“Don’t judge.” I shoved her shoulder and turned it into another awkward car hug. “Besides, if I hadn’t left it open, you would have asked for something sensible for graduation. Like textbook covers or … I don’t even know what, instead of the best, best, best thing on the planet.”

“I don’t think textbook covers are a thing in college, Amelia.” Her voice was even, but I could feel her smile.

“Whatever. You know what I mean.” My nose was lodged against her hair. She smelled like shampoo and her fruity, too-sweet perfume.

“Thanks, Jenna,” I whispered, and found myself oddly choked up.

“I’ll enjoy it, too, you know,” she whispered back. “But you’re welcome. Happy graduation. Is this hug over yet?”

“Almost. Your perfume is trying to kill me.”

The same perfume brings me back to the festival, to the pulsing hustle of book lovers swarming around us, which is no match for my enthusiasm.

“Look at it,” I urge Jenna, jogging alongside her fast walk to thrust my wrist in her face. “Look! This band means that, in only three hours, we get to see N. E. Endsley. Endsley, Jenna.”

Jenna does not pause, unfazed by my attempts at distraction.

“Amelia.” She says my name with a mix of exasperation and affection, but more of the latter than usual. “There are other events before his session, and we should enjoy some other panels and booths, too, okay?”

“Whatever you say, JenJen.” I say the pet name her first and last boyfriend gave her under my breath, thinking she won’t hear it in the din.

“Do not call me that.”

Her dark, curly strands bounce toward me all at once, and her eyes narrow, but a corner of her lips is restraining a smile.

“Oh, come on, JenJen. Lighten up. It’s a perfectly good name for a girlfriend … or a poodle.”

“Shove off,” she says, laughing. She steers us into a booth of T-shirts in all the colors of the rainbow with catchy book phrases printed on their fronts: I READ PAST MY BEDTIME or I’M A BOOK DRAGON, NOT A BOOKWORM. Most can also be purchased as posters, and I push us toward the rolled-up plastic tubes near the back of the booth.

“This is why boyfriends are useless,” Jenna mutters. “They distract you from schoolwork and they make up stupid names that your so-called friends never let you live down.”

“Chin up, JenJen,” I say, extracting one of the poster tubes from its brethren. “What do you think of this one for our dorm room?”

The top of the poster is decorated with little cartoon people attempting and failing to ski, skateboard, and surf, the message below reading, “If at first you don’t succeed, read a book instead.”

“That hardly seems conducive to an encouraging study environment,” Jenna says. “Besides, I don’t appreciate the implication that one cannot be a reader and an athlete.”