“No, really. That’s so cute. And he was totally checking you out.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Mickey said. “They were both just looking at you.”

“That’s because I have confidence,” Ruth said, taking Mickey’s chin in her palm and holding her head straight.

“You have good reason. I don’t.”

“No,” Ruth explained, snapping an elastic from her wrist onto Mickey’s braid. “It’s not real confidence. I fake it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just pretend it’s like a movie, and you’re the star. What would a totally ballsy chick do right now? And then you do it.”

“No way,” Mickey said, grateful when she felt Ruth’s fingers loosen the braid she had just created, and start over. “I’m a terrible actress.”

“Get up.” Ruth said, her hands under Mickey’s arms. Mickey stood up and faced the mirror. She hadn’t spent much of her life thinking about how she looked. Not yet. But she knew then that she would never go back. Her nose and forehead were burned and shiny from the heat of it, as if her freckles had been laminated. Her hair was half braided, half not, and entirely ratty. The straps of her bra under her tank top seemed the very definition of faking it. Ruth took her place on the bed, her skin the opposite of Mickey’s: if Ruth was sun-kissed, Mickey was sun-slapped.

“Give me the best you’ve got.”

“What?” Mickey asked.

“Come on, seduce me.”

Mickey’s jaw dropped, and she hit Ruth on her perfectly tanned knee.

“Screw you!”

“I’m serious! Pretend I’m Josh. What are you going to do to prove you’re not just Sean’s little sister anymore?”

Mickey pressed her open palms to her face.

“I mean, if you’re going to be a prude about it—” Ruth said, sighing. “But this is what best friends are for. To help each other.”

Mickey looked through her fingers. “I don’t know how.”

Ruth grinned.

“Here,” she said, pushing Mickey gently back down to the bed. “I’ll show you.”

When Ruth stood and turned around again, she held her face in a way Mickey had recently become familiar with, but hadn’t tired of. Ruth’s was a face of many parts. One part asked, another told, and a third, which pulled the whole thing together, challenged. How far will you let me take this?

“Hey, Josh.”

“Ruth, come on.”

“You’ve certainly grown up.”

Her voice matched her speed as she stepped closer, lazy but with a destination.

“Have you been working out?”

“As if I’m going to ask him that.”

Ruth stopped inches from Mickey’s hard-pressed knees.

“Remember when we used to play hide-and-seek?”

She reached out and touched the top hem of Mickey’s shirt, her fingertips light like insect wings.

“We played tag,” Mickey said.