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First published in the USA by A Feiwel and Friends Book, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC, and in Great Britain by Penguin Books 2024 001

Excerpt from “Detail of the Fire” from War of the Foxes by Richard Siken. Copyright © 2015 by Richard Siken. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, coppercanyonpress.org.

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Title page artwork by cherriielle

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ISBN: 978–0–241–63810–1

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FOR GABI, MY BEST- EVER BATHROOM KISS

LET’S ADMIT, WITHOUT APOLOGY, WHAT WE DO TO EACH OTHER.

WE KNOW WHO OUR ENEMIES ARE. WE KNOW.

“DETAIL OF THE FIRE”, RICHARD SIKEN

ONE

When I was eleven, Sydney Demarco told me that the nail polish she was wearing was called Princess Purple. She fanned her skinny li le ngers in front of my face and said that her mom had taken her to an actual spa and the women there said that she had beautiful hands and she looked at the ragged pink skin around my thumbnail and asked if I’d ever been to a spa.

I don’t want to be a dick, but maybe that’s where Sydney peaked, because she’s never stopped painting her nails Princess Purple.

I painted her nails for her, once, before a party. At Olivia Reiner’s kitchen island. She splayed her beautiful hands across the white quartz, and when I took o the old polish her nails were yellow and bri le underneath because they never see the sun, and then I covered them up again while we drank coolers and Olivia winged my eyeliner and asked me all about what it was like to sleep with Ethan Gray.

Sydney’s never stopped painting her nails Princess Purple. Same way Olivia’s never stopped throwing parties.

Now, though, there’s no pregame. The coolers are still

here, but my hands skip over them in favor of a vodka bo le’s shiny red cap. There’s no nail painting, but there is a bo le of Princess Purple on the same island. That’s where Sydney did her nails while everyone was ge ing ready. Olivia wouldn’t have been the one to paint them for her, but maybe someone else, Savannah or Jordan or Kennedy, someone, peeled back the chipped purple and replaced it with the exact same shade. The same, always.

I haven’t seen Sydney or Olivia, yet, but I know they’re around together somewhere. Olivia never goes missing for too long at her parties; she sparkles and glows when enough people look at her. At her house, she can make all the rules. And you can’t have an Olivia without a Sydney, who only ever wants to laugh at your jokes and remembers, sharply, everything you’ve ever told her.

It feels like everyone in the world is in Olivia’s kitchen. It’s sticky-hot, too hot for Maine in September. Olivia’s sliding glass door is open so the boys can smoke outside, and the humidity is creeping in, thick and su ocating like the rest of the party. My hair is starting to stick to my forehead. It must be going frizzy because I wasn’t here to get ready and borrow one of Olivia’s ten thousand products for it. A drop of sweat is slowly making its way down the center of my back.

If this was last year, I’d yell at the boys to stop, tell them they’re giving us all cancer even though it’s probably just pot, end up marching myself out there and nishing o whatever they have in their vape pens, tucking myself under Gray’s arm while he or me or both of us get more crossfaded than intended.

Logan Bailey comes in from the outside, and I try not to look at him, but I still see he’s holding a beer and a cider he pulled from the cooler. They’re dripping all over the oor. He starts walking toward me and it feels like something in my stomach melts.

“Hey, Alana.”

“You sure your delicate sensibilities can handle both of those in one night?” I ask him instead of saying hi back. You have to one-up Logan, always, or he’ll beat you to it.

Logan hasn’t quite known how to talk to me since last year, but he used to do this, would bring me drinks while we waited for Gray to arrive, and it wasn’t ever my favorite way to spend an hour but it was something. Maybe this is something.

“This one isn’t for me,” Logan says, and there it is again, the melting, the corners of my mouth li ing.

He looks around, over my head, past me at the brass pendant lights hanging perfectly in Olivia’s equally perfect kitchen. He still isn’t looking at me when he speaks again. “Where’s Gray?”

You can never let Logan know he’s made you feel small. He’s the type to pounce—on girls who give him the time of day, on teachers who think he’s a Nice Young Man, on the joke, always a joke, at your expense—and if he smells blood, it’s over. Even if the half smile on my face freezes, even if my gut twists, even if my cheeks glow red, he can’t notice it.

