Nobody else seemed to understand just why she insisted on dragging me around that summer to different parties and gatherings and hangouts, but she was Connie O’Reilly, and nobody with any sense of self-preservation was willing to actually call her out on it. I was awkward, as she ought to have expected, showing up in mismatched outfits and sticking to the margins of the group. I stammered when anyone that wasn’t her tried to talk to me, hiding in the corner. There was no disguising the way the others would watch me from the corner of their eyes, eyebrows creased, whispering to each other about why Connie had invited me of all people to hang out with them. I paid them no heed, of course, when I too pondered over how exactly I wound up in such situations. And normally such a flop would have had Connie surrendering and giving up, but something about me had caught her attention, and where everyone else saw clumsiness and a bundle of eccentricity, she saw potential. I just needed a little bit of work.

Early in July she had dragged me into town and had spared no expenses on the makeover she decided I badly needed if I was to gain the acceptance of our peers. We threw out all of my old clothes in one afternoon—my cardigans, my striped long-sleeved tops—to make room for a new wardrobe funded entirely by her unknowing father. And I showed up to her next party in black jeans that were cut out at the knees, a band T-shirt and leather jacket, dressing like I was on the cover of one of Claire’s old record albums. Everyone was starting to reimagine what it meant to be hip and original that summer and it was clear this was a major win on my part—on Connie’s part. It didn’t matter that I looked nothing like the rest of her friends. I stood out, and it wasn’t in a bad way. For once I caught people’s attention and that wasn’t judged to be a negative thing. I was unique. Cool. Different. I started to smoke cigarettes that Aidan’s older brother was happy to buy for me and stopped standing to the edges of the room. I said stupid, funny things to make girls laugh. I was charming and I was smooth, and it didn’t take long for most of Connie’s friends to want to be my friend, too. I didn’t care one iota what any of them thought of me, but an odd sense of satisfaction nestled in my chest, knowing I wasn’t going to go my whole life overlooked. I became the type of cool that a year earlier I would have hated; swaggering, nonchalant, and cripplingly insecure underneath it all.