“Is that the Veuve talking?” Chloe asked, getting up and taking our hands to pull us up too.

“No,” I said. “Maybe a little.” More honest. “But I really do. You guys could have turned your backs on me and walked away when I was going through a hard time.”

“Turned our backs? On you?” Dabney said. “That’s so 2008.”

We all laughed again.

“For real,” Chloe said. “The actions of some man don’t get to define us anymore—even if that man is, you know, your dad.”

I pulled them both in for a side hug. “Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Here goes nothing.”

“What now?” Dabney asked. “Do we break a window or something?”

I walked confidently up to the farthest left-hand window in the living room, put my palms flat on the window frame, and pushed with all my might. It slid right up.

“Wow,” Chloe said. She was close enough I could see her eye roll. “I’m glad we really stressed about that.”

“This window never locked right,” I said. “It didn’t matter because it wasn’t like anyone was going to break in.”

“Until now,” Dabney said.

“Until now,” I agreed, grinning at her.

I was about to climb through the window when Chloe said, “Wait!”

I tensed, ready to start running, but then she added, “You know your house could be, like, ransacked, right?”

I raised my eyebrows at her. “What? Why?”

Dabney nodded knowingly. “Oh yeah. Remember how trashed P. Diddy’s house was after that raid?”

I felt a little sick—but it was nice to be prepared.

I climbed through the window and my friends followed me. It was dark, but enough light was shining through the windows that it wasn’t too bad. It also smelled… weird. Not, like, bad necessarily, but just not like cooking and candles and general “we live here” sort of smells. It was kind of hot and damp. I didn’t like it. It made me sad. Still, it was a huge relief to be back in my house. I didn’t want to leave. Ever.

We all flipped our flashlights on. We walked through the living room and dining room, which looked pretty much intact. But that wasn’t surprising. They were mostly furniture. In the kitchen, a few drawers and cabinets were open, and some cleaning stuff was haphazardly on the floor, but my mom was a stickler for organization, so I felt like the lack of mess had less to do with the feds taking care of our house and more to do with the fact that they could see we weren’t hiding anything.

We made our way silently up the stairs, and in my room, out of habit, I clicked the light switch.

“Are you crazy?” Chloe hissed, flipping it back off immediately.

I smacked my hand against my forehead. “Oh my gosh. Sorry. See? What would I do without you guys?”