“Orangina?” I’m basically jumping up and down now. Orangina is my favorite French soda. Bea introduced me to it at a tiny café in Montmartre, a hilltop neighborhood flooded with tourists and gorgeous views.

Before I can ask how Poppy knows this is my most favorite drink on earth, I’m handed my pastry and soda and then whisked through the house to the back patio.

– 18 – Mason

Once the girls have played in the cold water long enough to turn their limbs sufficiently blue, we reverse the great Morgan migration and pack everything back up and head home. Three neighbor kids are waiting on the porch to play, and their presence makes the sound decibels in the house rise at least a hundred-fold.

I spend the afternoon rattling around my makeup-dusted bedroom trying not to lose my mind. I can’t stop thinking about Willow. The tour is still a solid twenty-four hours away, and the fact that I’m not with her makes me antsy, energy pooling in my arms and legs.

I’m just contemplating whether or not it would be creepy if I casually strolled past Willow’s hotel, when there’s a knock at the door. I assume it’s the girls ready to inflict some fresh cosmetic hell upon me, but when I open the door, it’s Emma. She’s changed out of her beach clothes and is dressed in what I now know are her tour clothes—a blouse tucked into a skirt, ballet flats, huge sunglasses on her head. Something about her is different, though, which sets off my internal scanner right away. I glance at her shoes, her face, and then her hands, and that’s when I see it. She has a large shoebox under her arm. Also, she looks nervous.

Instantly, my stomach drops. Why is Emma nervous?

She cocks her head. “Okay if I come in? I have something I want to show you. Well, two things.”

I step backward, making a little space in my room, and she reaches into her pocket and hands me a smartphone with a red case.

As she hands it to me, I feel a huge mix of feelings welling up. I’ve had a phone, and once my own laptop, but I’ve always felt behind compared to my peers because I couldn’t afford the right phone—the one that would give me access to all the games and streaming services and apps my friends had. And now Emma is handing me that very thing.

“It’s a used one. I was planning to buy a flip phone just to get you through the next little bit, but I mentioned to our neighbor that we needed one, and she offered to sell me this one. The number is on the back, and I’ll give you the Wi-Fi password. She warned me that the Internet is a little slow.”