“Are you home?” I ask.

“Yeah, I just got home. I got, like, two hours of sleep.”

“Was it fun?” I’m not sure I want to know how fun it was, but I ask anyway.

“The dance was fine. It was fun; it was stupid; it was okay. Your friend Sam was there.” She says it conversationally, not loaded in any way, and I feel a rush of gratitude at the way she is able to just accept things.

“She wore a flapper dress,” Cammie says, “and her date was in period costume, too. It was great.”

I hesitate to admit that I know what Sam wore. I realize that, in some ways, I feel like I’m cheating on Cammie. Like Sam is taking her place. I hope it doesn’t seem that way to Cammie. Sam can’t take Cammie’s place, for a thousand reasons. But at the same time, I can’t deny that there are things I love about Sam, things she gives me that no one else can.

“How was the after-party?” I ask, avoiding the subject of Sam entirely.

“Oh, you know. A little wild. Ethan was out of hand.”

“I’ll bet.” I’m not sorry to have missed it. “How about Erin?”

“She’s always out of hand.”

I laugh. “Truth.”

“I felt weird without you there. And with Hunter and everything.”

I guess this part was inevitable. I lie back on my bed. “Did he have fun?”

“You’d have to ask him,” she said. “I mean, there were times when he was laughing and screwing around with the guys, and other times he looked out of it. He thinks you guys are going to break up.”

“He told you that?”

“No, Connor did. Zo . . .” She sighs. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but . . .”

I sit up, girding myself.

“It’s just that everyone feels bad for Hunter,” she says. “And I don’t really blame them? Because he did kind of get the screw here. But, like, I don’t blame you, either. I think you’re going through a hard time and you deserve some slack. That said . . .” She hesitates. “I mean, Zoe. You didn’t even tell Hunter what was happening to you and your family. Or even Erin and Syd. It can make people feel like you don’t trust them, or like they don’t matter to you.”

I start to object, but then I realize she’s right.

I do put up walls so people can’t see past them — that’s true.

But it never really occurred to me that people could see the walls.