That’s Gray’s drink, that cider, and Logan is Gray’s friend, and he wasn’t my friend when I was Gray’s Girl, so why would we be friends now?

“He’s not here yet.” I cross my arms over my chest and

swallow hard, because Logan fucking Bailey can’t know that he hurt my feelings.

If Logan really was Gray’s friend, he’d probably know that Gray’s not here yet. But I bet he thinks texting Gray to ask when he’s going to show up is “gay.” Guess it’s only ing that he asks me, then.

Gray would have laughed at that, if he was here now like he said he’d be.

“Nice shirt.” Logan’s smirking now, in the way I used to nd funny. He takes a look at me, dips his gaze up and down my body like he has a right to it, the way he has a right to everything. “Nice shirt, nice hat, nice jacket.”

It’s even ho er in the kitchen now because I’m trying to tell myself that I don’t want to hit Logan Bailey, except that I do, I so do. I haven’t cut my hair all summer, so it’s down past my boobs now, spilling out from under Gray’s hat and wavymessy because I haven’t brushed it all day. I’m glad for it right now, covering me up, hiding me away from where Logan’s eyes stick to me for just seconds too long, sizing me up like he’s trying to peel away layers until he gures out what Gray ever saw in me.

“What, did you come out just so you could keep wearing Gray’s shit without having to sleep with him? You can tell me, I won’t say anything.”

Logan’s laughing because this is a joke, because we’re friends, aren’t we? Friends make fun of their friends. It’s a joke, it’s fun, we’re iends, come on, Alana, god, this is supposed to be a party.

I don’t respond, and he wanders o in that way drunk boys

do when you aren’t serving a purpose and they forget that they have to at least pretend to have manners. I tip my cup sarcastically at his back, and Jordan, stumbling inside with a vape cloud surrounding her like some kind of grimy angel, sees it and shoots me a confused look on her way by.

Someone cheers from a few rooms away, a big, loud boyshout that feels familiar and a million miles away at once. Gray’s shirt is so , worn with use. It’s one of my favorites, faded black and perma-wrinkled because I always tuck it into my bra when I wear it out. If I look down at myself and listen to the party, it almost feels the way it felt last year. Same Princess Purple on the counter. Same Alana, same party. Just waiting on her boyfriend.

The di erence is, last year people would be talking to me. Logan might have stayed, might have o ered me one of his drinks because everyone’s nice to Gray’s Girl. My makeup would be cuter because Olivia would have done it, and she can be an almighty bitch but she knows her way around a beauty blender.

I put both my hands on the island to feel the cool stone, to prove I’m still here. No one else has noticed Sydney’s nail polish there, wedged between two bowls of chips. No one would notice it if they didn’t know what it was, if they hadn’t felt the glass, hadn’t picked up Sydney’s hand like it might explode because everything always felt so much like a test back then.

It’s not that no one’s looking at me. It’s that everyone’s trying so hard not to.

I watch my hands reach over and stu Sydney Demarco’s bo le of Princess Purple into my back pocket.

The kitchen tile is sticky because all the other drunk kids are spilling their drinks, and the music and the talking and Sydney shrieking somewhere else in the house is all too loud, so I can’t hear the way my ip- ops peel slowly away from the oor, but I can feel it. It’s too hot to be wearing Gray’s jean jacket, but it looks good with my out t. We’ve both worn it enough that it smells like the two of us. I’m about to take it o (not because of Logan, but not not because of him, either) when I hear another voice.

“Nice jacket.”

It comes from behind me. The comment should make my shoulders rise, make me feel small and angry like Logan does, but instead everything melts away and I smile for the rst time all night.

“Nice dick,” I counter when Gray slings his arm over my shoulders and squeezes me close. Broad shoulders, brown skin tanned dark and beautiful, smile like the sun, like a homecoming. I lean in, arms around his waist, take a breath and smell minty gum and that boy-scented bodywash they all use.

“You would know,” he says down at me.

I cackle, bright and familiar but foreign at once. Gray must have snuck a couple of beers in before coming here; he hasn’t joked like that before. I picture him silent on the car ride over, his mom dropping him o before her shi tonight and him desperately trying to play it cool. My laugh is part genuine, part relief.

Gray grins, and I grin back, and the kitchen doesn’t feel too hot anymore. Everything is normal again. I can breathe again. Sydney’s never stopped painting her nails Princess Purple.

