The grass is mostly dead, mowed bald in patches. We pass a covered picnic area shedding brown paint, a playground with jungle gyms and swings tossed up over the frame, and, beside that, a skate park.

It’s all concrete, like a drained swimming pool with rails and half-pipes. That’s where everybody is, a small crowd beneath the streetlights, perched or sharing benches or ollieing boards off ramps. Reminds me of when we lived in Berlin, New Hampshire, where I spent most afternoons with my best friend at the time, Nica Pleck, eating Popsicles and watching her brother practice stunts on his board in their driveway. When I had to move the summer before eighth grade, Nica and I made the usual promise to visit each other over school breaks. Tough to keep when you’re thirteen and your life is ruled by your parents’ schedules and whether they’re willing to drive across state lines just to ensure that your BFF doesn’t find somebody else to eat blue Icee Freezes and share Raina Telgemeier books with. We drifted. Four years later, Nica’s a vaguely familiar profile pic on my social media feed, shrunken, without detail.

Now, Bree’s fingers work the hem of her shirt, itching to tug it down. “Shitshitshitshit. Why didn’t I change—”

“You look hot, okay? Quit messing with—” Sage’s last word hiccups off as he collides with her, this boy-shaped bullet who seems to come from nowhere, catching her around the waist and tossing her up in the air, nearly knocking me on my ass in the process.

No time to shriek—she’s over his shoulder, laughing crazily, carried off as if by a pillaging Celt, which he sort of looks like: six and a half feet tall, his hair a ragged carroty-red Mohawk, the flannel around his waist streaming back like a clan tartan.

I shoot a WTF look at Bree, but it bounces off her back. She doesn’t even slow down, totally focused on finding a strategic position along the edge of the park, only a few feet from where the concrete dips down into the flat bottom, where the skaters do their thing. I run to catch up.

Bree seems to want distance from the cluster of girls who chat on the benches nearby, so we stake our own territory close enough to catch the wind off the passing skaters. There’s a carnival vibe here, the smell of cigarette smoke and overfilled trash barrels, and music, somebody blasting vintage Beastie Boys from iPhone speakers.

After charging her in mad circles around the parking lot, the Celt brings Sage back clamped upside down under his big arm, letting go every few seconds like he’s going to drop her on her head, and saying, “OhmyGod—ohJesusChrist—” while she screams like she needs saving. People only laugh and catcall, so I guess this is normal.

“That’s Trace,” Bree says. “Don’t ask.”