The question takes me by surprise. I turn my eyes toward the water, watching my dress float and ripple around me. The reflection of my pink hair creates a rosy halo around me. “Don’t you already know? You sleuthed me out, Detective. I want to save Amara.”

“But you could’ve done that a myriad of other ways—you are doing that, it seems, at least by your online presence.”

“As if that’s enough,” I sigh, resting my hand just above the ripples of the water, watching the lights from the pool dance across my skin. “You know, I really love Amara. I relate to her. She was able to make mistakes and still come back from them—she wasn’t ruined because of them. She learned, and she grew, and she became stronger.” Because Amara is the type of character who always screwed up—like me, trying to do the right thing but never doing it the right way. Like the online petitions, the Twitter hashtag, the movement itself—it’s all fine and good, but it wasn’t the right way because…“I’m no one, Ethan. I haven’t done anything. So I guess that’s why I wanted to be Jess, so I could be someone. So my voice would matter.”

“Imogen, that’s not—”

“Oh, it’s true,” I interrupt. “My brother’s a year younger than me and he’s vice president of his class, and he’ll probably even be quarterback. He’s just so talented at everything, I feel like…like I’m letting everyone down because I’m not good at anything. And it’s not because I don’t try,” I add before he can suggest it, because people always suggest it. “I’ve tried out for the debate team, but when I had to debate a guy over women’s reproduction he told me that women are too fragile to have control over their own bodies. I got kicked out of the club for kneeing him in the nads—”

“Whoa, really?”

“—and I tried to join the track team but I’m about as good at running as I am at algebra, so I couldn’t join the math club, either.”

“Imogen,” he tries to stop me, but I’m just getting started on the Great Failings of Imogen Lovelace.

“I suck at grammar, even though I love books,” I tell him, beginning to count my shortcomings on my fingers. “I’m in the book club, and the anime club, and I started a sci-fi club for the sole reason of getting after-school credit for watching reruns of Starfield. I’m still very proud of that.”

“Imogen.”