The quote is from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her favorite. Willa has always loved words, but this was the play that made her fall in love with language, with story. When she received her acceptance e-mail from Kenyon College, she entertained a brief fantasy of being the next Emily Gould and walking the same halls that John Green and Ransom Riggs had walked. Then she tucked it away—in the same place she kept her inexplicable attraction to Cam—and enrolled at Case Western as a business major. Studying business was smarter. Better. Even though Campbell has no way of knowing any of this, it feels as though he’s been rummaging around in Willa’s brain, and she doesn’t like it.

“How did you know I’d come?” she asks.

He cocks his head, his brows furrowing as if the question is absurd. “Because you’re Willa.”

“What does that even mean?”

“You always do the right thing.”

She’s not sure if she should consider that an insult or a compliment, so she doesn’t reply. Especially when she’s not sure if this is the right thing.

Willa’s original plan for the summer was to work as many hours as possible at Plato’s Closet. Her college scholarships would cover the major expenses, but she needs her own laptop. She wanted to hit up garage sales to find a dorm fridge, get started on her fall reading, and try to figure out how life works without Finley. Despite Willa’s deathbed promise, spending the entire summer on a boat with Taylor Nicholson was never really part of the plan.

Then two things happened that changed her mind.

First, Willa delivered her valedictory address to the tops of people’s heads while they thumbed through their commencement programs and played games on their phones, and the feeling she’d wasted the past thirteen years snaked through her like a strangler vine. There were no trophy cases for valedictorians. She would not leave a lasting impression. The only reward for all of her hard work would be four more years of hard work, and the thought of that made her want to cry.

Afterward, Willa went home and slept fifteen hours—right through Taylor’s graduation party and straight on into the following day. When she woke, Willa found an instant photo lying on the edge of her bed. It was the one Taylor took a couple of months before Finley died. She’d been almost bald from chemo, so they all wore silly wigs—and Taylor snapped three shots, one for each of them. It was their last sleepover, but also the night Willa and Taylor swore to take the trip without Finley. The tape on the back of the picture must have come unstuck in the night, but it felt as though Finley had left it on Willa’s bed to say, “Suck it up, buttercup. You promised.”