up in middle school. We’d planned to do an exact replica of the constellations in the northern hemisphere, but halfway through the Big Dipper we’d just started sticking them up any which way.
“An excellent deduction,” I said, yawning.
It was quiet for a minute, and then Livvie yawned also. “It’s so crazy that we’re juniors. Remember when we were freshmen? The juniors were older than Jake! We’re now older than people who were older than Jake used to be.” We both laughed at how nonsensical the last part of her sentence was.
I thought about freshman year, watching the juniors and seniors stand at the doors to the parking lot, swinging their car keys as they waited to go out to lunch with their friends. They’d seemed so … grown-up. So sure of themselves. I rubbed my forehead as if to remove the image of those confident upperclassmen from my brain and said, “I feel like people are going to expect us to know things we don’t actually know.”
“Yes!” There was the rustle of the sheet as Livvie rolled over. In the faint light coming under the door, I saw that she’d propped herself up on her arm and was facing me. “Driving! SATs! College. It always seemed so far away, but it’s not. It’s here.” She lay back down. “I don’t feel ready.”
“It’s still kind of far away,” I pointed out.
“Emphasis on the kind of.”
I could hear footsteps on the floor above us, and I knew it was one of Livvie’s parents checking on the twins. Then I heard someone coming down the stairs, then her mom talking to her dad. The hall light went off, and the room, which had seemed dark already, became nearly pitch-black. I pulled the soft sheet up to my chin, smelling the familiar smell of the detergent Livvie’s mom used.
“Calvin really looks at you when you talk to him.” Livvie’s voice was growing sleepy. “It’s intense.”
“That’s what you said about Milo Bradley,” I pointed out.
Milo Bradley was this boy who went to private school in Manhattan and took classes at Juilliard. He was a couple of years older than us, and Olivia and I met him freshman year right after Christmas break at a café we always went to when we had time between classes. He was cute in this nerdalicious way, and the three of us started getting together for coffee on a regular basis. He and Livvie would have these long, intense conversations, and it seemed pretty clear they were into each other, so I’d try to make myself scarce by doing stuff like staring intently at the screen of my phone and going to the bathroom every thirty seconds. Olivia went to watch him rehearse a few times (he played the piano) in these private practice spaces they have at Juilliard. It was kind of a big deal because we had to lie to her parents about how we were having extra rehearsals just so she could sneak away with him.
Each time they went off together, Livvie and I were sure they were totally going to fool around, but they never did. Once, when they were sitting next to each other on the piano bench, he kissed her hand, and another time he put his arm around her, but that was it, even though Olivia was practically dying to make out with him. She was too scared to ask him what was going on, so finally she just started telling him she was busy whenever he called to make plans. The third time it happened, he said, “I don’t get it. Are you breaking up with me?” I was with her at the time, and when she said, “I guess I am breaking up with you,” I just lost it. I mean, were they even going out? She had to practically beat me to death with a toe shoe to get me to stop laughing loud enough for him to hear me.
It had been a while since I’d teased her about dumping her clearly gay boyfriend, but Milo’s being a really good listener had been something she’d referenced constantly, so her saying the same thing about Calvin Taylor seemed a good reason to bring him up.
“Don’t remind me about Milo,” she wailed. “I’m begging you.”
I yawned. “Calvin’s annoying.” But I was too sleepy to really care if she liked him or not.
“Mmmm,” she answered, and I heard the rustle of sheets as she rolled over. “Don’t worry about finding something to do, Zoe,” she mumbled after a pause. “Everything will work out. I can tell. This is going to be a great year.”
I could feel myself dozing off, surrounded by the sounds and smells of Livvie’s house, as familiar to me as my own. My last thought before I fell asleep was that Olivia was right. This was going to be a really great year.
Livvie woke up with a fever Sunday, and she missed school Monday. Monday night when I talked to her she said she’d be in school Tuesday morning, but then she texted me and said she’d woken up with a fever again and her mom was taking her to the doctor.
I called Livvie at the start of lunch Tuesday, but she didn’t pick up the phone. I was standing by my locker, finishing leaving her a message, when Mia Roberts turned down the corridor.
Mia was the girl on the soccer team I knew the least. She’d been new freshman year (before coming east she’d lived in L.A.), and unlike the rest of the team (who hung out pretty much exclusively with one another), Mia hung with a lot of different people. And she didn’t just not hang out exclusively with the team; she also looked nothing like the other girls we played with, all of whom—whether white or black, Asian or Hispanic, freshmen or seniors—were very … American-looking. Clean-cut. Like, you could use any one of them in photos for an antidrug campaign.
But Mia’s hair was bleached white except for the tips, which were blue. When she wasn’t wearing her soccer uniform, she wore black pretty much exclusively, down to black motorcycle boots or Doc Martens.
“Hey,” she said. Today she was wearing a pair of black leggings with lace at the bottom and a black tank top. Her dark eyes were heavily made up with black liner.
“Hey,” I said. I put my phone in my bag.
“You heading to lunch?” Mia asked. I nodded, and she gestured for me to accompany her. “Let’s do it.” She was chewing gum, and while I watched, she blew a small bubble, then cracked it loudly between her teeth.
I fell into step beside her. “I love cracking my gum. It drives my mom batshit when I do it, though.”
“Well, your mom’s not here now, is she?” Mia reached into her bag and pulled out a pack of Juicy Fruit.
I eyed the pack suspiciously. “I don’t know. Sugar gum. Kind of a gateway drug, isn’t it?”
“Try it,” she said, wagging the pack at me. “The first slice is free.”
I reached for a piece, unwrapped it, and popped it in my mouth. “Oh my God,” I said as the fruity taste exploded on my tongue. I had to close my eyes for a second to savor the experience. “This is the first nonsugarless gum I’ve had in years.”
“I know, right?” said Mia, smiling triumphantly. “The dentist loves me. My mom says I’m sending his kids to college.”
“It’s worth it,” I assured her.
We passed a circle of football players, including Calvin and Jake. Each guy was surrounded by a healthy harem of cheerleaders. Jake looked up, saw me, and waved. I waved back. Calvin glanced my way also, but even though we were both at the Grecos’ practically every day, his glance slid over me as if I were some exchange student he’d never seen in his life.
Inwardly I rolled my eyes at what an ass he was.
“So,” said Mia, “how come you don’t do soccer anymore?”
“Um, because I so totally sucked at it?” I offered.
Mia