“You still like Colin?” Frankie asked, making an exaggerated confused face.

“No, but Mia doesn’t know that! As far as she knows, she’s going out with someone her good friend likes. That’s against friend code.”

“Except you told her you didn’t want to be friends anymore,” Frankie said plainly.

“I know, but . . .” Friendship stuff was sometimes hard to explain to Frankie, who tended to see things in black and white, no gray. It could be extremely frustrating.

And at the heart of everything was something I didn’t want to admit. Sure, I’d been mad at Mia for what she’d said about Frankie, but I could’ve gotten over that if she’d apologized; I knew that Frankie would have. What had bugged me more was Mia’s reaction to Colette’s death.

Mia had acted too sad at first, then not sad at all, too soon.

What are you, the Grief Police? You judged Mia for being wrecked, even though you’d known Colette better and longer—but who are you to say how she should feel?

And you’re mad at Frankie about how she’s grieving, too. Who do you think you are?

You’re an awful person.

I know. I know!

“Anyway, I thought you liked Girl Name,” my sister interrupted my thoughts.

It stopped me in my tracks. Most of the time, I could do what my mom always said: Pick your battles with Frankie. But sometimes, it really pissed me off that I had to, that I couldn’t just treat her like anyone else. This was one of those times, and I lost my cool.

“Stop calling him that!” I shouted angrily.

Frankie looked surprised and a little amused. “His parents should have named him something I can remember.”

“Izzy!” I shouted. “His name is Izzy! Maybe if you’d pay attention when people tell you things instead of always thinking about yourself, you’d remember them!”

Regretting I’d called in the first place, I pulled hard on the finger skin between my teeth and ripped all the way down to my first knuckle, blood instantly gushing out of the wound. It was probably the worst I’d inflicted.

Frankie was staring at me, looking so hurt I’d have cried if I wasn’t so mad at her.

“Sorry I’m such a disappointment,” she said quietly.

Then she hung up.

Alone on the boulder, wrapping my wound with my T-shirt to stop the bleeding, guilty, I said aloud,

“You’re not.”

Lying in bed that night, listening to the buzz of Kennedy’s loud music in her headphones, I thought of my second-grade teacher. At the beginning of the year, she’d instructed us to cut hearts out of construction paper. I worked so hard to make the sides of my heart match perfectly, taking much longer than the other students to do the simple task.

I’d been horrified at what happened next.