“Oh, little Bee,” she said. “I bet Ash doesn’t tell you everything he gets up to.”

“Of course I do.” Ash winked at me, but I couldn’t say for sure it was the truth.

Mom changed the subject and patted my head as if I were five, not—at last—a teenager. How I’d longed to call myself that, a teenager, only to learn the word held no superpowers at all. When I looked in the mirror, I still saw an awkward thing staring back at me. Shaggy black hair and an angular face with huge eyes, which might have been fine if I’d lived in an anime comic book. I wondered if it was what everybody else saw when they looked at me, including Ash.

“Hang out with me this afternoon?” I’d said to him three weekends ago, as we’d sat on the porch eating ham sandwiches and drinking Mom’s delicious homemade lemonade. “I want to get some more wood at the beach and make necklaces and bracelets.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” Ash replied, which sounded much the way Mom talked to me when she’d already decided I wouldn’t get what I’d asked for.

“Why not today?” I sounded whiny, but I couldn’t help it. We hardly spent any time together anymore, and I missed him.

He lowered his voice and leaned in, his whisper tickling my ear. “Can you keep a secret?” After I’d given him my most sincere nod, and crossed my heart, he’d continued. “Celine’s having some trouble. She needs someone to talk to.”

“What kind of trouble?” I whispered back, leaning in, and throwing a glance over my shoulder to demonstrate my utmost levels of discretion.

“I can’t tell you. I promised, and it’s important to keep your promises. Always.”

I’d insisted I wouldn’t share with anyone, I was excellent at keeping secrets, but he’d still refused to elaborate, maintained it wasn’t his place to tell, he couldn’t betray her. I didn’t like him excluding me from parts of his life, and stomped up to my bedroom, ignoring Mom’s pleas to be quiet because she had another headache.

Ash saw Celine more and more often, hanging out with her after school, sometimes at her house, or at ours as they worked on math and biology because she was, quote, “smart, and a grade level ahead.” His voice had gone soft when he’d made that comment, and I’d winced as it pinched my heart like a crab’s claws.