I shook my head. “I mean, she’s right, you know? It’s totally possible that Dad could go to jail for a crime he did not commit. And we can’t stay here then. Sure, it was kind of cool to be here where everyone knew us and thought we were a big deal. But if he’s in jail, we need to be in a place where we can blend in a little better.”

Ben turned to me, taking my elbows in his hands. And my heart started pounding again. I was suddenly very aware of the cicadas humming, of the silvery moon over the ocean, of the sea oats waving in the breeze. All my senses were on high alert. Something was happening here.

“I don’t want you to leave,” Ben said quietly.

I couldn’t make eye contact with him. Because, oh my gosh, did Ben like me? Did he want to be more than best friends? Did I? Sure, there’d been moments, plenty of them, when I wondered what it would be like to kiss him, to hold his hand. And, yes, his proximity was making my heart beat out of my chest. But I was sure that whatever was about to happen would guarantee that I lost my best friend. If I told him I didn’t like him like that, and he liked me like that, then we could never go back to just being friends. And if he tried to kiss me, and I didn’t kiss him back, our friendship was over. And if he kissed me and I kissed him back and I liked it, wouldn’t we just eventually break up and I’d lose him anyway? It was truly shocking how many thoughts a person could have in the span of a split second.

“Iris, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” he said.

Oh no, oh no, oh no. How did I make this stop? There was a slight, teeny chance, I was now realizing, that maybe I liked Ben too. But I couldn’t handle losing my best friend right now. But if I stopped him from saying what he wanted to say, wouldn’t that be nearly as bad?

“Hey,” Merit said, out of breath, running up to us, resting his hands on his knees and panting. There was a little bit of sweat breaking through his T-shirt. He straightened up and brushed his hair out of his eyes, and it was like angels started singing and the moon was only shining on him. Yes, I might like Ben. But no one on earth was Merit. “Iris, you can’t just run out like that.”

Ben was staring at Merit so intently that I wondered if he was trying to incinerate him.

“Hey, man,” Merit said, putting his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Can we have a minute?”