While Peak and Bats seem to be making a habit of baring their souls to each other, Ridley and Jubilee are much more tentative. We are stolen smiles and the occasional head resting on my shoulder. Peak and Bats are . . . more. And the closer they get, the shittier I feel about everything—especially since she handed me exactly the in my dad’s looking for when she told me about needing that scholarship. God, I hate money.

She sighs. “I just have a lot on my mind today.”

“Is this about the audition?”

“The what?” she asks, her face scrunching up. “How do you know about that?”

I should have known this would happen. I’ve been juggling too many balls at once, and that’s never been my strong point.

“How do you know about my audition?” A little divot forms between her eyebrows when she asks, and I wish I could shrink down like Ant-Man and hide in it until she’s less angry, or until she forgets about me completely. Whichever happens first.

“You told me,” I say, but suddenly I’m not so sure. Did she tell me? Or did she just tell Bats? She must have told us both. She had to have. It’s like the most important thing about her. She definitely would have told Ridley too—told me too, I mean.

“I didn’t.” She crosses her arms. “Conservatory prep and audition are inner circle only.”

I wince at the implication that I’m not inner circle. But, of course, I’m not. I’m just the rando at her mom’s store.

“Are you sure?”

“They only let in eight cellists, and I don’t need anyone finding out I applied if I don’t make the cut. Inner. Circle,” she says, flicking me in the shoulder. “I wouldn’t have told you. It’s not the kind of thing I would let slip.”

And okay, it is supremely fucked up, but a part of me is jealous that she told Bats all about it but wouldn’t let it slip to me. I know.

I know.

But the bigger issue at the moment is that I know something I shouldn’t, and she’s standing in front of me, waiting for an explanation that I don’t have. Here we go.

shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit

I exhale slowly, fumbling with the rack we were just restocking. Maybe if I just stare straight ahead, another customer will come in, and Jubilee will forget all about this conversation we’re having.

“Well,” she says again, “I know I didn’t tell you.”

I chew on my lip, trying to buy myself more time. “Vera must have mentioned it?”

“She wouldn’t. She knows how superstitious I am. There are, like, seven people in this entire world who know I’m going for the summer program, and I want to know how you make eight.”