I decide that I can’t assume, which, as Isla likes to say, makes an ass out of u and me. Isla always says dumb-smart stuff like that, which is why I hate-love her.

Me: I don’t know. I need more information.

Levi: Well, she kills at beer pong and turns nouns into verbs and she gives good advice and she’s fun and awesome and she’s…

I hold my breath. I wait through three rounds of ellipses, and then disappearing ellipses, and then ellipses appearing again. So many ellipses. Are you kidding me?

Levi: taking the SAT tomorrow.

My stomach falls out. Me. He’s talking about me. I think. Just to be sure, I write back.

Me: Tell her

More ellipses.

Levi: I just did

—

I fall asleep that night, way too late, grinning and hugging my phone, like it’s actually Levi and not an electronic device that translates his thoughts into words on a screen. My mom would be mad, since she’s constantly harping on about blue light disrupting sleep and the radiation giving us cancer.

No matter what happens tomorrow, even if I sit for my unlimited time and still manage to bomb the SAT again, Levi Haas, Levi Haas, likes me.

CHAPTER NINE

Now

After Isla leaves my room to play Nancy Drew girl detective, I realize I need to talk to Shola. What are best friends for, if not for when the FBI comes pounding on your door? How many times have we joked about the fact that when the time comes, we’ll always be there to help each other bury a dead body?

My corpse-in-the-trunk moment has arrived.

I scroll through my phone and realize the messages are from numbers I don’t recognize. Every single one of them, without exception, seems to be a hate text.

Deep breaths. No one would ever say this stuff to my face. When I eventually go back to school—though I have no idea when that will be, as it went without discussion that Isla and I were staying home today—people will be, if not exactly nice, then at least civil. I will not get assaulted in the parking lot.

Have I been doxxed somewhere?

Hope your mom rots in jail

Die of AIDS cheater bitch

Spoiled See You Next Tuesday

You too stupid to live

entitled rich idiot

I deserved that spot so much more than you

“Isla!” I scream, because I don’t know what else to do. Deep breathing is a scam. I feel like I’m getting stabbed in the brain by my phone.

I need Shola. She’ll know, for example, how so many strangers have my cell number. When I dial her, it goes straight to voice mail.

“Delete all your social media accounts,” Isla yells back from her bedroom. “Carrie’ll get us new phone numbers later today. Ignore them.”