“Elise—I don’t know,” she said, and my guard was up again.

“What about Elise?” I said, immediately ready to defend her.

“She seems kind of selfish?” Melody said, sounding uncertain. “Wait—maybe that’s not the right word.”

“Elise is one of the most selfless people I’ve ever met,” I said, remembering our first night together. How she caught me when I was reeling and patched me up. She always knew what I needed, she was always looking out for me.

“That’s not what I meant,” Melody tried again, but I was already walking away from her.

Elise said Melody and I had simply outgrown each other. “But don’t worry,” she told me. “We will never outgrow each other.” And I believed her.

Lying on the Astroturf, we were all still laughing, Elise’s hand loosely on top of my wrist. Our eyes met and even in the dark I could see that undercurrent of electricity behind hers. She gave my hand a short squeeze and let go.

“I’m bored,” Jae announced when the laughter died down.

“Well, we can’t have that. What do you want to do?” Elise asked.

“I don’t know. But something. Anything.”

“I have an idea,” Julie said. “We could go trash Mr. Dawkins’s classroom.”

“What? Why?” Ben said.

“Ugh, he is gross,” Elise said. Dawkins, one of the AP Lit teachers, had a certain reputation for being a creep. He never said anything reportable but I’d heard girls complain about the way he’d look at them, staring a little too long, or the way he kept asking some of the students to come by his room after school for a chat—almost always his female students. I stayed clear of him and his classroom. Had he done something awful to Julie?

“I don’t know how or why, but he found out about me and Madi,” Julie said. “And he pulled her aside to ask her about us.”

We all sat up and looked at Madison expectantly. “Well, I mean, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but yeah, not exactly great either. He was just ‘curious,’ ” she said, using air quotes. “He wanted to know why I broke up with my boyfriend for Julie, which isn’t even what happened!” I couldn’t believe he took it upon himself to target them like that.

“He said he was concerned about her,” Julie said, rolling her eyes. “He wanted to make sure she was making good life choices.”

“What the hell?” Ben said, leaning forward, elbows against his knees.

“Actually, he didn’t even say Julie’s name, just ‘that girl,’ ” Madison added before reaching for Julie’s hand.

“Wonderful,” Elise said.

“Let’s do it,” Jae said. “Let’s go trash his room.”

“No,” Madison said. “Let’s just forget about it. I mean, he’s a jerk but he’s harmless, you know? More annoying than anything else. And I’m graduating in a few months, anyway.”

“I don’t know,” Elise said. “I feel like we should do something.” It was moments like this that I was extra grateful for Elise. She could be counted on to take action, fix things.