Avery blew on her nails. “I had a fight with my mom, too. She wanted me home by eleven. How embarrassing is that? Also, the car. They wanted me to learn to drive, and now there’s like a fight every time I want to borrow it. I can’t wait to go to college, and I’ll be applying on the other side of the country to get away from the nagging.”

There was a humming in Izzy’s ears.

They moaned the whole time. About trivia. Stuff that just didn’t matter. The contrast between what they thought was important and what she thought was important was so vast they might as well have been living on different continents. If she’d crawled past them bloodied and injured, would they even have noticed? That was how she felt on the inside.

Was she a terrible friend? If it mattered to them then it should matter to her, too, shouldn’t it? Or were they terrible friends, not understanding how she felt?

She reminded herself that probably qualified as “all or nothing thinking.” No one was terrible. Everyone was doing the best they could, but there were days when she felt their best wasn’t enough for her.

There had been a time when the trivial stuff had mattered to her, too. What would she give now for her biggest worry to be whether she wore the blue top or the red top?

“The first thing I’m going to do when I’m in college is buy a new wardrobe and new makeup.” Charlie swiped orange nail polish onto her nails. “Mom won’t see how I’m spending my money, and if she does find out she won’t be able to do anything. It’s going to be so great to get away.”

It didn’t seem to occur to them that moaning about their mothers might be tactless. They were supposed to be her best friends, but these days she felt isolated and alone.

Freaked out by her own thoughts, she grabbed the can and knocked back her drink. The sudden rush of sugar gave her energy. Maybe the sugar was the reason she decided to speak up. Or maybe it was because she was sick of being silent and pretending she thought what they thought. Felt what they felt. Maybe part of her wanted to shock them. She wanted to shake them and tell them to wake up to what they had.

She’d had a fight with her mother, too, and she hadn’t been given the chance to put it right. And now she had to handle those feelings all alone. She wouldn’t want the same thing to happen to them.

If she could turn the clock back, her motto would be a hug before bed, and nothing left unsaid.