I looked after him for a moment, feeling a tightening in my chest at the thought of broaching either subject, but especially the one about him and Mom. At sixteen, I really thought I’d avoided the Child of Divorce identity, but that was looking like premature optimism.

The kettle started to whine, but Ayisha didn’t take it off the gas stove. She let it keep getting louder as she scrolled through whatever it was she was looking at on her phone.

“Pretty sure it’s ready,” I said.

She slowly glanced up at me then made no move toward the screeching kettle.

I rolled my eyes and went back to scrubbing.

Things weren’t always like this between me and Ayisha. In elementary school we had been almost friendly, back when she was still a grade above me, before I jumped from fourth to fifth.

I was nine years old at the time and the move put me in a peer group that was older and more mature, even if only by a year or so. As an adult that didn’t mean a lot, but when you were a kid it impacted everything, especially interpersonal relationships. Because as it turned out, Ayisha Lewis wasn’t merely the prettiest girl in her grade, she had also been accustomed to being the smartest.

Until I arrived. Suddenly she had real competition at every turn, from English to math to history. She beat me in art, though. I couldn’t draw or mold or craft papier-mâché to save my life, but Ayisha could and did. Her mild annoyance at my academic challenges steadily devolved into a much deeper resentment I never before understood.

I did now.

Six months at Barrington being shown up by everyone there was eye-opening to say the least. And I might have broached the subject with Ayisha except academic rivalry wasn’t what really torpedoed our tenuous relationship. That happened because of one Mr. Brody Tuck. The same Brody Tuck who was now dating my former best friend, Mia.

Were all small towns and high schools such a toxic cocktail?

As if summoned by some unseen cosmic force that called forth the one person you least wanted to talk with, the phone in my back pocket buzzed.

There on the front screen was the name and profile photo of none other than Mia Gurdowitz. The photo where we were smiling, our faces pressed close together, was from last Memorial Day weekend, at my farewell party before I departed for Barrington. I wondered if she was planning to go after Brody at that time or if the idea came later.

“Bold of her,” Ayisha said.

She was looking with seeming disinterest at my screen before she moved to take the kettle off the stove. Guess that meant Ayisha was aware of the Mia/Brody situation.