“I’m sorry,” she said. She was embarrassed by her sister’s behavior. Claudia was barely in high school and even she’d heard the rumors about Ridley Drake. Was her sister really that dumb? That desperate for attention?

“I’m sorry,” said Chad. “Is Edie even eighteen yet?”

Claudia nodded. “I don’t get it. He’s older than our dad.”

“Women are attracted to power,” he said.

“That’s such a cliché.” Maybe, she thought, if her parents hadn’t spent half of Claudia and Edie’s childhood on tour, leaving them for weeks every other month in the care of nannies and housekeepers, Edie wouldn’t find the affections of a man twice her age quite so exciting. Daddy issues. Nothing was more cliché than that.

“Cliché is just a shitty kind of true, though, right?” said Chad.

“I guess. That’s a weird way to think about it.”

“The whole thing is weird.”

It got even weirder when Edie got pregnant. Ridley connected Claudia’s sister to a doctor in Manhattan, paid for the procedure, and dispensed with her by Labor Day. In the years since, Claudia wondered whether Chad would have gotten so fierce about everything if what he’d had was just a regular crush, instead of a crush complicated by Edie and Ridley’s sordid backstory. The crush—was it mutual?—became apparent as soon as they returned to school that fall and were partnered in biology class. Now they had lots to talk about and none of it involved their awkward family connection. But that part of the connection was always in the background. They began building a friendship around shared humor and intelligence and a little bit of teenage chemistry, but the foundation was rotten. It stank the whole time.