I turn around and make direct eye contact with Brittany. She stops next to our table and frowns down at the laminate floor. “Good show tonight, guys,” she says, but she somehow makes it sound like an insult. We all half-heartedly parrot the sentiment back at her. “Shay, can I talk to you for a second?”

“Um.” I stare at her, trying to figure out what she could want to say. There’s not an obvious answer I can think of. “Sure.” Ana touches my arm lightly, and I can sense her rooting for this to go well.

I follow her to an empty part of the restaurant away from our group. Brittany stops between a table and the back wall, then stands there fidgeting with her tank top for a few seconds. “I guess I should thank you,” she says quietly, looking as though she would rather swallow her own tongue than thank me.

I blink at her. Did she just . . . ? Wow.

“I read the article.” Brittany tightens her ponytail, not making eye contact. “I kept waiting for you to, like, get tired of whatever game you were playing and tell everyone about me,” she says. “But I guess you’re not going to do that.”

“No,” I say, glancing around surreptitiously. We’re out of earshot from anybody in our group.

“I probably shouldn’t have tried to, like, threaten you. I mean, Ed was totally full of shit anyway. You’re such a Goody Two-shoes, there’s no way you would have OD’d on one of his potions.”

I school my expression so I don’t show how ironic I find that statement. “It’s okay,” I say. “Don’t worry about it.”

“My mom sent me to therapy after your mom went all wacko on her,” Brittany says, rolling her eyes.

“That’s good,” I say. Now I’m interested in what exactly went down when our moms met each other. That’s probably a mystery that will remain unsolved, since I very much doubt that Mom is going to tell me about it.

“Yeah, I think it would kill her to actually talk to me without criticizing literally everything, so she brought in a professional.”

There isn’t a good response to that, so I just nod in a way that I hope looks supportive.

“Um, you were pretty okay in the show tonight,” she continues.

“Thanks, Brittany,” I say, strangely touched by this half-hearted compliment.

“Yeah,” she says. “Okay, bye.”

With that, Brittany strides away. I take a few moments to absorb what just happened and then return to my table. Ed and Mikey are off talking to Mateo at another booth, though I don’t doubt Ed will return soon to sniff out any potential new gossip from me.

“That went . . . well?” I say.

“Really?” Ana says, lacing her fingers into mine. “What’d she say?”