him laughing as he closed the bathroom door.

The next morning, Conrad was gone. He left just like I thought he’d leave. No good-bye, no nothing. Just gone, like a ghost. Conrad, the Ghost of Christmas Past.

Jeremiah called me when I was on the way back home from Cousins. He asked what I was doing, and I told him I was driving home, but I didn’t tell him where I was driving from. It was a split-second decision. At the time I didn’t know why I lied. I just knew I didn’t want him to know.

I decided Conrad was right after all. Ilsa was meant to be with Laszlo. That was the way it was always supposed to end. Rick was nothing but a tiny piece of her past, a piece that she would always treasure, but that was all, because history is just that. History.

Chapter Nine

After I left Anika’s room, I turned on my phone. There were texts and e-mails from Jeremiah, and they kept coming. I got under my covers and read them all, each and every one.

Then I reread them, and when I was done, I finally wrote him back and said, Give me some space. He wrote OK, and that was the last text I got from him that day. I still kept checking my phone to see if there was anything from him, and when there wasn’t, I was disappointed, even though I knew I didn’t have a right to be. I wanted him to leave me alone, and I wanted him to keep trying to fix things. But if I didn’t know what I wanted, how could he possibly?

I stayed in my room, packing up. I was hungry, and I still had meals left on my meal card, but I was afraid I might run into Lacie on campus. Or worse, Jeremiah.

Still, it was good to have something to do and, to be able to turn the music on loud without having to hear my roommate Jillian complain.

When I couldn’t take the hunger anymore, I called Taylor and told her everything. She screamed so loud, I had to hold the phone away from my ear. She came right over with a black bean-burrito and a strawberry-banana smoothie. She kept shaking her head and saying, “That Zeta Phi slut.”

“It wasn’t just her, it was him, too,” I said, between bites of my burrito.

“Oh, I know. Just you wait. I’m gonna drag my nails across his face when I see him. I’ll leave him so scarred, no girl will ever hook up with him again.” She inspected her manicured nails like they were artillery. “When I go to the salon tomorrow, I’m gonna tell Danielle to make them sharp.”

My heart swelled. There are some things only a friend who’s known you your whole life can say, and instantly, I felt a little better. “You don’t have to scar him.”

“But I want to.” She hooked her pinky finger with mine. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. “Better, now that you’re here.”

When I was sucking down the last of my smoothie, Taylor asked me, “Do you think you’ll take him back?”

I was surprised and really relieved not to hear any judgment in her voice. “What would you do?” I asked her.

“It’s up to you.”

“I know, but … would you take him back?”

“Under ordinary circumstances, no. If some guy cheated on me while we were on a break, if he so much as looked at another girl, no. He’d be donzo.” She chewed on her straw. “But Jeremy’s not some guy. You have a history together.”

“What happened to all that talk about scarring him?”

“Don’t get it twisted, I hate him to death right now.

He effed up in a colossal way. But he’ll never be just some guy, not to you. That’s a fact.”

I didn’t say anything. But I knew she was right.

“I could still round up my sorority sisters and go slash his tires tonight.” Taylor bumped my shoulder. “Hmm?

Whaddyathink?”

She was trying to make me laugh. It worked. I laughed for the first time in what felt like a long time.

Chapter Ten

After our fight the summer before senior year, I really thought that Taylor and I would make up fast, the way we always did. I thought it would blow over in a week, tops. Because what were we really even mad about? Sure, we both said some hurtful things—I called her a child, she called me a crappy best friend, but it wasn’t like we’d never had a fight before. Best friends fought.

When I got home from Cousins, I put Taylor’s shoes and her clothes in a bag, ready to take them over to her house as soon as she gave me the signal that we were done being mad at each other. It was always Taylor who gave the signal, the one who initiated making up.

I waited, but it didn’t come. I went to Marcy’s a couple of times, hoping I’d run into her and we’d be forced to talk things out. Those times I was at Marcy’s, she never came. Weeks passed. The summer was almost over.

Jeremiah kept saying the same thing he’d been saying for all of July and most of August. “Don’t worry, you guys will make up. You guys always make up.”

“You don’t get it, this isn’t like before.” I told him.

“She wouldn’t even look at me.”

“All of this over a party,” he said, which pissed me off.

“It’s not over a party.”

“I know, I know—hold on a sec, Bells.” I heard him talking to someone, and then he came back on the phone.

“Our hot wings just got here. Want me to call you back after I eat? I can be quick.”

“No, that’s all right,” I said.

“Don’t be mad.”

I said, “I’m not,” and I wasn’t. Not really. How could he understand what was going on with me and Taylor?

He was a guy. He didn’t get it. He didn’t get how important, how really and truly vital, it was to me that Taylor and I start off our last year of high school together by each other’s side.

So why couldn’t I just call her, then? It was partly pride and partly something else. I was the one who had been pulling away from her this whole time, she was the one who had been holding on. Maybe I thought I was growing past her, maybe it was all for the best.

We’d have to say good-bye next fall, maybe it would be easier this way. Maybe we’d been codependent, maybe we’ll always have summer · 51

more me on her than the other way around, and now I needed to stand on my own feet. This is what I told myself.

When I told this to Jeremiah the next night, he said,

“Just call her.”

I was pretty sure he was just sick of hearing me talk about it, so I said, “Maybe. I’ll think about it.”

The week before school started, the week I usually came back from Cousins, we always went back-to-school shopping together. Always. We’d been doing it since elemen-tary school. She always knew the right kind of jeans to get. We’d go to Bath & Body Works and get those “Buy Three, Get One Free” kind of deals, and then we’d come home and split everything up so we each had a lotion, a body gel, a scrub. We’d be set until Christmas, at least.