I look out at Amy’s window and will her to pull back her curtains. When she doesn’t, I make a promise I’m scared to keep but terrified to break.

I’m going to find out if Amy’s hiding something and, if she is, I’ll put it right.

26

Tonight is the first costume party of the year.

It’s how the student committee raises money for prom. They rent the town’s only decent club and charge $5 for entry. A lot of the money comes from the younger kids—the crowds of sophomores and juniors who pre-drink enough to be wasted before they arrive but are sober enough to walk past the bouncers without wobbling. They don’t get wristbands, so they can’t be served. But the damage has already been done.

Tonight’s theme is Geek Chic. You only get a dollar off entry, but, like always, Zak moaned until I dressed up.

He never needs an excuse. Tonight, he has a comb-over and pants pulled up to his waist. I’m wearing thick-rimmed glasses and a curly black wig—basically the only things appropriate left in the costume shop. Without our parties, I think they’d go out of business.

Two junior girls in school uniforms walk past Zak and laugh.

“Dream on,” one of them says, and he flashes his teeth.

“Sorry to disappoint, but…” He holds my hand, and they don’t know whether to smile or be offended, so they pick one each.

If you only knew this version of Zak, you’d think he was super confident. But it’s not that simple. He wouldn’t like me saying, but he has something called a do-over diary. Basically, he goes home every night and rewrites his day.

In real life, he stares at a boy, dances at least three meters away, plucks up the courage to speak to him, then bottles it. But in his do-over diary he talks to them all night long.

For an hour before he goes to bed—every single night—Zak reimagines his entire day. He writes scenes where people laugh at his jokes, where he scores the winning goal at lunch, where he gets every question right in class. And, on party nights, he writes love stories.

Zak told me about it during a sleepover, and I thought he was joking until I woke up to find him scribbling at his desk. He says it’s practice for when he meets his dream guy; all those fake perfect nights he’s written—one day he’ll use the best bits for real.

I reckon he’s filled at least twenty diaries, and he still wouldn’t say hi to someone he liked. I don’t blame him. Sometimes the smallest words are the heaviest. But it’s funny how he can be super confident in some ways but not in others.