“I just want you to take some responsibility! We can’t change everything just because you want to be an actor.”

Marlene shifted forward, pulling her half-formed braids from Lola’s hands, her eyes round with anticipation. When Spencer and Lola fought, it happened fast.

“Guys,” Scarlett said quickly. “Don’t do this.”

“I don’t want to do this,” Lola said, her voice shaking. “Trust me. I’m sick of doing this.”

“So don’t,” Spencer replied with a shrug. “Lola, what’s your problem?”

“My problem is that your problems follow us everywhere! You get crazy people coming after you on the street, and Scarlett got caught in that. Now they come home, to work…”

“Those people who bothered you at work had nothing to do with Spencer,” Scarlett said. “They were Chip’s friends.”

Spencer had been fairly restrained up until that point, processing all the accusations that were flying in his direction. At the sound of the name Chip, however, a look of furious understanding passed over his face, and his calmness was gone.

“Oh,” he said. “Chip’s friends. Chip’s friends bother you and it’s my fault. It’s not your fault for dating someone like Chip. Who could blame you for dating a great guy like that?”

Scarlett had seen them fight before—plenty of times—but there was something about the way this particular fight was going that scared her. The barometric pressure in the room dropped suddenly. Marlene sensed it, too. She didn’t seem so eager to watch anymore.

“Lola,” Scarlett said, “it’s not that bad. That first day with the doughnuts wasn’t even…”

But Lola didn’t want to know what it wasn’t.

“Don’t!” she yelled. “You always side with him!”

“She’s not siding with me,” Spencer shot back. “What gets you mad is that I’m actually doing something I like, and you have no idea what you want to do. You always act a martyr because you gave up going to college. No one asked you to. You didn’t even try. But for some reason it’s my fault that you have no plan—I mean, aside from dating rich people.”

Spencer must have hit a nerve. Lola clutched at her phone and, for a second, Scarlett thought she was going to throw it at the wall, or even at Spencer. Instead, she just left the room.

“She’s going to run out of rooms to storm out of,” Spencer said. “We only have about fifteen more.”

The next morning, Scarlett was vaguely aware that Lola was moving around at a slightly earlier hour than normal, but these were not things she cared about much at five A.M. She rolled toward the wall and continued sleeping. When she woke, she found a note sitting on her alarm clock. She picked it up and squinted at it in the half light. It read: