“They pump oil down from Canada and ship it to the Gulf Coast. There’s a campaign to stop it. Miss Sedge wants Jack and me to get involved.” I tried to look demure. “He’s nice. He’s cute.”

Eyebrows hitched up and down.

“Don’t get too excited. Nothing happened.”

“Nothing?”

“But it might.”

“How do you know?”

“He touched my arm.” Pathetic! Just when you’re wanting to lie, you find yourself telling the truth.

She sank back in the beanbag, unimpressed. Fiona was almost fifteen when she got her period, and she still had the high-waisted, spindly look of a middle school girl. Her wrists were so small she had to punch extra holes in her watchband. “But Jack Bell? Isn’t he kind of basic?”

“He’s different now. He gave me a beer. He wanted to talk.” Each sentence I said about Jack made me feel as though he and I were in actual communication. “He’s going to be a scientist.”

Fiona brightened. “Can I tell Vicky?”

“No!” Vicky was thirteen and a half when she got her first boyfriend, a sophomore linebacker. There was another one after that, and now Wade, who worked at the Coffee Bar downtown. If Vicky found out, she would never let it go.

Fiona was staring at me.

“What?” I laughed. I forced out a solemn look. “What?”

“Are you sure nothing happened?”

“I’d rather mention it to Vicky myself, that’s all.”

“Okay,” she said. “That’s fine.”

I stared. “What do you mean, ‘That’s fine’?” In days gone by, she would not have stopped there. “What if I told you he kissed me?”

“Get out! Where?”

I took a second: architecture or anatomy? “On his dad’s window seat.” It was easy, the move from partial truth to outright lie.

That look again, like a safety bar coming down. “But, Maddy?”

“What.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Fiona crossed one leg over the other, chewed her thumbnail, and pumped her foot up and down. “Are you sure he’s a nice guy?”

It was my turn to stare. “You think no nice guy in his right mind would want me?”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” She flashed me a smile. Not a real one. “You more than any of us, you idiot!”

“You think a boring nice guy is all I could get?”

“Just saying . . .” She put on her wheedling voice. “I am your fwend, you know.”