“Operation Hide the Bug.” Bree puts her hands up at my look. “That’s all he’ll say.”

I sit cross-legged on the ground, making the gummy bags crinkle in my coat pocket. I toss one to Sage, the other to Moon, stealing the moment of shark enthusiasm to drop, briefly, into a flashback of the woods. How I let his tongue in my mouth, something I always secretly thought sounded gross and intrusive, but isn’t at all. With the right person, maybe you can never get too intimate, never go too far. I open my eyes. Kincaid is watching me. I watch back.

He slows, hops off his board, holds it out to me. “Ever done it?” And it’s there between us, all the heat, his hands sliding over my bare skin. A smile plays at his lips. “Try.”

“So you can watch me fall on my ass?”

“Damn, really? No faith.” Kincaid puts his board down, steps up with the spectators. “Put one foot on, push off with the other. Easy.”

I exhale, looking over at Bree, who’s watching with the rest of them. I put one foot on the board, push off on the concrete with the other, rolling along with embarrassing slowness, making me push off again, harder, getting some speed under me, following the edge of the flat bottom so I don’t wobble into the paths of the pros and sabotage somebody’s trick. Kincaid walks with me, calling out, “Goofy leg.” Gestures down. “You ride with your left foot back. Not many people do.”

“Always knew I was special.” Trying to act like this is all impulsive, indicative of nothing, cursing and laughing as I almost run into the rail. “How do you, like, steer?”

That’s when I notice the small, dark figure coming down the sidewalk toward us. As she draws closer, she develops mid-calf boots, a black watch cap, a purposeful gait as she crosses the parking lot, then the dead grass. Landon, her face still and guarded.

She stops at the first group of people she sees, talking low, not lingering long before moving onto the next, then the next.

“—okay? Forget it.” Landon turns away from the girlfriend bench, leaving them whispering, shooting looks in her wake. She stops a few feet back from us—Trace scrapes a fingernail gouge down a shark stomach, saying, “Look. Gummy surfer body parts,” making Sage laugh—and you can feel it: Landon doesn’t really see us as friends. Even though we all hang here almost every day. Maybe Ivy is the buffer, the one whose presence makes this place belong to them, too. Kind of the way Sage and Bree are my passports to . . . well, pretty much anywhere. I step off the board, needing to feel grounded, my nervous stomachache back again.