The farther we got from the lodge, the less I worried about William or the animal crossing or Colette. I didn’t bite my nails or beat myself up. Being on the lake felt like I’d taken a gigantic chill pill.

“How big is it?” I shouted to Girl Sam, gesturing to the water. It was hard to hear over the motor.

“Ten miles?” she asked back.

“Wrong,” Jake shouted, having heard us. He was facing front, on a bench back-to-back with ours. “Fremont Lake is twelve miles long and a half mile wide.”

Girl Sam said, “Thanks, Jake!”

It was super windy with the boat moving so fast. Girl Sam worked her hair into a low ponytail, then put on a trucker hat with a buffalo in front of a sunset.

“I like the buffalo,” I shouted.

“It’s a bison, not a buffalo,” Jake corrected me. Aren’t they the same thing? No, dummy! “The bison is the state animal of Wyoming. Also, about the lake, it’s six hundred ten feet deep. In the winter, there’s the Big Fish Ice Derby. My grandma won it once.”

The thought of walking on ice made me shiver.

“Thanks for the information,” I shouted. “I guess you’re the Wyoming expert around here.”

“I am,” he said, like this was an undisputed fact.

Jake’s bench made an L shape that ran up the left side of the pontoon; Kennedy was lounging on the other part of the L, stealing glances at Seb. Just as I was thinking she was probably going to embarrass me with her flirting ways, she struck up a conversation with Jake about fishing. Jake’s eyes lit up.

Happy, I refocused on the crisscrossing waves.

“Hey.” Girl Sam nudged me with her shoulder. “I’m like so sorry for outing you in class the other day.” She was talking loudly enough for me to hear, but had moved closer to my ear so probably no one else could.

“You already apologized a million times over text,” I said. “Seriously, don’t worry about it. It’s really okay.”

“I know, but I just feel bad, like maybe I caused your migraine, you know?”

I laughed, shaking my head. “My mom caused it, since I inherited them from her.”

Girl Sam leaned away and raised her eyebrows high enough I could see them over her sunglasses. “Oh yeah? Your mom sucks like mine?”

“Sometimes, yeah,” I admitted, immediately feeling guilty, as if my mom could hear me right now. “But I don’t mean like that,” I said quickly. Yes, you do. “I guess she’s had bad migraines all her life. She never told me.”

She gives me her migraines, but not her attention.

Shut up, you ungrateful princess!

“Promise you’re not mad?” Sam asked, seeming to really care. She was a nice person, someone I realized I might even want to keep in touch with when I went home.