Connor finally joined Jordan, and they started their game. But now Annabelle was too thirsty to read, so she walked over to the water fountain. And when she peeked back at Connor and Jordan, Connor was watching her, too.

She gave him that closed-mouth smile she’d practiced in the mirror with Mia, but it widened into a grin when she heard Jordan yell at him.

“It’s your turn, Mads! Come on!”

She’d made Connor Madison forget it was his turn. She’d never felt so powerful in her life.

Chapter 14

Mom was there at the end of practice, standing so close to the edge of the pool that her beige linen work dress was dotted with water spots. When she pushed her sunglasses up to the top of her head, there was that worry line, creasing the triangle of skin between her eyebrows and her nose.

And there was Mia, standing in the middle of a group of girls, watching Annabelle’s mom with her whole body angled forward to listen instead of paying attention to what the other girls were saying.

“Get your things and let’s go,” Mom said. “Now, please, Annabelle.”

Mia caught Annabelle’s eye and frowned, as if to say she was sorry Annabelle was so obviously in trouble. It was the same frown she gave Annabelle when teachers asked to talk to her after class, and it made her want to scream. At least Connor was busy talking to Jordan and the other guys instead of watching her get scolded by her mother as if she were a six-year-old who’d gotten caught sneaking an extra cookie.

She caught up with Elisa on the way to the locker room.

“So do you work at Beach Buzz?” she asked. That was the most popular coffee shop in town, on the cobblestoned Main Street across from the preppy shops that only summer people shopped at. They always hired lots of extra high school kids for the summer.

“Yeah, I just started,” Elisa said.

“Lots of fancy summer people asking for all those fancy drinks?” Annabelle asked.

“So many fancy drinks!” Elisa said. “I guarantee you they sell, like, two half-caf skinny iced mocha-caramel-whatever lattes the whole rest of the year and then two thousand in the summer.”

Annabelle was relieved to reassure herself that things were normal with Elisa, to sort of . . . counteract what had happened during the game, when Jordan had called Elisa manly and laughed. But it struck her how easy it was to bond with girls, too, by sort of making fun of someone else. When in doubt, say something mildly insulting about summer people to another year-round islander. Or at school, complain about a teacher. Or for the kids who went to the public school, complain about kids who went to the Academy. She didn’t like it when she was part of the group that got complained about, but here she was doing it, too.

Then her wet ponytail thwacked against her right ear and a tan hand grazed Elisa’s shoulder.