My nose is cold and the sky’s a flat gray and out of nowhere I’m homesick for Mom, how she smells like coconut sunblock and sun. I don’t know what I’m going to tell her about Angles either. She didn’t even want me to come to Lakeshore. She wanted to take me out of high school and move to LA, where she thought I’d become a big star. But I knew what I really wanted. To be an artist, not an entertainer. And Angles is the next step to that. I’ve made that clear to her. So now what do I say?

More to not think about.

I sign out at the side gate, flash my ID, scribble my name, and rush down the driveway, leaving Lakeshore behind.

The town surrounds campus on three sides, residential streets giving way to the tree-lined blocks with shops and cafés and chiropractors. It’s like the set of a Hallmark Christmas special, or what you’d build if you asked for the exact opposite of where I grew up.

Java the Hutt, halfway down the second block, is usually empty. It smells like flavored coffees and cinnamony baked goods and wet newspaper and homey familiarity from all the times we’ve been here. Bright, filled with plants, and everything they sell, including the coffee, is truly terrible. We love it.

They’re already here when I arrive. Katherine’s wiping down the table with a napkin, and Nevaeh is laughing at Taylor, who is making his usual sweeping gestures as he talks animatedly, and there’s a cupcake with a match stuck in it sitting in front of them. They expect it to be good news.

Katherine sees me first, her whole face bursting into light, and she goes up on her tiptoes to wave me over, as if I could miss them.

“Congratulations!” she shouts across the room at me, and something in my chest unclenches. Taylor whistles, sharp and loud and shrill, and Nevaeh is clapping like I’ve just won a basket of infinite kittens. The usual barista frowns at us the way the usual barista does, dragging a rag across the counter, but my friends’ excitement is softening some of the ugly knots of self-pity.

“How’d you know?” I say, grinning at them and unwinding my scarf.

“Because you are amazing,” Katherine says, reaching up to grab my hand, pulling me down into the booth next to her. Her blue eyes are glowing like she’s snatched down pieces of a Florida beach sky. “I told you. We all told you.”

“We believe in you,” Nevaeh says, her voice matter-of-fact.

“Also, we’re always right,” Taylor says. “Do you think you’re ever going to listen to us?”

“Probably not,” I say to him honestly, and he laughs.