Same way Olivia’s never stopped throwing parties. Same way Gray and I never stopped loving each other.

“I can’t believe you made me sit here alone for an hour.” I follow him to the drinks table and watch him mix dark rum and Sprite. It’s too strong for him and he’s going to make me nish it o later, I already know, but even that’s comforting. The knowing. It’s not a party without Gray. Everyone thinks so.

“You only texted me een minutes ago, drama queen,” he says. “Besides, I gured you’d be doing all your pregame shit with Olivia and them.”

I take a very, very long sip of my drink.

“Well, you haven’t missed anything,” I tell him instead of disclosing my lack of pregame invite this evening. It’s true that Gray hasn’t missed anything tonight, as far as I know, but I’m sure by Monday we’ll hear all about how someone pissed their pants and fell down a ight of stairs or something.

“I’ve missed you,” he says, jabbing his ngers into my sides. I double over and laugh again, loud enough that people look our way. It all clicks into place, and it’s so good that I remember why I faked this for as long as I did.

“You’re the best boyfriend ever,” I tell him. I mean for it to come out as a joke, but I end up sounding too sincere. Gray makes a face like there’s something caught in his throat for a second and then laughs me o .

“You’re just saying that because I’m the only one you’ll ever have.”

“You don’t know that!” I chirp. “I could have an exploratory phase in college and nd me a good old-fashioned himbo jock to se le down with.”

Gray gives me a look. I ignore it.

“He’ll treat me well,” I continue. “His name is absolutely Josh.”

Gray tries to glare at me, but he laughs instead, so I laugh harder and take the drink he’s just going to pass o to me anyway.

We do a lap and nd ourselves in Olivia’s crowded living room, standing o to the side and watching everything, me tucked under Gray’s arm as if it’s not a billion degrees in Olivia’s house. She and Sydney are both in here, Syd’s legs in Olivia’s lap while Logan sits on the arm of the couch and looks down Olivia’s top so obviously it even makes me feel violated.

“Do we know her?” Gray asks a er a second. He nods his head in the direction of a girl wearing ripped jeans, without a drink in her hand. She’s standing uneasily beside another girl—a sophomore, I think—who looks much more comfortable than she does. I consider making some kind of joke. Anxious and out of place. You have a type, huh? But I already feel like I’m pushing my luck with Gray tonight, so I bite my tongue, say what he wants me to say.

“I think she’s Rachel Milner’s cousin.” I don’t know for sure, but anyone new at Olivia’s house is almost de nitely someone’s cousin or neighbor or childhood best friend who’s just moved back from somewhere.

Gray and I haven’t done this yet. We don’t quite know how this works. I’ve spent years of my life dealing with the fact that nearly every girl Gray comes into contact with wants to

be with him. Before, I was always more worried about making sure people knew I didn’t like it than I was about the wanting itself. Gray would never. Not even when, secretly, in the middle of the night, I wished he would.

But it’s di erent now. Now Gray has all of this wanting right in front of him, and he knows that if he wants any of it back, all he has to do is ask. He just doesn’t know how to yet.

“Maybe we should invite her to play beer pong with us,” he says, not looking away from her. He has to dip his head and crane his neck to keep staring because there’s always this frenetic energy in Olivia’s living room, everyone nearly vibrating, constantly darting in and out of conversations and people and locations, wondering who’s going to do whatever it is we’ll be talking about tomorrow.

“Ah, yes, that beer pong game we were mere moments from playing.”

“Yeah, that one.”

I guess it’s be er to get this one, this weird rst whateverthis-is-going-to-turn-into interaction with a girl who isn’t me, out of the way before the school year actually starts. Gray and I haven’t spoken about protocol yet, but we’ve put ourselves in an extremely fucked-up spiral where neither of us feel like we can do something like this without the other around. Nothing says hook up with me at a party like your ex-girlfriend chaperoning the entire thing, right?

I roll my eyes, but walk up to the girl and her friend. The oor here is less sticky than the kitchen, deep brown hardwood that’s usually covered with these impossibly u y

white rugs. Olivia would have made Sydney roll them up, stashed them away in her room so no one could spill on them.

