Danielle swears softly from the front seat, and I can tell she’s caught on, even if she can’t hear Andrew’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Your mom’s gonna kill you,” I say.

“Yeah, and she’s gonna kill you too.”

“What did I do?”

“Your parents are here.”

I sigh, the weight on my chest increasing. “I didn’t have a party!”

“Yeah, but it was your birthday. Obviously you were here.”

“Fine,” I answer. “I’ll get dropped off.”

I hang up the phone and turn to Danielle. “You left the condom wrapper on the nightstand?” I can’t tell whether I’m angry or whether I want to laugh.

She purses her lips. “At least we used protection.”

Andrew’s house looks spotless. When we pull up to the front, it’s easy to forget that last night even happened at all, that we spent the morning lugging trash bags across the slushy ground.

“Tell Andrew I’m sorry,” Danielle says as I jump out of the car. “His parents won’t kill him?” She actually looks worried. I want to tell her Andrew will be fine. He’s used to getting into trouble. I’m the one she should be apologizing to. But she’s craning her head out the window and looking toward the house, and she doesn’t focus her worried gaze in my direction at all.

“Don’t worry about it,” I say instead. I shut the door and walk toward the house, my boots crunching in the snow. The car peels out of the driveway, the smoke from the exhaust leaving little puffs in the cold air. I can hear Wicked come back on from all the way down the street.

My mom must have spotted me coming up the driveway, because she bursts through the front door and onto the porch. Like usual, her white-blond hair is wild around her head, curling out like wisps of smoke. When I was little, I used to think my mom was a beautiful witch in a fairy story, with her long colorful skirts and the gemstone rings stacked on her fingers. But then I realized she’s just from Vermont.

Right now she’s wrapped in a purple pashmina to keep out the cold, and it whips behind her in the wind like a flag. I shrink back slightly when I see her, preparing for a lecture, angry words to match the angry whip of the pashmina.

“Honey, it’s freezing! Where is your coat?”

The soft tone of her voice catches me off guard.

“I’m fine.”

She grabs ahold of me as I get up the steps and ushers me inside. The house smells like garlic now instead of the stale beer stink from last night, and there’s classical music playing—I recognize Debussy from when I used to take piano lessons.