Well? We used to tell each other everything. Besides, he’s the one who brought up porn outside the pool house. I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. “Know what’s funny? Between me and my mom, I’m the adult,” I tell him. “The responsible one who sits at home alone and does my homework and has to remind Mom to pay the electricity bill on time so I don’t have to sit in the dark or walk to Starbucks for Wi-Fi until she can get it turned back on again.”

“Josie,” he says. Feeling sorry for me, pleading for me to shut up … it’s hard to tell.

But it’s too late for that. I have held myself under tight, careful control for too long, not communicating with my mom, not communicating with anyone, and now the levee’s broken.

I’m awash in emotion.

“This isn’t me. I’m a good girl,” I insist, feeling tears prick the backs of my eyelids. “All I wanted was to get out of here before the time bomb exploded between Grandma and Mom when the Nepal trip ended—and for a chance for a real family with my father in LA. Now I won’t be surprised if my mom shoves me back into the Pink Panther and drags me off to some other town once she hears what I’ve done here in the portal to hell.”

“She’d really do that?” he asks, sounding shocked. “Make you leave Beauty again?”

“Maybe? I don’t know. I … I was trying to keep my head down and mind my own business. Now everyone is going to be getting their jollies looking at a photo of my mom, thinking it’s me? What is wrong with this town?”

“It was so small on Adrian’s phone screen, probably half the people in the pool house didn’t see it.”

“You looked?”

Face long, he lays his head on the table, and that only makes me more miserable.

The door to the holding room opens. An officer tells Lucky his parents are here to pick him up, and he can leave the station with them. A little panic rises in me when Lucky stands to leave. Suddenly I don’t want him to go. It’s as if the past few years have disappeared, and we’re twelve again—two geeky shy kids who bonded over books and video games and bad D&D campaigns at our secret North Star boatshed hideaway at the end of the Harborwalk. This night has turned me upside down.

“Hey,” he says to me in a low voice. “Don’t sweat. It’s going to be fine. One of the good things about Beauty is that if people here expect you to be something, it’s easy for them to continue believing it.”

“What?” I say, confused.