SPARKS ROSE FROM the crackling bonfire in lazy, twisting spirals, the tiny stars of some miniature universe, soaring high above the loud party on the stony banks of Painted Pony Creek, blazing brilliant red-orange trails against the night sky for a few glorious moments, then, inevitably, fading to ash. Drifting slowly earthward, so briefly bright, then gone.

Shallie Fletcher, seventeen and prone to finding cosmic meaning in just about everything, sighed. Sparks continued to flare, then vanish, only to be replaced by more.

Not that she’d ever shone, let alone soared.

That was for other girls, girls like her best friend, Reba Shannon.

An ache formed in Shallie’s throat as she watched her best friend wrap her dazzling self around Eli Garrett, there at the faint, flickering edge of the firelight, but the ache didn’t stem from jealousy.

Oh, no. What Shallie felt, that hot summer night, was remorse.

And guilt. Mostly because of what Reba was busy doing. But Eli was certainly doing his part…

He was making a damn fool of himself, which was his own fault, since he’d had too much beer, like a lot of the other guys and not a few of the girls. High school was over. Graduation was a full week in the past, but the parties, it seemed, might go on all summer. Or until the whole class ended up in jail for underage drinking, whichever came first.

Shallie, raised in foster care by her aunt and uncle, both of whom swilled cheap vodka from midmorning until they passed out sometime after the eleven o’clock news, quietly avoided alcohol. Tonight, knowing what she knew—what everybody knew, except for Eli and his two closest friends, John Patrick McCall, known as J.P., and Cord Hollister—she’d considered diving headfirst into a bottle and curling up at the bottom, like the storied worm in a jug of rotgut tequila.

If she’d been drunk, after all, she could have forgotten for a little while that she’d stood by and watched, saying nothing, not for just a day or a week, but for months, while Reba, beautiful, narcissistic Reba, played her game. While she convinced each of them that she was in love with him, and him alone.

Shallie hadn’t been the only one who could have, should have, spoken up. But that didn’t really matter now, did it?

She’d known Eli, J.P. and Cord since kindergarten. A tomboy, Shallie had been part of their circle from day one, when they’d decided, for whatever reason, to befriend the scruffy foster kid from the run-down motel south of town.

In the early years, she’d gone everywhere with those three—fishing and swimming in this very creek, horseback riding, and even to Saturday afternoon matinees at the Silver Buckle Theater, before it closed for good.