Jess Regel, you’ve been with me as my agent since the beginning of my career as an author. You are the first person who tells me I can do it when I don’t think I can. Thank you for believing in this story and for championing it—all while taking care of two littles of your own. I’m so proud to be a client at Helm Literary. You’re an advocate and an ally, and I feel very lucky to be in your orbit.

To my editor, Nikki Garcia, at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers—you were a true partner throughout the process of writing this book, and your guidance and direction are all over the final product. I’m so grateful you knew this was so much more than a pandemic book and that you saw value in a story centered around female friendship. A huge thank-you to Milena Blue Spruce, editorial assistant extraordinaire, whose notes and feedback were also invaluable to this process.

Everyone at Little, Brown has been a dream to work with. Thank you to Kathleen Cook and Jen Graham for your incredibly thorough and thoughtful copy edits. I’m not sure this book would have made any sense without you. I wish you could also read all my emails before I hit send. To Virginia Lawther for shepherding the production of the book. There’s nothing more creatively fulfilling than seeing a file on your computer desktop turned into a physical book you can hold in your hand. Thank you as well to Karina Granda for your beautiful design. This book was filled with texts and emails, and you managed to make it all look authentic and pretty at the same time. I’m sure marketing and promoting a novel about the pandemic was no easy task, so I’m eternally grateful to Stefanie Hoffman, Shanese Mullins, Savannah Kennelly, and Cassie Malmo for their tireless efforts to get this book out into the world. The best part of writing a YA novel is interacting with librarians, teachers, and students. Thank you to Victoria Stapleton for everything you did to get this story into the hands of educators. Last but certainly not least, thank you to Dana Ledl for the stunning and dreamy cover you created for the book. You captured the isolation and angst in such a whimsical and poignant way, and I love it so much.