“So, to be clear: You’re going to go on torturing yourself and me about Levi Haas forever?” Shola asks. Today she’s wearing a vintage TLC T-shirt, cutoff jean shorts, and knee-high black Dr. Martens, the sort of amazing outfit that makes me proud to know her but makes the rest of our classmates shake their heads. I’m wearing a short ’80s babydoll dress I inherited from the “casual lunch/beach” section of my mom’s closet, which makes no one do anything. Shola and I often talk about our school’s aesthetic, how we haven’t quite yet figured out the line between what makes people admire your bravery with your style choices and what ignites irrational anger at them.

We are sharing a cup of fro-yo on the bench outside the auditorium, as we do most afternoons after school before I head to Mandarin or to see Cesar. If you asked me my single most favorite thing about Wood Valley, besides Shola, of course, I’d say it was the self-dispensing yogurt machine. That chocolate-and-vanilla swirl is almost worth the $50k a year my parents pay in tuition.

“Yup.”

“Both of you need to grow a pair,” Shola says, and pauses, as if reconsidering. “Of ovaries.”

“Did you say I need to grow a pair of ovaries?” I ask.

“I did. The language of courage should not only belong to men.” Lola fist-bumps me, and I grin.

“We can do better than ovaries. How about: You need to grow a vagina?”

“A vulva.”

“You need to learn to shed your lining,” I say.

“Nailed it,” Shola says.

It’s been a month since beer pong, and though I feel like things have shifted between Levi and me—he often waits for me after classes, he finds excuses to touch me, he hasn’t mentioned another girl in a while—we’ve made zero progress. I need to learn the language of courage and kiss him first.

None of this passive, please kiss me nonsense.

“I hear that Xander’s parents are away again.”

“I wish my parents lived in Monaco.”