I try tracing over the characters after Dani leaves. It works. When the words finally come off, Jess, Nancy, and Florence walk up. The four of us stand back and look at my locker. The words are gone but I’d overscrubbed and now there’s a faint white outline against the beige metal.

Florence looks nervously at me. “You sure you still want to go through with this?”

Later that day, I’m moving into my new apartment, two blocks away from school. It’s a two-bedroom town house overlooking the lake. The real estate agent, a white lady named Sarah, gives me the keys and asks if it’ll be just me. I tell her yes and brace for a lecture about the dangers of living alone as a teenager, but she couldn’t care less. She shows me how the stove and the oven work and leaves the number of the local housecleaning agency on the fridge. It happens to be Dani’s agency. I toss it out.

After Sarah leaves, the movers drop off my stuff and the delivery guys from Pottery Barn show up to deliver the rest of the furniture I ordered. As they’re moving the couch inside the house, I hear a sports car speeding down the street. My body shrinks with dread. I look up to see my worst nightmare parking in front of my town house.

“We need to talk! You’ve been ignoring all my voice mails!” Jay shouts, walking toward me.

I’m so shocked he’s here, I’m disoriented for a second. Then angry. Violently, hysterically angry. This is my home! How dare he come here? I look to the mover guys and the delivery people and want them all to get out so I can lock the door, but the door’s open wide, and Jay’s running up the stairs, and before I know it, he’s standing in the middle of my living room.

“You can’t be here!” I say to him.

The movers and delivery guys look up at us.

“Is there a problem?” one of them asks.

“Yes!” I say. “I don’t want this guy here!”

Jay explains to the movers, “She’s my girlfriend. We’re just having a fight.”

The movers nod sympathetically—Been there, bro—and get back to unpacking. I reach for the phone to call the cops.

“Please, Claire! Hear me out!” Jay pleads, grabbing the phone out of my hand. Tears brim in his eyes. He puts his hands together and begs me for two seconds.

We go outside.

I hold on tight to my jacket, my arms across my chest in a brace position. “How’d you find me?”

“My family has real estate connections all over town,” he says, handing my phone back to me. “We know every real estate transaction that occurs.”

I roll my eyes. Of course he does.