I’ve been comforting myself by imagining a scenario in which Leo shows up on my front lawn and shouts I’m sorry up at my window, like a scene in a romantic comedy. He’ll also yell that he’s made a terrible mistake, and if I will just forgive him he’ll make it up to me, and Kayla doesn’t mean anything to him. Then I plan to open my window and scream back, You don’t mean anything to me, either! Go away, loser! and slam the window shut again. No kissing and making up for me. I don’t require a happy ending, only some small form of petty vengeance.

But, sadly, Leo never appears.

“What’s up with you?” Pop asks. “You’re being quieter than usual.”

“I’m a quiet person,” I say, although that’s not entirely true. I’m only quiet around people I don’t know. Around Pop I’m generally talkative. “I’m fine.”

Pop and Abby are in my bedroom, helping me pack for Hawaii. Although helping is not quite what Abby is doing. She keeps bouncing on the bed and suggesting weird stuff for me to bring, like my large wooden art easel that won’t have a prayer of fitting in my suitcase, or the white feather boa that’s draped over one of my bedposts, a leftover from a birthday party years ago. “To remind you of home,” Abby says, flinging it around my neck.

“We’re only going to be gone for like a week,” I remind her.

“How many days is a week?” Abby wants to know.

“Seven. But we’re going to be gone nine, counting the travel days.”

Abby counts it out on her fingers. “Nine days is a lot,” she decides.

Yes, it is. Thank god. It’s just what I need, nine days with an entire ocean between me and Leo. “I won’t get homesick, Abby. Trust me.”

“It’s too bad you burned up Bucky,” Abby adds mournfully. “You could have brought him instead. He was snuggly.”

“Bucky?” Pop looks confused.

“Ada got mad at her horse,” Abby explains. “I don’t think it was his fault, but she burned him up anyway, in the firepit, because Leo’s an asshole.”

Pop’s mouth opens, but no words emerge. He turns to me, eyebrows raised.

I cringe and hold my hands up, like I surrender, arrest me. “I don’t want to talk about it?”

Thankfully that’s when Afton struts into the room—without so much as knocking, of course—and everyone’s attention shifts. Because all Afton has covering her body is a bright red bikini.

“Um, why are you wearing your underwears?” Abby asks.

A legitimate question.

“Oh no, that’s too little to be underwear,” I say. “I’m not sure what that is, actually. I don’t think it’s clothing.”

“What, is this too slutty for you?” Afton says archly.