“I know Connor pretty well,” Elisa added. “He’s the kind of guy who wants every pretty girl he meets to think he’s amazing and pay lots of attention to him. Every person he meets, really.”

“We don’t want someone like Connor to make you feel bad,” Kayla said.

So they had decided to gang up on her and make her feel bad instead? And what was that supposed to mean, “someone like Connor”? How well could Elisa possibly know him? They barely hung out at swim team stuff at all. She hadn’t even been there that night at the Creamery when the rest of the group was hanging out.

“I really have to go,” Annabelle lied. She didn’t even put her plate in the sink and rinse it. Her mom would be horrified, but whatever. Kayla and Elisa deserved to have to wash her plate. “Thanks for the pizza and everything!” she said. “See you soon!”

Except she wouldn’t, really. She wasn’t going back to the team, and she wasn’t going to accept any more girls’ night invitations after today. And that was fine by her.

Chapter 25

As Annabelle walked to the beach entrance at the end of the street, the sounds of music and laughter floated toward her.

The bonfire was going strong, but the wind had picked up and Annabelle shivered. People here weren’t as dressed up as she was, either. Most of the girls had on sweatshirts or fleeces with jeans. Before she spotted anybody she recognized, she saw the beer cans glinting in the fire’s orange glow.

Of course there was beer. It was a high school party. She thought about leaving and calling Mitch for real, but then she spotted Connor.

He was sitting in the sand with his legs bent toward him and his elbows resting on his knees. He had on a baseball cap—that’s why she hadn’t found him right away. She’d been searching for his blond hair, which barely peeked out in the back, curling a tiny bit at the ends. Jordan was next to him, holding a beer, and Mark from the library was on Jordan’s other side with a shiny blue can propped up in the sand next to him. But Connor didn’t have one.

Connor wasn’t with Ruby, and he wasn’t drinking. The dread that had sunk to the bottom of Annabelle’s stomach in a tight wad when she saw the beer cans began to loosen, like the saltwater taffy she and Mia used to buy in town and pull apart into thin, stringy bites.

“Annabelle!” Ruby’s voice. Great. She was with a girl Annabelle recognized from the Academy. Genevieve, another day student, who played lacrosse with Mia and had just finished eighth grade.

“What’s up?” Ruby asked, her skinny eyebrows raised into arches. “What are you doing here?”

Annabelle launched into a too-long explanation about how Mitch was running late to pick her up from Elisa’s, and she’d heard the party while she was waiting and wandered down.