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Dedication

To Emily and Hartner. To Taryn and Jean. To Elaine and Beth and our Greg.

To everyone else who lost their best friend.

Epigraph

I know what you must be thinking. “Poor little rich girl, what does she know about misery?”

—ROSE DEWITT BUKATER, TITANIC (1997)

PROLOGUE

fifteen years ago

I pull the trigger over and over and over as the increasingly feeble stream of water fails to propel my tiny horse as fast as I want it to go.

“Come on, come on!” I say, baring my teeth, which are still sore from today’s orthodontist appointment, not taking my eyes off the bullseye for a moment.

Aimee’s horse lurches ahead even farther, and that’s when I notice that she’s doubled over beside me, cracking up, her finger not even on her accelerator gun.

“Mine’s broken!” she says between laughing gasps, and points at her ghostly horse, racing on speedily without her assistance.

My jaw drops and I yell, “This game is rigged!”

The finish-line bell sounds as Aimee’s horse stops at the end of its track, leaving mine far behind.

“You win,” says the bored, older teenager working the booth. He then gestures at the prizes. She picks a white teddy bear; he yanks it down from where it’s clipped by the ear and tosses it to her, then sets up the horse game for another couple of suckers.

“It’s rigged,” I whisper to the girl taking over my old position. “The game is rigged.”

“I don’t think she got it,” Aimee says as we walk away.

“Kids.”

It’s the end of summer and as hot as it gets in this part of muggy Florida. At home, the air-conditioning is broken, so I’ve been aching hot for weeks except for the nights I’ve been allowed to sleep over at Aimee’s. Even our pool is hot. My parents keep reminding me what a whiny, ungrateful complaint that is, but it sucks, and it’s not my fault they don’t get that having something that should be nice that doesn’t work is annoying.