“Ready?” Mom asks, emerging from her bedroom fully dressed.

“Yep.” I grab my backpack off the stairs and sling it over my shoulder. “Do you think you can pick me up after, too?”

Mom looks at me with that Mom look. “Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”

“I’m sure,” I say.

I’m just doing whatever it takes to make sure we both go home at the end of the quarter.

I avoid Tru at lunch by staying in the cafeteria with the underclassmen, but I can’t avoid him all day. We have senior seminar together fourth period.

I contemplate playing sick, going to the nurse’s office and pleading cramps or stomach flu, but I figure missing class for any reason won’t go over well with Mom right now.

Instead, I wait until the bell is about to ring before entering the classroom.

Turns out, all that stress was for nothing because Tru isn’t even there. I take the seat closest to the door and let out a huge sigh of relief as the bell rings and there’s no sign of him.

Until the door opens.

“Sorry, Oliver,” Tru says. “Grandig wanted to see me after class.”

Oliver waves him off and starts talking about the various results of the personality tests. I tune him out as Tru sits next to me. All I can think about is how close he is and how much I hate having to avoid him.

How much I want to let him make me smile and laugh like always. And how much I can’t afford to.

“Hey, I missed you at lunch,” Tru whispers in my ear.

I knew this was coming. “Yeah, I had to look up some stuff in the library for my modern lit paper.”

“My condolences,” he teases. “Oh, hey, I’m parked in the front row today. First-class all the way.”

“Actually,” I say, feeling awful about pushing him away but knowing that I have to do it, “Mom still wants to play chauffeur for a while.”

“Bummer,” Tru says with a pout. “How long do you think the paranoia will last?”

I force a shrug. “No clue. I can never tell with her moods.”

I busy myself with doodling on my tablet. Trying not to react to every movement he makes.

“Hey,” he says, leaning even closer—so close I can feel the heat of his breath brush against my cheek. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

He hesitates for a second. “Are we okay?”

“Of course,” I say. And I hope the lie sounds more believable to him.

He leans back in his chair and actually pays attention to Oliver for once. Has he realized that I’m putting distance between us? Or is he just interested in the test results?

I don’t know and, really, I shouldn’t care.

Whenever Tru couldn’t figure something out, his hands itched. Which probably explained why he always broke out in hives in math class.

Tonight his palms they felt like they were on fire.

Rather than scratch himself raw, he went for a walk. Slipped quietly down the stairs, through the house, and out the front door.

It was the first night where he felt like the end of summer might actually be in sight. He knew that the heat and humidity were far from over, but he could walk a few steps without breaking into a sweat, and that was progress.

He turned left and started down the sidewalk.

Something had changed with Sloane, and he couldn’t figure out why.

As he leaped over cracks, did flips off the neighbors’ retaining wall, and jumped up to grab low-hanging branches, he mentally ran through the film from the last couple of days.

He’d thought they were making progress. They had shared secrets. He had told her things he’d never told anyone. She was the first person, besides his mother, who ever knew what went on between him and his dad.

Telling her had been…terrifying. But also liberating.

He hadn’t been lying when he said just telling her helped. It felt like a lead weight the size of an aircraft carrier had been lifted from his chest. He could breathe again.

When he’d convinced her to skip school yesterday for lunch at Abbey Road, he’d wanted more of that feeling. More breathing. More sharing. More everything.

But ever since then, she’d been different. Absent. She hadn’t been in their usual spot at lunch today. She’d been riding to and from NextGen with her mom. And he hadn’t seen her once between classes, despite waiting at her locker long past the tardy bell several times.

Something had definitely changed, and he didn’t think it was all her mom’s idea.

When he circled back around the block, he stopped in the shadows of the trees in front of her house. There was only one way to find out for sure.

He vaulted over her fence and made for the rain gutter in the corner of the house.

The ceilings of suburbia are so boring. Not a crack or a watermark in sight. And I should know. I’ve been lying on my bed, staring up at mine for the last hour and a half, trying to fall asleep. I finally give up, roll over, and grab my tablet off my nightstand. If I can’t sleep, I can at least get some Graphic Grrl sketches done. I’m still two cells from finishing this week’s strip and it’s already Friday night.

I’ve just finished the first one when I hear a scraping noise on the roof outside my window. A few seconds later, there is a familiar tap-tap-tap on the glass.

I’m out of bed like a shot and at the window before he can tap again.

I yank it open. “What are you doing here?”

“Are you avoiding me?”

Unlike last time, he actually seems sober. That’s an improvement.

“No,” I lie. “Is that why you’re on my roof?”

He shakes his head. “I think you are,” he says. “I think you’ve worked hard all day to avoid being with me, and I want to know why.”

“Tru, you’re imagining things,” I insist. “I’m not— What are you doing?”

He pushes my window farther open and lifts the blinds that hang halfway down the opening. When he starts to put one leg through, I push him back. Before he can ask questions, I shoo him away, then climb up on the box that acts as my ladder and out onto the roof.

Just to make sure Mom doesn’t overhear, I pull the window shut behind me.

“Sloane, what’s going on?” he asks as he twists around to sit on the roof. “Is this about your mom catching you off campus?”

I squat down next to him and let myself fall back onto my butt. I should have known that just ignoring him wouldn’t make him go away. In fact, it probably only made him want to talk to me more.

With Tru, I need to be direct. I owe him that much.

“We can’t hang out anymore,” I say bluntly.

To his credit, he just blinks and says, “Okay. Why not?”

I tilt my head back, stare up at the starry night sky.

“Yesterday, when my mom almost caught us out for lunch,” I explain, “I realized how close I came to blowing my chances of getting back to New York to finish my senior year at SODA.”

Tru nods, as if he suspected as much.

“You know she doesn’t…” I search for the right word choice. “Approve of you.”

He snorts. “She outright hates me.”

“No,” I argue. “She doesn’t even know you. She only knows what your mom has told her.”

“All good things, I’m sure.”

“I just…” There’s no nice way to say this, so I just have to blurt it out. “If Mom knew I’d been off campus with you, I would never be allowed out of my room.”

“With me?” he murmurs, all humor gone.

I squeeze my eyes shut. “I can’t risk her deciding that my being friends with you is a deal breaker.”

I turn to look at him, but now he’s the one staring off into space.

“I can’t do anything to risk being stuck here,” I say. “Which means I can’t hang out with you.”

For the longest time, he doesn’t move. Doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even breathe for all I can tell.

But finally, after what feels like forever, he nods. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I get it.” He pushes to his feet and says again, “I get it.”

He starts for the edge of the roof. I can’t just let it end like this.