“I’m fine.” A slight, forced smile drifts across her face as quickly as the ocean breeze. “But are you? For real? Because yeah, maybe I was cool with them getting divorced, but not so much with my dad moving to New York and dropping me to only Christmases and summers.”

The shop is empty except for us, and the older woman behind the counter is sitting with her feet up and a small TV turned on to soap operas, so I imagine she won’t mind if we make ourselves comfortable. I drop onto the floor across from Jasmine and take the wig from her hands before she can twist off all the artificial hair with her anxious fingers.

“I am,” I say, and I mean it. “My mom has had to be double the parent, but she’s amazing, and I couldn’t ask for better. Is that why you never talk about home and your school friends? I’d never even heard of Laila before today.”

She shrugs and slides down the wall onto the linoleum. “I guess. It just feels like two different worlds—there and here. It’s like it isn’t even part of the same life.”

For a second, my mind flashes to when we were feeling each other up under the watchful eyes of Constance Wu and Gemma Chan, and I know exactly what she means.

“What are Laila and your other friends doing this summer? I’m surprised you don’t have any other school friends here.”

“Asheville’s pretty kick-ass during the summer, so most people stay home and go hiking and to festivals and whatever. Laila and our friend Kendall work at a day camp together. I get to come back at the end of every summer and listen to two months of private jokes before everything gets back to normal.”

I pull off my blond curls and toss the wig to her. “You can’t win, huh?”

She spins the wig on her finger and exhales into a self-deprecating laugh. “God, I sound like such a brat. Boo-fucking-hoo that I spend the summers in a gorgeous, expensive beach house with a pool and hot tub.”

“You get to boo-fucking-hoo that you’re lonely, Jas,” I say softly, because I realize that’s exactly what she is. Her friends at home feel conditional, her friends here feel like surface-level entertainment, she isn’t with the parent she knows wants to spend time with her, and she is with the one she feels doesn’t give a shit.

She is lonely and hurting and has been for a long time.

A tear forms in one of her eyes and is wiped away so quickly I almost think I’ve imagined it. “Hashtag onlychildproblems. And hey,” she says, tossing the wig back, “I’m not lonely this summer, right?”

I smile. “Sure as hell not.”

“So, are you doing it?” She nods toward the hair. “It looked damn good.”