It was curiosity and the fact that they’d already probably gotten from Dot all that she was willing to give up that made Mia ask the question. It was a cold, vague fear that made her hesitate. But still . . . “Why don’t you like me?”

Izzy made a little surprised sound next to Mia, but Mia didn’t look away from Dot. The woman blinked at her, curled in, but then straightened as if chastising herself for backing down.

“You were horrible to me. In school. You and that . . . that Bell girl.” She spit the words, her chin quivering with either anger or the urge to cry.

“What?” That cold, vague fear turned jagged, shards of ice slicing into the sun-tinted warmth of those summer days.

“I mean”—Dot’s lower lip trembled—“you were fine until the summer before you left.” She looked away, shrugged, her face pale. “Once you and Cash started dating, though . . .”

“What did I do?”

With squinting, suspicious eyes, Dot studied her. “You don’t even remember, do you? I was that insignificant to your little clique.”

Mia was helpless. “I’m sorry. I don’t . . .”

“You all . . . you all convinced me . . .” Years-old bitterness turned Dot’s voice ugly, small, wobbly. “You know what? The details don’t matter. I humiliated myself. And you just laughed. All of you just laughed.”

Mia’s brain rebelled. Even when prodded, she couldn’t pull up the memory of whatever Dot was hinting at. But Mia had never thought of herself or the others as cruel. Maybe careless in the way teenagers were. Never cruel, though.

“I’m sorry,” Mia whispered, left with nothing else to say. Dot was blinking too fast, far too fast, and Mia didn’t want to subject her to the embarrassment of crying in front of them. She apologized quietly one more time and then walked out the door.

“That doesn’t sound like you,” Izzy said under her breath once they made it halfway across the basketball court.

Mia thought of that picture in the hallway, summer days and loose limbs, their little group wrapped up in each other. So young, so foolish.

But the moment was only a snapshot, unable to capture the darkness that must have lurked beyond the parameters of the frame. Jealousy, pettiness, all the angst that came with stupid, pointless puppy love. A mean streak, if Dot were to be believed.

And why would the woman lie?

That doesn’t sound like you. Izzy had thrown it out, offhand, like those questions she’d asked Dot. The thing was, it was just as purposeful as those had been.

Mia stared at the clouds rolling in, slow and steady. This storm that wouldn’t relent, that felt as never ending as their time on the island.

“You don’t know me well enough to say that.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER TWELVE

IZZY