“Okay, okay.”

My car keys jingled as she held them up. Darn. They’d been left in the ignition while I checked out the injuries.

“You can have these back next week.”

I deserve that. It seemed like she knew it had been an accident, but she wouldn’t let me off easy.

Head hanging low, I shuffled to my room with my soccer and interview gear heavy in my hands. I threw myself onto my bed, pulling the thick pillows over my eyes and burying into the fleece blankets.

Might as well tell Carter.

It wasn’t until my fingers hovered over the Send button that I remembered: I couldn’t be grounded.

A chill caught in my throat. The phone slipped out of my sweaty palms.

Eliza.

RULE NUMBER 14

A bro shalt never half-ass a first date.

Thursday afternoon, Carter picked at Sir Whiskerton (the name we’d given our sacrificial rat—for science) and I flipped through the lab directions. This brain dissection had already taken weeks and nothing we did made sense.

This did not bode well.

Our classmates shrieked as they dug further into their specimens, many of them now uncovering the, crap I had still had no idea what it was, even though Carter and I had gotten to it last week. Because Carter is a supernerd.

“I want to take the AP bio test,” I said, “for that PT program. I know we were already going to, but now I really want to do well.”

“You do know your class average is, like, a 71.” Carter wiped a speck of formaldehyde off his safety goggles.

“Actually . . . 69.” I was pretty proud of that.

Carter punched my shoulder. That’s the spirit.

“Good thing I have an in with the best tutor Cassidy High has ever seen,” I said.

“Gonna take some work, Mags,” he said. “It’s going to be more than putting labels on—” He squinted at the label I’d stuck in what I’d guessed was the rat’s outer intestine. “That’s the left kidney.”

“Testing you. And I know. I want to do it. That program seemed like a great fit.”

“You want to start tonight, then? Test is in February—practice tests start soon, though.”

“Tonight . . .” I wracked my brains for an excuse. Nope, can’t, chilling with your sister, wasn’t exactly something I could say.

Then again, how exactly I was even going to go out with his sister was still TBD, as I was grounded, and sans transportation.

It seemed like I was down to four options:

A. Cancel my date with Eliza, risk looking like a total flake and loser for prioritizing Carter and biology over her, and risk losing her forever.

B. Tell Carter I was busy and somehow pick up and go out with his sister without him realizing I was there or that she was with me.

C. Mrs. Doubtfire the situation and make plans with both of them in the same location, then switch back and forth between hanging out with each of them and lose a wig in the process.