Someone bumps into Dee and she knocks into Ava, whose drink gets on them both.

“Watch it!” I say to the girl shouldering her way through the room. I realize it’s Breanne, and she lifts her middle finger at me as she moves away.

Antar and Marta exchange looks, before Antar says to Dee, “I’m not afraid of you, you know.”

“Why would you be?” I ask, surprised.

“I know you have this, like, ‘If you’re not with us, you’re against us’ bullshit, and, like, some kind of rage problem. I don’t care. Just leave us out of your weird club.”

Dee laughs and says, “What’s your damage?” She looks at the three of them. Ava looks away.

“Ah, fuck you guys,” Dee says. “You’re fucking weak.”

We turn and Dee says, “Let’s get a drink, sister soldier.” I feel their stares but don’t care because there’s something else pulsing through me with the music.

I’m not really a big drinker. I’ve been drunk a couple of times, but I wouldn’t say it’s something I do often, although maybe that’s changing. When Dee hands me a red cup filled with heady draft, I take a swig and have to choke it down. I wipe my upper lip and grin, and she’s taken a healthy gulp of hers, also. She moves her head to the music and looks around the room, pointedly ignoring the corner where our former friends are in a tight circle. There is a pretty good cross-section of the school here, a range from the gorgeous to the geeky, all pressed up against each other and staring over shoulders and at their phones, hardly paying any attention to who they’re with. Within a few sips of my beer, I sense a buzz coming on. I sway my hips to the music and enjoy the fact that none of us can hear each other, not really.

I see Lottie across the room and feel the sudden need to talk to her. I push and weave through people to get through. Dee tugs my shirt, but I shrug her off.

“Lottie!” I call out, but my voice is swallowed up. “Lottie!”

I finally reach her and grab her arm, relieved. She turns and looks at me, and for a tiny minute we are twelve, not fifteen, and a world lies between those years. She’s standing with a few kids from our elementary school, kids I’ve known my whole life. They say hi to me, ask me what’s up, smiling kindly at me, but keeping their distance.

“Lottie,” I say, “can I talk to you?”

She takes a drink and says, “I dunno, okay.”

“I, um,” I say, and suddenly my voice is cracking. But I can’t tell her that I need her, that I miss her.