“Come on, Keely.” Her voice is soft. I feel bad that she’s comforting me when just a few minutes ago she was the one in tears. “That boy would do anything for you.”

I know I have to tell her about the Plan, why everything is so messed up. Then she’ll know why she’s wrong.

There’s a sliver of light on the horizon and the sky around us is hazy and blue, almost morning. There’s a bird chirping somewhere, but I can’t tell what kind it is. I’ve forgotten all of the birdcalls we learned in kindergarten. I wonder how long it will take me to forget everything else.

I sigh and turn to Hannah. “This wasn’t the first time, okay?”

“I know,” she says. Not what I was expecting.

“What?”

“You’re my best friends and you guys have been acting so weird around each other lately. It’s not like I haven’t noticed. You can barely be in the same room together. Of course something is going on.”

“I lied to Dean, remember? About being a virgin?” I feel a sharp pain in my head and I reach a hand up and press it against my forehead, wishing for the millionth time I didn’t drink 20,000 margaritas. I can feel the tequila churning in my stomach.

“Of course I remember,” she says. “Keely, did you sleep with Andrew?”

“It was that thing you said at lunch that day,” I say, the words spilling out of me. “That Andrew was such an expert, that he knew what he was doing. He could help me practice—”

“So you’ve been practicing with him?” she asks, and I can’t help but notice Hannah seems a little excited, her eyes glittering.

“Hannah, stop,” I say. “This isn’t good news.”

“No, this is great news!” Now she’s full-on smiling.

“No, we’re not friends anymore, okay?” It feels freeing to finally say it to someone. I didn’t realize how much I needed to talk about this with her, how heartbroken I’ve been to lose him. “He never wanted to . . . practice . . . with me in the first place. We didn’t even go all the way, because he couldn’t do it. He just . . . left.”

We turn off Danielle’s street and into town, past the EVmU campus and onto Main Street. I’m struck by the sudden fear that we’ll run into Dean, that he’s stopped playing Mario Kart and has decided to come into town to go to the bars. I can’t see him right now. Not when I’m feeling like this.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she says. “That’s not what was supposed to happen.”