“Are you Rachel’s cousin?” I ask the girl. I guess the drinks I pounded while I was waiting for Gray worked be er than I thought they did, because subtlety le the building a while back. “You look familiar.”

The girl’s friend hides a laugh behind her hand and I realize what this looks like. Oh my god.

“My friend thinks you’re cute.” I nod back at Gray, probably too quickly, probably too jerky, but the girl’s friend drops her hand and gives her The Look, so I know it worked.

We play beer pong, badly. I never liked beer, but I learned to like it back when I thought that: A) liking beer would make boys think I was hot, and B) I wanted boys to think I was hot. It’s ne until Gray picks up Rachel’s Cousin (I should probably learn her name, but a mean part of me doesn’t want her to stick around long enough for it to ma er) when she sinks her rst shot, spins her around and I get dizzy.

It’s when the lights start to blur and my head starts to pound along with the music and Gray has his arm around Rachel’s Cousin’s waist that I know it’s time for me to go. If I squint at the two of them I can put myself back there, can feel Gray’s hand touching the skin between my shirt and my ripped jeans.

Sydney’s nails are still Princess Purple. But I’m not Gray’s Girl anymore.

“Gray,” I call out from across the table, too quietly. He’s murmuring down at Rachel’s Cousin and she’s pretending that she doesn’t care. “Baby.”

He hears that, looks up at me like I woke him up from

something. I walk around Olivia’s glossy dining room table so I don’t have to keep shouting.

“Leaving.”

“I’ll walk you home.”

I wave him o . “It’s down the street.”

This isn’t a new conversation and it won’t have a new ending. Gray picks up my hand, presses his lips to it, squeezes twice.

“See you tomorrow,” he says against the thin skin on the back of my hand, and I’m suddenly that drunk kind of exhausted where my legs are heavy and it feels like it takes a million years to get out of Olivia’s house, let alone make the ve-minute walk to mine. We all live in the same newish part of town, got packed up by our parents when we were too li le to remember and plopped into houses with construction-white insides and new turf in the backyard. Grew up alongside the limp saplings they planted in front of each carefully planned house. It used to mean that you never had to worry about leaving a textbook at school, there was always someone nearby you could borrow from. Now it means that when I need to get out of Olivia’s house, when it feels like I could dri away from the whole world, I have a quick getaway, a short walk under the streetlights, hidden away under Gray’s hat.

My parents leave the door unlocked for me. They’re friends with Olivia’s parents, because all the parents are friends here, have been since they were our age. They like to think they’re cool, be er than their parents before them, so they let their kids drink on hot September nights and leave the door unlocked.

I text Gray got murdered when I get in, and he replies with a thumbs-up. When I close my eyes, I can still see him. Surrounded by our friends, everyone hanging on his every word.

Just another thing that never changed.

TWO

My dad drops me o for the rst day of school. We stopped doing the whole pictures-on-the-front-porch thing back in middle school. There’s no li le chalk sign that says senior year! but I still get a ride on the rst day. That’s the rule.

We pull up to the building, clean white brick and glass stairwells because it’s still new, not even ten years old, not the same school our parents went to. All our parents love to tell us that, love to talk about how the old high school had asbestos in the walls, wooden lockers with gra ti practically from the Middle Ages. One time, they swear to god, a rat fell from the ceiling. Now we have this tall shiny thing nestled in with all the houses, unearthly green lawn stretching out in front of it and 1,500 of us swarming in and out like an ocean tide. A great school when you don’t have any other options for miles—and our parents don’t—busing kids in from three towns over if they have to.

We pull up, and it’s not like it’s this huge di erence between last year and now. It’s not like I’m expecting some ridiculous teen movie moment where I walk down the hall in slow motion and everyone stops what they’re doing to stare at me. Everything that happened last year happened before

summer. I’ve been this version of myself in this school before, so it shouldn’t ma er that it’s a new year. But it does ma er, I guess, somehow, because I can feel the way it does, cla ering around in my chest. I shove a big breath out of my lungs, let it trill my lips like when we used to pretend to be horses and Olivia would insist that she was actually a unicorn.

“Are you gonna be okay?” my dad asks, in that voice I’m still not used to. The one that seems to have no idea what I need.

“Guess so!” I say, and hop out before he can keep talking, before he can ask me something else or look at me for too long. I don’t particularly know what I need, either.

