“Ahh! Good practice for next year!” Pearl teased.

It was almost Christmas. Which meant it was almost the last semester of Clara’s high school career. Which meant it was almost graduation. Which meant it was almost time for her to move away. She and Lynn were constantly texting or Snapchatting or whatever it was that allowed you to turn yourself into a cat, hatching plans for room decor and the introductory science classes they would both need.

Evie laid her hand on his forearm.

It had the effect of settling and stirring up the neck butterflies at the same time, which was technically impossible.

Technically impossible when it came to neck butterflies, which were totally a thing?

He looked at her. She wasn’t looking back, was just smiling at the TV as the opening credits played. But she knew. She knew what he was feeling.

All her knowing was both unsettling and a relief. It felt good to be understood, but it was also disconcerting. He wasn’t used to it.

She did things to him that should have been contradictory. Which was why he was her friend, yet not her friend. The bar erupted into cheers when the host of The Agenda introduced Clara. There was so much noise that he couldn’t hear anything about the other two kids on the panel.

“Shhh!” Evie turned around and shushed everyone.

And then he watched his little sister talk about vaccination policy on TV.

He was so proud, he was fit to bust. He kept switching his attention between the TV and, when he started to get overcome, his beer.

When Evie set her hand on his arm again, he about combusted. It was too much. These women. His sister and his…friend.

“Let me ask you something,” he said while one of the other kids—the non-Clara kids—talked. Evie was smart. Maybe she could help him make sense of what was happening to him—when it came to Clara, at least. “Remember Medea?”

“Yep.”

“I was proud of her then, too. But not like this. This is like…”

“Medea times ten?”

“Yeah.” Exactly. “What’s up with that?”

“It’s probably because Medea was a role. Clara’s a great actor, but that wasn’t her. You were proud of her performance. This is her talking about her own ideas. Things that came from inside her.”

That was exactly right. “How’d you get to be so smart, Evie Abbott?”

She made a dismissive gesture, but he knew the answer. She’d gotten to be so smart because she’d gone to university. She’d followed her dreams.

Was it possible that he could claim a tiny bit of credit for that? The prospect filled him anew with that overwhelming mixture of happiness and melancholy and pride. He took a deep breath. It was almost too much to bear, this onslaught of contradictory emotions.