He likes Jasper well enough, but he worries about the same thing Dr. Shepard does: Jasper pulling me down. And it’s much harder to argue with my dad. He’s seen the state that Jasper is in—the circles under his eyes, his way of staring off into space randomly when you’re right in the middle of a conversation. I get why my dad is worried. I’m worried. But ever since my dad said his piece about Jasper shortly before Cassie’s funeral, he’s tried hard to keep his mouth shut about our friendship. Rachel, on the other hand, took the funeral as an invitation to jump right into the fray.

“HALF THOSE GIRLS will end up pregnant by the end of college, if they go to college,” Rachel muttered to me, motioning to Maia and the others. We were at the reception at Cassie’s house, which followed her funeral. Maia and her friends had been buzzing around Jasper from the start, “attending” to him in a way that was gross and also pointless because he was so out of it. “And, I mean, are they serious with the short skirts and the shaking their butts in his face? It’s his girlfriend’s funeral.”

I turned to look at Rachel, not sure whether to be pissed or grateful—for her being there in the first place, for weighing in on Maia and her friends, for trying to act like my mom. Because that’s what she was doing. That’s what she had been doing ever since I got back from Maine. And maybe that’s what made me angriest: her pretending that she could ever live up to who my mom had been.

“They are serious,” I said flatly, trying not to watch. Trying even harder not to care. I already knew enough about Jasper to know that their attention was making him feel worse. Like less of a person. Or more like a terrible one.

Maia and her friends had sniffled at Cassie’s service, and there’d been some running mascara. But I had been near enough to feel that underneath all of that, there wasn’t much more than a collective: ugh, crap, that totally sucks, but Cassie was kind of a disaster.

“Well, I think you should stay away from Jasper, too. I mean, look at him,” Rachel went on. “He’s a total mess. And this is exactly the kind of situation where—well, I could see how things between the two of you could—”

“Stop it,” I snapped at her. “I mean it.”

How dare Rachel pretend she had some special insight into Jasper and me? After everything we’d been through, Jasper and I were friends, but that was all. Of course, I would have much preferred if Rachel hinting otherwise didn’t bother me quite as much as it did.