They locked their bikes at the rack in front of the dunes, where Mia’s pink cruiser was waiting. As they walked onto the beach, Annabelle kicked off her flipflops, letting her feet sink into the soft sand. The waves were bigger than usual, leaving hissing white foam after they’d broken, and the seals were out, some resting on the rocks and others bobbing up and down in the water. She took in a big, salty gulp of ocean air.

Mia wore a bright blue bikini and lay facedown on her towel, kicking her already tan legs up and down as she read something on her phone. Annabelle had the kind of fair skin that either burned or did nothing, and Jeremy did, too. But Mia could spend five minutes out in the sun and boom: Her olive skin was golden-tan. “One good thing about Greek genes,” she’d told Annabelle once.

She popped up and ran over to Annabelle and Jeremy, spraying sand with every step. She looked like the old Mia right now, with her dark eyes all lit up. The Mia from sixth grade and even the first half of seventh, who made Annabelle a card on National Best Friend Day and painted Annabelle’s nails team colors before all their big meets last summer.

But when she opened her mouth, it was second-half-of-seventh-grade Mia all the way.

“I did it! Nothing below an A-minus except art, which my parents couldn’t care less about!”

The words pushed all the soothing, salty-fresh air out of Annabelle’s lungs, but she told herself to be happy for her friend.

“My dad’s taking me anywhere I want in August to celebrate!” Mia said. “I think I’m going to pick L.A.”

Her family was one of the few year-round island families with enough money to afford the full Gray Island tuition and plan a trip across the country in honor of a report card. They lived up the coast from Annabelle and Jeremy, in a neighborhood full of vacation homes. They used to be summer people who lived in Boston the rest of the year, but they’d moved here full-time right around the same time Annabelle had. Mia’s dad’s company had moved their office, so he was going to work from home anyway, and her mom, who had grown up in California, missed being near the ocean all the time.

“Congrats,” Jeremy said. “That’s awesome.”

Then he snuck a wrinkly-foreheaded look over at Annabelle, and her heart cannonballed to the bottom of her stomach.

Jeremy knew. It didn’t matter how hard she had tried to hide it. Jeremy knew how stupid she was, and he felt sorry for her.

She was already sure Mia had figured it out, since Mia peeked at her papers and lingered in the doorway when teachers talked to her after class. But Jeremy never peeked or eavesdropped. He was in a different section for history, so he hadn’t heard Mr. Derrickson say, “I can’t teach you if you don’t even try” loud enough for everybody to hear as he handed back a mostly blank quiz. And he was always busy with mathletes or sitting with his guy friends when she went to Ms. Ames’s office or met her tutor at lunch.