Danielle moved to Prescott in fourth grade, a month after school had already started. Even at ten years old she had the same thick dark hair, high cheekbones, and commanding personality that promised more to come. Even then, everyone wanted to be along for the ride.

Andrew and I had been sitting together in the back of the bus when it pulled up to a new stop and Danielle got on. With a school as small as ours, new kids could never slip by unnoticed; they were an event, one of the few exciting things that ever happened. She hadn’t looked nervous, hadn’t shuffled around looking for a place to sit. Instead she’d walked up the steps, skinny legs under a bright turquoise skirt, hands looped through the straps of a fire-engine-red backpack, and twirled. I was fascinated—who was this girl who looked like she’d come off the set of some Disney Channel movie, whose clothes were as bright and bold as she was—who looked like she wanted to stand out, wanted attention the way I had always wanted to blend in? Danielle became the sun around which all of us rotated, and she’d done it within thirty seconds of stepping onto the school bus on that first day. But just like the sun, we could never get too close, could never stare too long or we’d get burned. Because Danielle could burn. That hadn’t taken long to figure out.

Maybe Andrew had noticed her even then, had been fascinated by her like I had, but in a different way. Maybe he’s been drawn to her sunlight for years, has always been rotating in her orbit.

“Of course they know each other,” I repeat to Hannah.

“No,” Hannah says, her voice insistent. “They don’t. They only know, like . . . the polished versions of each other. But that’s not really knowing someone. Party Andrew isn’t really Andrew—you know that. You guys know each other without the bullshit. What Andrew and Danielle have is all bullshit.”

“But isn’t that what keeps it exciting?” I ask. “The not knowing?”

“Maybe it’s exciting, at first,” she says. “It’s the thrill of the chase, the thrill that someone might like you back. Getting that attention from someone is a rush. But that’s not love. Love is when your weirdness matches up with someone else’s weirdness. When you’re comfortable being exactly you.” One of her hands falls to her neck, to the spot where Charlie’s necklace used to be, and she drums her fingers softly, absently, against the hollow of her throat.

“Yeah,” I say, turning back to the mirror. I feel weirdly like I might cry, which makes no sense at all. I take some deep breaths, turning away from Hannah so she can’t see. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.