I’d traveled the seven-minute ride to Izzy’s house hundreds of times, the curves and dips in the roads connecting us as natural to me as the freckles dotting the backs of my hands and the blue veins running along my pale wrists. That morning was no different, and I found myself pulling into her driveway before I’d consciously recognized that I’d even turned onto her street. My sweaty palms slid along the gear stick as I shifted into park and stared out over the towering three-story stone house, the thick white pillars lining the porch like a row of royal guards.

I will not cry, I will not cry, I repeated silently, looping in sync with each step along the brick sidewalk that carved through the deep green of her perfectly manicured lawn. The strong scent of boxwood and chrysanthemum, usually so fresh and welcoming, gagged me as I stepped up on the porch and banged the brass knocker against the front door.

“Coming!” I heard Izzy’s voice call out, followed by the stamping of hurried feet down the front stairs that led into their foyer.

The door swung open, and Izzy nearly barreled into me before looking up, an expression of total shock flooding across her face as she registered whom she was seeing.

“I didn’t think it was you,” she said in explanation, her hard eyes staring directly into my own. “I was expecting someone else.”

“We need to talk. Can I come in?”

“Now isn’t a good time. I have a hockey tournament today, and my ride will be here any minute. That’s why I answered the door. That’s the only reason I opened the door.”

“Fine,” I said, wedging my foot against the door’s lower hinge. “Then we’ll talk on the porch.”

She looked surprised, maybe even a little impressed, by my defiance. “Fine then. You have a few minutes. Talk.”

“I know that you’re telling people, Isabelle. I know that you’re telling them everything, that I’m pregnant, that I’m claiming to be a virgin, that it’s the reason that Nate and I broke up. I knew that you were angry with me and that you might never trust me or want to be my friend again. I’d come to terms with that, or at least done the best I could to ignore it most of the time, because, really, what else could I do? Beg for forgiveness? But I never, not in a thousand years, would have expected you to betray me like this. It’s so low, Izzy. So despicably, disgustingly low.” I could have stopped there—should have stopped there—but the more I let go of everything that had been bottled up inside me, the more invincible and the more justified I felt.

“You’ve always been jealous of me—admit it. My family, my grades, my boyfriend, my life—all of it. And the first time something happens that makes you feel better than me, what do you do? You throw me in the trash and make sure that everyone else in Green Hill knows it, too. You make me sick, Izzy. Sick. I can’t believe it took me this many years of friendship to see you for who you really are—a sad, desperate, pathetic little girl who’s so lost in herself that she can’t honestly give a damn about anyone else in her life. I don’t need that. I don’t need you.”

I’d been looking straight at her the whole time I’d talked, but I was so high on my words that I’d barely noticed her reaction until I’d finished, my monologue neatly wrapped and tied up with a bow.

Izzy’s usually golden, rosy complexion was so milky white that it was nearly translucent, drained of all expression. Her eyes were open, but they might as well have been closed for all they were holding back from me, like a filmy veil had been pulled down to protect her from the world outside. To protect her from me.

“Izzy?” I stepped back, pulling my foot away from the door. I wanted to undo it all, every last word. I wanted to start the whole conversation over—tell her what I’d heard, ask her for an explanation. My hands tingled to reach out and wrap themselves around her, but I held back.

“I never told anyone, Mina. Not a single person, not even my parents.” Her lips were moving, but her face was still stiff and bare. “I would never have done that to you. Never. I would never have disrespected our history together, and I would never have just stopped caring about you.”

A light flush was slowly starting to circle her cheeks, and her pupils seemed to focus and sharpen in the dim light of the porch. I was relieved—an angry Izzy I could understand, I could face. “Do you think this has been easy on me? Going through my senior year without my two best friends? I mean, seriously, how insensitive and clueless are you?” She laughed, a cruel, unfamiliar sound. “And you think I’m the one who’s lost in herself . . . Priceless, Mina. Priceless. This conversation is over. Please be off my porch by the time my ride gets here.”

She slammed the door, and I stumbled back, almost tripping down the first step before I turned and ran to my car. The drive back to my house was even more of a blur than my trip there—I was lucky that some subconscious part of my brain managed to navigate stop signs and turns and passing cars, flashes of shiny metallic reds and blues that streaked past my windows.

As I parked in our driveway, I saw my dad puttering in the flowerbeds in front of the house. I fixed my eyes on the stone path as I walked up to the porch, refusing to give him any kind of acknowledgment. I was vulnerable enough as it was without adding his rejection on top.

“Mina,” he called out.

I nearly tripped over a loose stone as I froze midstep, completely knocked off balance by his greeting. I kept my head down, waiting for his next move.

“Mina,” he said again, more quietly, as he wiped his hands against his mud-and-paint-splattered work jeans. “I hope everything went okay with Izzy. Your mom . . . She told me after you left that you girls haven’t been talking. I didn’t realize.”

I jammed my hands into my pockets, biting back any of the bitter words that had raced to the tip of my tongue in response. He was trying, and I could, too. “Yeah, she’s, uh . . . She’s had a tough time wrapping her head around this. I can’t say I completely blame her. And I guess I can’t say I completely blame you, either.” I let it all out in one breath before I could convince myself to keep it in.

He was silent for a moment, probably because our dialogue had gotten so rusty and out of shape from disuse. “I see,” he said, nodding, as if each word was a weight lifted, a gasp for air. “I see. Well, I hope things are better after your talk. She’ll come around. Give her time.”

Does that mean you’ll come around, too? I wanted to ask. But I didn’t, because maybe this conversation was already enough of an answer.

“Thanks,” I said. “I hope so, too.”

We gave awkward nods to each other then, and I started toward the house, still in a confused daze. This morning I was invisible to him, and now he was consoling me. Step backward, step forward. But I was glad to be stepping, period, after standing still for so long.

My mom was sitting in the kitchen exactly as I’d left her, a half-full mug of what I was certain was lukewarm coffee still clutched in her hand, staring down at the newspaper.

“Mom?” I said, stepping so close, I was just inches from where she sat.

She jumped in her chair as she finally looked up, startled, and a small splash of coffee ran down the side of her mug and dripped onto the table.

“Goodness, sweetie, way to give me a scare. I didn’t even hear you come in,” she said, dabbing at the spill with a napkin. She shook herself, and the fear seemed to leak away, replaced with a concern that lined the crinkles of her eyes. “Do you want to tell me about what’s going on with Izzy?”

I nodded and slid into the chair across from her, resting my forehead on the smooth, cool wood of the tabletop. “People know, Mom.” The words felt sour as they slipped through my lips. I wanted to spit them out, fling them as far away from me as possible. “People know.”