It’s Shannon’s turn to snort as Jasmine walks off, but my eyes are on Kiki, even as everyone shifts to make room and Chase’s warm body slides in next to mine. Kiki is freakishly smart, but more than that, she’s tenacious. If she thinks Jasmine’s being shady, no amount of snark is gonna throw her off.

I pray whatever digging she inevitably does into Jasmine leads in a direction that’s far, far away from me.

That hope dies in my chest when I see Kiki waiting by my locker at the end of the day. “I know Chase has football practice and Shannon’s at French club tonight, so I figured you’d need a ride home.”

“Don’t you have independent study?” That’s what they call having Kiki help produce the school podcast one night a week. It was the best compromise they could come to, given they were desperate to get her on the newspaper and she wouldn’t budge.

“Changed to tomorrow night. Alex has a dentist appointment.”

How convenient. Thanks, Alex. I hope you don’t need a root canal or anything.

“Lucky me,” I manage. Ordinarily I’d mean it—Kiki drives a vintage Porsche she and her dad worked on for two years, but it’s so small it only comfortably fits one other passenger, so I rarely get to ride in it. But she’s up to something. I can see her detective nose twitching.

Sure enough, the questions begin as soon as she pulls out of her spot. “We’ve barely talked about your summer at the beach,” she says, her trademark round-lensed sunglasses obscuring my ability to read her expression. “Did you really only spend your summer tanning and playing assistant to someone at your mom’s boss’s company?”

Okay, so I stretched the truth a bit. “Yup, pretty much.”

“That’s it. That was your whole summer.”

“Well, you know I started at the Book and Bean a few weeks before school, if that’s what you mean.” I shade my eyes with my hand and stare out at the neatly manicured lawns of Stratford, house after house in a town with only one apartment complex, which I happen to call home.

She sighs. “Come on, Lar.”

“Come on what?” I force myself to face her, and I’ll admit, not being able to look her in the eye helps. “What sort of secret mission do you think I was on in freaking North Carolina?”

“I don’t know,” Kiki says exasperatedly, “but you’re different.” She stops at a red light and turns to me. “Look, I’m really happy you finally got with Chase, but are you happy for you? Because I thought when this day came, I’d be begging you to stop mentioning his name every three seconds and asking us what to wear on dates and how soon is too soon to get naked.”