“I’m so happy you’re finally into this.” Skyla giggled like a little kid.

They searched for Uranus and Centaurus but had no luck. The patterns in the sky that night seemed random, and as Skyla took out Marianne’s dad’s handbook to find some constellations, Marianne lay on the cushions instead.

“I give up,” she told her friend.

“You just have to keep searching,” Skyla insisted.

But Marianne hadn’t been talking about the stars.

She didn’t belong with the Quiz Quest kids. She didn’t even belong with Skyla. Skyla had been afraid she’d move on from Marianne if they weren’t together. But she already had. Whatever Marianne had tried hadn’t been enough, and she could see then—as clearly as the nearly full moon outside the windowpanes—that it might never be. If she got to high school, Skyla would still have to move on. Marianne would bring her down.

“Maybe I want to be an astronaut,” Skyla said, her eye pressed to the tiny lens. “After we open our shop, of course. Or maybe we’ll do the shop in our retirement. Kids always say they want to be an astronaut when they’re tiny—”

“Suri does,” Marianne jumped in.

“But someone has to do it for real.” Skyla paused. “I see Venus! Come look!”

Marianne stayed where she was.

If Mr. Garcia or Ms. Clarke decided she couldn’t compete due to her behavior, it would probably be for the best.

“If I got you a free pass to the moon, you’d come, right?” Skyla asked her, eyes still searching for a far-off planet.

“Yeah, of course,” Marianne said, looking up at the white ceiling. “I’ll bring the lemonade.”

At bedtime, Marianne approached Lillian’s door. This time, she knocked.

No one answered, but the light was on, and Marianne sneaked in.

Lillian sat on her bed—no music, no podcasts, no book, no phone—just painting her nails a dark color, thinking. Lillian was not one to sit and think. She was always doing, and going, and doing more.

Marianne wasn’t about to beat around the bush.

“What’s up and why were you crying?” she asked her, jumping onto the bed and curling up like a cat.

Lillian gave her some side eye and said nothing.

So Marianne held out her fingers. “Do me, too,” she said.

Lillian dutifully started to paint them.

“Did Samia break up with Jack yet?” Marianne asked. “He’s really the worst, right? I mean, he sounds like he’s one of those guys who’s nice, but then if you get mad for even the smallest thing, even if it’s totally fair to be mad about, he’s like, ‘I’m so nice, you don’t appreciate how nice I am,’ you know what I mean? That’s like a fake-nice.”

Out of nowhere and extremely casually, Lillian changed the subject to say, “I’m just a little bummed because Harper doesn’t think I’m ready for the show at the Youth Zone.” She painted Marianne’s middle finger and shrugged. “I get it. I was new to it.”

“Um, excuse me?” Marianne hadn’t been over the moon about this Harper girl, and now this?