When I was younger, I hated the rst day of school because I could never see the point. If we weren’t going to just get on with it and start doing work, why have this day, this week, dedicated to lling out worksheets about our summer activities and favorite colors?

I’m feeling that again now, a bit. It would be so much easier if we could sit down and get yelled at about verbs and not have time to talk to each other.

Or talk about each other, as the case may be.

It’s exactly the same as the party last weekend, exactly the same as every other party since last year. Suddenly, I don’t know how to walk through a hall and wait around for a class to start. I don’t know how to answer those stupid rst-dayof-school questions teachers make us answer, don’t know how to tell us one interesting fact about yourself because I think everyone already knows the most interesting thing about me, and honestly, I’m ge ing a li le sick of repeating it.

Gray isn’t in any of my morning classes. He’s got Business

and Law and Politics and Accounting because Gray’s known that he’s going to be a lawyer since he was a li le kid. Meanwhile, I have the no fucking clue special, a generic math, science, and English combination that works for me most of the time and hopefully is going to work for my UMaine app, but it means that I don’t see Gray until lunch.

“There’s my rst lady!” Gray hollers when I walk into the student council meeting room. He bops over and wraps me up in a hug and my shoulders unlock a bit from where they’ve been hovering at my ears all morning.

“You’re such a dickhead.” I laugh, pushing him away. “Not only am I not your rst lady anymore, I’m literally the VP.”

It made so much sense, last year. Gray would be the president because he was always going to be the kind of guy who was senior class president. I would be vice president, because I went where Gray went.

That’s still true.

I don’t really know why we have student council meetings, since there are only four of us and we’re all friends because high school student council elections are, in fact, a popularity contest. Sydney’s here, giving Gray and me a funny look because no one seems to be able to comprehend the fact that we still love each other the way we do. Logan shows up late, because he doesn’t think being the treasurer is that exciting ever since he found out that he doesn’t actually get paid for the job.

“Teacher incoming, please sti e all hormones and swears,” a voice says. Mrs. Davis-Garcia, my eleventh-grade math teacher, student council advisor, and token faculty lesbian

breezes into the room in a pair of mustard corduroys I actually really like. Not that I would ever say that.

Mrs. DG nudges Gray out of the way and steals his spot at the teacher’s desk at the front of the room. She immediately pulls out her phone and gets sucked into something on the screen, scrolling endlessly. Gray clears his throat and she looks up.

“Sorry,” she says. “My wife’s at home waiting for someone to come x our toilet and they haven’t shown up yet. I’m trying to gure out if I need to call someone.”

I ignore the way her saying my wife so casually makes my heart leap, just the tiniest bit, same as it did last year before I fully knew why.

“Ugh,” Mrs. DG says now, still looking at her phone. “Okay, this is a phone call. I’ll be right back. Maybe. Realistically, I don’t do much here and you guys know it. Gray, you’re in charge.”

I groan internally. You never tell Gray he’s in charge. It immediately goes to his head.

“Order in the student council room!” Gray booms as soon as she’s gone, making me and Sydney jump. I smack him on the arm and he smiles winningly at me.

“Syd, can you please note that demonstration of violence from our vice president, and also jot down the fact that I would like a gavel for our next meeting.”

“I’m not your secretary.” Sydney rolls her eyes. Normally I would agree, except for the fact that Sydney is the senior class secretary.

“Correct,” Gray says. “You are everyone’s secretary. The people’s secretary, if you will. And we all love you for it.”

Sydney laughs at that and starts writing things down, and Gray’s saved the world again.

“Quick meeting! Only one thing to talk about,” Gray says. “Then you can get back to terrorizing the local community, Bailey.”

Logan gives Gray the nger and I snort into the sleeve of my hoodie.

Gray’s hoodie. Whatever.

“The state’s doing this new thing for . . .” Gray reads aloud from a pamphlet on the table in front of him, pu ing on a faux-fancy voice. “ ‘Maine’s best and brightest high school students looking to enrich their academic careers.’ It’s a camp that runs the weekend of Thanksgiving break; teachers are nominating ve kids to go and hang out in the woods listening to CEOs give inspirational speeches with kids from other schools in the state. It also says that they’re doing speed networking. Apparently, they tried it in a couple other states and all the kids who went got into their top-choice college and are now, like, curing cancer and making ying cars and shit. We’re supposed to spread the word and try and get kids excited about it so they’ll kiss teacher ass this semester.”

