Sarah stretched out next to her and threw her hair, damaged but still enviable in its volume, over the edge of the float into the lake. “I live dangerously enough on my own two feet.”

Lily snorted. “Did you practice that line in the mirror?”

“How else would I have nailed it so flawlessly?”

That time, Lily laughed for real.

“So, Silas Harrison, huh? How’s that going?”

Whatever fragile camaraderie there was between them was lost the minute Lily heard Sarah say his name. Like it was at home in her mouth.

“That’s definitely none of your business.”

“I think it’s cute,” she said. “You two make sense, you know? Like Happy Days. I’m sure it’s really nice.”

“It’s a whole lot more than nice.”

“I’m sure. You seem . . . wild.” Sarah grinned and closed her eyes against the sun.

“What about you and Dan? Or was it Kevin? Or wait . . . no. I think it was the whole baseball team,” Lily said as she sat up, using her perfect twenty-five-inch waist to block Sarah’s sun.

“Basketball, actually.”

“Why are you even here?”

“I was invited.”

“By Phil? Don’t get too big a head from his little crush; he would stick it in anyone who would have him. You’re just his best bet.”

“Well, aren’t I lucky!” Sarah said, but Lily could hear a little crack in her witty armor, and it was enough.

“You didn’t know he wants to fuck you? That’s why he’s here this weekend; usually he’d stay home. But he wants . . . whatever this is,” Lily said, sliding one finger under the string tie of Sarah’s bikini bottom and letting it snap, like she was emptying a rattrap.

“Phil and I are just friends.”

“That’s not what he tells the boys,” Lily said, leaning back on her hands. “Apparently, you get real frisky with just a little tequila . . . Is that true?” She went sweet on the upward inflection, in that poison way teenage girls do.

Sarah’s eyes fluttered, but she kept them closed. “Phil wouldn’t say that.”

“I guess we’ll see when they get back from the liquor store.”

Lily stood and stretched, showing the whole length of her body. She was long from start to finish, a ray of light straight from the sky.

“Later,” she said, and she dove into the water with barely a splash.

—

WHEN LILY REACHED THE clearing that afternoon, she stood at the lake’s edge and plucked the petals off all of the poppies but one, throwing each into the water. No matter how far she tried to throw them, they gathered back at her feet.

“I’m sorry, Sarah.”