“Right now?”

“Yeah, Austin and I are kind of in the middle of something.”

“Dude,” I hushed, “I am too.” It should have bothered me that Carter was making me Eliza’s official babysitter, especially when he could have easily looked for her. It bothered Madison more.

She stopped straddling me, dusting her cropped jeans. She flipped me off and stalked back to the party.

“Fine.” I hung up. I shouted after Madison, “Are you going to be okay? Where are you going?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she shouted back.

“Madison,” I said. She put her finger in the air, signaling the end of this conversation. Whatever. She could be a drama queen if she wanted. This wasn’t the first time I’d made her mad and she’d stormed away from me, and I didn’t think it would be the last.

Whoosh. A low plane flying overhead pulled me back from my thoughts. A hollow reminder to rejoin the party.

“Nick Maguire,” Robert called from the sand dune. He reached for a high five. “Dude. Madison again? You’re the man.”

“Don’t forget it,” I said, giving him the obligatory shoulder punch.

Fifty or so more people had scattered around the fire during my brief intermission, and a sense of pride caught in my throat. This scene had every kind of student from all the senior cliques—the athletes, the smart athletes, the theatre kids, computer science guys and the one computer science girl, the princesses, the stoners, and even the stoners who had made the trek from other schools—everyone mingling and making memories.

This would be what I missed the most about high school: the rare moments of forgetting to pretend.

Eliza was settled in a camping chair a few yards away from Jamal’s grill, roasting a marshmallow. By herself, her yellow hair caught both the moonlight and the fire, accidentally creating a gentle, mesmerizing glow. How had Carter not found her?

“Hey, dude.” I plopped in the dirt next to her. “What’s happening?”

“Hello, Nicholas.”

A light tap touched my shoulder. “Let me guess,” said Jamal, “two hot dogs, extra ketchup?”

“How ’bout some waters? And one with a lime. For the lady.” Jamal shot me a thumbs-up.

“Jamal knows your food order?” Eliza asked. “How often have you come over here?”

“Actually I think the line is, ‘come here often?’”

“Duly noted.” Eliza slid the marshmallow off her stick. Its gooey center oozed between her fingers, while its exterior was burned black. Just how I liked them too.

“It’s truly an honor to have pick-up lines explained to me by Nick Maguire himself.” She chewed her marshmallow, keeping her eyes on the bonfire’s playful flames.

“What can I say, O’Connor. You’re special.”

Jamal approached with the waters, handing Eliza a plastic cup with a lime wedge in it. I had been joking about the lime—how Jamal had thought to bring limes to this bonfire was anyone’s guess. That bro knew his way around a party.

“Tell Madison that too?” Eliza sipped. Jamal retreated to bro-ing the grill. “Can’t have been what made her cry, though.”