“Five kids,” Logan muses. “So, what, us four and some random, right?”

Sydney laughs and I grimace, but Logan’s only saying what we’re all thinking.

“Bremner may have implied he’d be into nominating me,”

Gray admits, but that’s not a surprise. Bremner’s only been principal since last year, but he’s been obsessed with Gray since he got here.

“And you’ll just have to talk to Linney, huh, Syd?” Logan nudges Sydney and she laughs again, but nods. Ms. Linney basically thinks Syd is a Rhodes Scholar in the making, and she’s not shy about le ing people know.

“And . . .” Logan turns his face to me. That mean li le smile from the weekend comes back and my stomach drops.

Before I can nd out exactly how Logan was planning on making fun of me (though I could guess: I’m sure his jokes about why Mrs. DG might want to nominate me would be hilarious and not at all o ensive), the door is yanked open and a girl is in the room.

And . . .

That’s all, really. A girl is in the room. But that’s not all. A girl is in the room and something makes my gut twist. A girl is in the room and I can’t look away from her. A girl is in the room, and, somewhere, something blinks into clarity for the rst time.

She’s tallish, just a li le taller than me, in ripped jeans and a cropped hoodie. Her hair is dark and curly—curly curly, not like those girls who sleep with braids in and then talk about how hard their curls are to maintain—wild and hanging over one perfectly winged eye. She’s looking at all of us, carefully, one by one, and I jolt. I think she said something.

“Is this the senior student council meeting? Mr. Bremner said I’d nd it here.”

“Yes, it is!” Gray says, standing up at his desk just a li le too quickly so his chair falls over. “I’m Ethan Gray, senior class president.”

Oh, he’s Ethan now. Of course. I sti e a slightly hysterical laugh behind a cough.

“Tal,” the girl says. I watch her tongue ick down from the roof of her mouth to form the sharp T sound and then I want to slap myself.

“I’m new this year,” she continues. Half our school is new this year, everyone being bussed in from these shiny developments a few towns over. But none of the other new-this-years look like her. None of the other new-this-years have inspired this awful combination of dread-and-longing nonsense going on in my chest right now.

“This school’s a fucking labyrinth,” she’s saying. “My schedule is all over the place and Mr. Bremner said you guys could help.”

If it was somehow possible for me to not have known Tal was new, I’d know it now. Because now she steps toward me. Now she ashes a tiny but blinding smile my way. Now she tilts her head down so slightly that no one else probably even noticed it.

“How is it possible that I have Art in room 210 and English in 211, but those rooms aren’t, in fact, across the hall from each other?”

Disarming. That’s the word. That’s Tal, I think, and then feel stupid for thinking that. Who am I to say who Tal is? Tal’s said one sentence to me, and I’m making it weird, the way I must be looking at her. What, like I’ve never seen a hot girl in real life before?

(Except I don’t know if I have, really. I don’t know when me googling “girls kissing” when I was ten turned into me scrolling through some actress’s Instagram turned into me coming out turned into this, here, now. Seeing a girl and knowing that I think she’s hot.)

Gray laughs like that was the funniest thing he’s ever heard and I just barely suppress the urge to roll my eyes at him.

“I know, this place is wild,” he says to Tal, coming up beside me and swinging an arm around my shoulders. He shoots Tal the kind of smile that makes you feel like the only person in the universe, leaning forward and bringing me with him. “But if you show me your schedule, I can de nitely help you out. Believe it or not, the 210/211 thing isn’t even the weirdest part of the layout.”

Gray holds out his hand and Tal passes him her schedule. If there was even the faintest brushing of hands there, I’m going to be hearing about it for the next four business days. He’s using his Grown-Up Voice. There’s only one reason for Gray to turn on his Grown-Up Voice, and that’s when he’s trying to impress a girl. Also, the 210/211 thing is totally the weirdest part of the layout. He’s just looking for an excuse to talk to her.

Tal smiles up at him the way I’ve seen a million other girls do. Looking up through her eyelashes, head tilted, shy but knowing exactly what’s going on. I know it. I know it. Because that’s how girls look at Gray. That’s how I looked at Gray.

