“I like people.” I circled a carrot stick in the air. “I did that whole swim race thing with Jackson.”

“That had nothing to do with liking him and everything to do with the fact that you lost your race that night and you needed to win at something.”

I narrowed my eyes and bit into my carrot. “Fine, you’re right. But Robert! What about him? I dated him. And Miguel before him.”

“True. They were both confident enough to date someone as independent as you. Well, until Robert wasn’t, apparently. Have I mentioned yet today how stupid he is?”

I smiled, but these arguments weren’t proving my case at all. “DJ!” I exclaimed. “I talk to DJ.”

“Because you know he is unavailable.”

“So you’re saying that Brady is right? That people think I’m closed off?”

She sighed. “No. I mean, sort of. You’re just private. You like to keep most things to yourself. But you can be friendly, nice, when you want to be. We’re best friends, after all.”

Exactly. We were best friends. . . . Granted, I’d known her since second grade. I wondered if she would’ve given me a chance if we had met now, in high school. She was much more open than I was. Willing to let people in. Willing to give people the chance to have control over her emotions. It took a lot of trust for me to get there.

“You’re like the big swim star at the school, Hadley,” Amelia added. “You can be intimidating.”

“I am not intimidating.”

“You are. I thought that’s what you were counting on when you finally get to confront the masked man.”

“You’re right, it is.” She was right, why was I getting hung up on this? I liked my life. I liked my emotions safe. Who cared what Brady or anyone else thought, for that matter? They had no idea how I really was.

I glanced around the courtyard. “So were you able to check anyone off your list?”

She shook her head. “They aren’t talking. They won’t give him up. It’s frustrating. I even talked to some girls not on our list. A few said they’ve seen his posts but couldn’t care less who he is. One person swore it was Thomas Freeman and another said it was Liam Baker.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Did you add them to the list?”

“I did.”

“You talked to a lot of people,” I said.

“How many have you talked to?”

“Just the one.”

She bit her lip, pulled out a pen, and crossed off several people. “I really only talked to three from our list and then added the two, so I’m only one down too.”

“We need to figure this out before Friday.”

“What’s Friday?” she asked.

“Our next swim meet.”