She says nothing. Not to Becca who would freak out, not to Julia who would tell her she was talking bullshit, not to Selena; especially not to Selena. When Holly can’t sleep a few nights later, when she opens her eyes to Selena’s whole body one curve of concentration over something cupped glowing in her palms, she doesn’t sit up and say softly Lenie tell me. When a long wait later Selena takes a shivery breath and shoves the phone down the side of her mattress, Holly doesn’t start making up excuses to be on her own in the bedroom. She lets the phone stay where it is and hopes she never sees it again.

She acts like Selena is totally fine and everything’s totally fine and the biggest problem in the world is Junior Cert Irish which OMG is going to destroy her brain and turn her whole life into a total failure. This makes Becca chill out and cheer up, at least. Julia is still a bitch, but Holly decides to think this is because of exam stress. She spends a lot of time with Becca. They laugh a lot. Afterwards Holly can’t remember about what.

Sometimes she wants to punch Selena right in the soft pale daze of her face and keep punching. Not because she got off with Chris Harper and lied to them and broke the vow that was her idea to begin with; those aren’t even the problem. But because the whole point of the vow was for none of them to have to feel like this. The point was for one place in their lives to be impregnable. For just one kind of love to be stronger than any outside thing; to be safe.

Becca is not stupid and, no matter what people sometimes think, she’s not twelve. And a place like this is riddled with secrets but their shells are thin and it’s crowded in here, they get bashed and jostled against each other; if you’re not super-careful, then sooner or later they crack open and all the tender flesh comes spilling out.

She’s known for weeks that something is wrong and spreading. That night in the grove, when Holly was going on at Lenie, Becca tried to think it was just Holly having a mood; she does that sometimes, digs into something and won’t let go, all you need to do is pull her attention somewhere else and she’s fine. But Julia doesn’t care about Holly’s moods. When she jumped in to make everything all sweet and smooth, that was when Becca started knowing something real was wrong.