“If you want, I can walk you to your next class?” Gray’s saying now, and it sends me right back to earth. I know my cue when I hear it, know when it’s time to leave something

alone and let Gray work his magic. It just hasn’t happened like this yet.

Tal looks at me one more time, just for a second, just long enough to meet my eye and make me feel like there’s static electricity in my ngertips. I force myself to remember the smile she just gave Gray, to think about Gray’s posturing and his Grown-Up Voice.

“I’ll see you guys later, nice to meet you, Tal!” I say, too quickly, too desperately. I get the fuck out of there. I ee, honestly, because Gray’s using his Grown-Up Voice and Tal loves it and they were two words away from forge ing I was even there. Lunch isn’t over for another ten minutes, but I have a feeling Gray’s not going to notice when he’s looking at Tal.

I’m halfway down the hall before I can think too hard about the fact that Tal is the rst girl outside of the internet who’s made my stomach feel like that.

OTHREE

“She is so fucking cool, Luke.”

“Don’t call me Luke,” I say automatically.

“She is so fucking cool, Ms. Alana Lucas, Esquire.”

“Be er.”

Gray showed Tal around for the rest of lunch, brought her to the cafeteria that’s always too cold and the track out back where half the student population sneak out to smoke and the other half earnestly run laps or have picnics when the weather’s nice. Then it turned out that they’re in the same English class, so Gray took it upon himself to become Tal’s uno cial rst-day-of-school buddy, already showing her o like she’s Gray’s Girl 2.0. I heard someone in h period say of course Gray already claimed the hot new girl, and the rst day only ended twenty minutes ago. Dozens of new transfer kids, but Gray’s already found the best of them.

“We were supposed to talk about our favorite poets, and, like, who has a favorite poet, right? Tal does.”

I swallow something bi er stuck in my throat when I hear Gray say her name.

“She’s from Portland, which, y’know, automatically makes her cooler than any of us, right?”

“I guess.”

Gray squints at me.

“You guess? What’s your issue with her?”

“I don’t have an issue with her!”

“But . . .”

But I wonder if her hair’s as so as it looks and what she smells like and how her voice sounds rst thing in the morning.

Jesus, that’s not good.

“But nothing!” I rush to say. “I’m glad you’ve found someone new and exciting to chase around.”

“What makes you think I’m going to be chasing?”

I catch myself before I say something stupid like the, like, everything about her? Because I can’t imagine Tal chasing anybody, but I can very easily imagine people chasing a er her. Like Gray. Like me, in a di erent universe where she looked at me the way I saw her look at Gray earlier and where I’d actually have the guts to talk to someone like her in real life and have it mean something.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I forgot who I was talking to for a second.”

Gray grins at me. “I’m six one, y’know.”

“I know.”

“Girls like that.”

“So I hear.”

Gray laughs and swats me on the arm. It’s a er school and we’re in the big gym with the A/C the school’s said they’re

xing twice a week since freshman year. My hair is sticking to the back of my neck. All around us, dozens of freshmen are playing badminton with a zeal the sport has never seen before, our conversation punctuated by yelps and screeches and big look-at-me laughs.

“So,” Gray says grandly, sweeping an arm across the stunning landscape. “That brings us here.”

I look around us. Two of the badminton players are having what appears to be a lightsaber ba le with their rackets. They’re making the schoom noises and everything.

“Here to . . . intramural badminton?”

(When Gray and I were still together, it made perfect sense for us to volunteer to be the student council reps for the badminton team. All we’d have to do is sit around and watch people swinging rackets at each other, right? Now that we aren’t together, it’s still nice to hang out, but I can call him a dickhead more freely for choosing the world’s most annoying sport based solely on the fact that he likes to giggle at the word shu lecock.)

“Here to the plan, Ms. Alana Lucas, Private Investigator!”

Oh god, he has his notebook with him.

I groan. “Why do we always need plans? Can we not do something without wri en documentation?”

“These are our glory years, Ms. Alana Lucas, Certi ed Life Coach,” Gray says. “One day, you’ll thank me for the wri en documentation.”

I give Gray the nger and he gasps, pu ing his hand up to shield it from the eyes of the impressionable badminton freshmen.