A cold, clammy fear gripped my insides. I couldn’t shake the visions of Dara Chapman, sitting at the lunch table but not getting any of the jokes, then not showing up at our parties, just slowly fading out. What if that happened to Stevie and me? Right when it was supposed to be our senior-year swan song, the celebration of all we’d worked so hard for? The thought of it was making me feel ill. I couldn’t let it happen.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“I’m telling you now,” Stevie said. She raised an eyebrow at me and I knew, in that moment, that whatever she said, she was not 100 percent okay with the switch I’d pulled on her.

“Are you mad at me?”

“I’m not mad.”

“It’s okay if you are. Just tell me.”

Stevie looked out the window, taking a halting breath. “I don’t, like, need your permission…” She stopped and looked back at me. “I’m not mad,” she said again. “I just—you didn’t need to lie to me.”

“I didn’t!”

Stevie gave me a look that said come on.

“I didn’t,” I insisted. “I just didn’t tell you all the facts at that exact moment. What’s the legal term? Omission something?”

“It’s a lie of omission,” Stevie said, now looking like she was trying hard not to laugh. “ ‘Lie’ is literally right there in its name!”

“Oh,” I said, momentarily stymied, and Stevie laughed, which made me laugh too. “I am sorry, you know. I just… really need this to all work out.”

“I know.” She gave me a smile. “I really hope it does, Kat.”

“It will,” I said, in case The Secret was an actual thing and the universe was listening. And to be on the safe side, I crossed my fingers and toes and leaned over Stevie to knock on the fake wood paneling by the window. “So, what is this internship? Besides being a terrible idea?”

“Hello.” We both looked over to see that the toddler was back, her whole head now above the seat, looking between the two of us. She extended a chubby fist and opened it to reveal a T. rex figurine. “I have a dino.”

This was such an objectively true statement that I smiled. “You sure do,” I said, leaning closer to look.

“Her name is Lulu.”

I saw Stevie’s mouth twitch in a smile. “Lulu the dinosaur,” she said, giving the kid a nod. “Very cool.”

The little girl dropped out of sight again—apparently this was what she’d wanted to tell us—and Stevie turned to me. “Look, nothing’s decided about the internship,” she said. “We’ve got lots of time to figure it out.”