It’s like the wind’s been knocked out of me because I know that feeling so, so well, and never in all my life did I think Kiera and I would ever find anything in common again. “Yeah, actually. I know exactly what that feels like.”

She reaches past me for the soap dispenser and starts to wash her hands.

“So your parents aren’t getting along?” I ask.

“That’s putting it mildly.” She dries her hands and shoulders past me.

Something inside me is desperate to keep her in this bathroom so I can hear more. Maybe it was the letter she sent. Or maybe a small part of me thinks we have more common ground than I thought. “No one gets it,” I finally say. “It’s like your parents being married is one of those things that’s supposed to last forever. No one gets what it’s like when that just ends out of nowhere.”

“It’s like finding out the tooth fairy isn’t real.” Kiera turns around, and her face looks like I’ve sucked every bit of air out of her. “It’s all I can think about. Sometimes I just ask for stuff I don’t need or throw fits over silly things so that they can argue over that stuff instead. That at least feels normal.”

I shake my head, remembering how I lied to my dad about his mail. I don’t even know what I was trying to do. Just get some kind of reaction out of the two of them, I guess. Because right now in their weird perfect little divorce world with their perfect little houses on the same street, I feel like a broken compass just spinning in circles, trying to find my way. Like, I’m just looking for a sign—any kind of sign—that will tell me how I’m supposed to feel.

I take a step closer to her. “I’m sorry for crashing your party and for giving you that dumb gift.”

She shrugs. “The deodorant actually did smell good.”

“And for puking on you.”

“That was, like, the grossest thing ever,” she says, but then as though she’s just realized we’re not being jerks to each other right now, she adds, “but maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to hit the trampolines after all that pizza and cake.”

“It was still a pretty cool party.”

She pauses for a moment. “We better get back to class.”

I hate to leave the bathroom, where it felt like we were in neutral territory for a little while, a place where neither of us had to worry about what had happened in the past, but I’d also hate to get in trouble for taking too long in the restroom. The two of us take our hall passes and walk back to Mrs. Young’s room in silence.

It feels like something between us has shifted. But I still can’t forget what the last three years have been like and what it felt like to be ditched by the person I trusted most.