I’d known her almost as long as I’d known Patrick, which meant basically all my life. Natalie had been described in school as what you’d get if you added caffeine to a squirrel. The comment wasn’t entirely unfair, either. At five foot nothing and lightly but athletically built, Natalie would never be considered physically intimidating. But she could out-run, out-climb, and out-curse most people, and she never backed down from anything or anyone. She’d more than earned the nickname “Mighty Mouse.”

And as one half-wit in junior high found out, she had a left jab that was almost too fast to see.

We’d had several on-and-off romances during our high school years, yet we always seemed to settle back into a comfortable friendship. I don’t think I’d ever not had a crush on her, but we got along far better when we weren’t involved. Eventually I’d decided that having Nat as a lifelong friend was better than having her as a girlfriend for a while.

Since the thing with MIT, I’d been unable to face her and had found myself avoiding contact. There had been a few awkward conversations that had gone nowhere, but Natalie seemed unfazed by any of it. I, on the other hand, was embarrassed about my behavior toward her, which just made me avoid her more.

Patrick, meanwhile, gave her a wide smile. He didn’t have the specter of an expulsion from his lifelong dream college hanging over his head and had kept up an easy friendship with her.

I looked away and mumbled, “Oh, uh, hi, Nat.” Good job, Jack, I thought. Mature as ever.

“Don’t Hi, Nat me,” she said. Then she pointed. “What. Is. That?”

“Chewbacca.”

“Yeah, no.” She examined the corpse. “For one thing, Chewbacca had no tail. This looks more like a squirrel. Where’d you get this?”

Patrick barked a single laugh. “Did you see the front of the truck?”

Natalie stared at me, her eyes widening. “You ran over a giant squirrel?”

“That seems the most likely hypothesis.”

My dry delivery broke the tension, and all three of us giggled. Again, I thought I detected an undertone of hysteria in Patrick’s laugh.

“So is this why you haven’t been answering my texts?”

I sighed and looked down for a moment. “No. Look, I’m sorry, I’m just having trouble facing people right now. The MIT thing—”

Nat cut me off. “Chrissake, Jack. You think I believe the accusations? I know you better than that. They’ll figure it out eventually, and you’ll be cleared. You just watch.”

Natalie had always been like that. When she was on your side, she was all in.

“Three Musketeers,” I said.

“Damn right,” she replied. “One for all … ”

“And all for me.” Patrick finished the cheer with his standard line, and Nat and I laughed dutifully.

“So you’re stalking me, then?” I asked.