“Oh my god,” she said, yawning again as she beelined for my bed. My bed was old and the mattress sagged in the middle, but it was queen-size, and there was enough room that we could face each other and still have enough space to see each other and talk. She took the side she always took when she stayed over, nestled down under the blankets, then hugged her pillow and smiled at me. I knew when she had something to say, and I could tell that she had been waiting for this moment—quiet, with my full attention—since I’d opened the front door. “So I met a boy tonight.”

“You did?” I asked, getting into bed as well, pulling the blankets up and turning to her. “At the party?”

“Mmm-hmm,” she said. “He was there with his parents too.”

“Does he go to Stanwich?” I settled back, only to realize my pillow was still on the floor. I leaned half out of the bed to grab it, then plumped it once and settled into it, preparing to hear the story.

Boys had been besotted with Sloane since she’d shown up at Stanwich High, but she’d been picky. She’d dated a senior for a few weeks our sophomore year, then a fellow junior this past fall, and the summer before, had a brief fling with a guy who normally went to boarding school and was just in town for the summer. But none of these had lasted, and she hadn’t seemed particularly devastated when they didn’t—she was always the one who did the breaking up. But it had been a while since a guy had appeared on her radar—until tonight, apparently.

“No,” she said. “Stanwich Academy.” It was the private school in town, and while I vaguely knew some girls who went there, the two schools didn’t really have much overlap socially. “His name’s Sam. Sam Watkins.” She pronounced the name carefully, like it was a foreign word she wasn’t used to saying but nonetheless loved the sound of. She smiled, wide, and I saw in that moment that she really liked him.

“Oh my god,” I said. “You’re smitten already. I can tell.” She didn’t deny it, but buried her face in the pillow, so all I could see was her hair, the waves coaxed into curls for the evening. “So tell me about him.”

She turned her head toward me, yawning, but didn’t open up her eyes again when the yawn was finished. “He’s great,” she said, her words coming slower than before. “You’ll see.”

I waited for something else to come, an explanation of his greatness, when it occurred to me it was probably Sam who’d dropped Sloane at my house—Milly and Anderson would have just taken her back with them. Not because they would have cared if she slept over, but because they wouldn’t have wanted to make an extra trip. I tried to recall if there had been a car there when I’d opened the door, someone waiting to make sure she got in okay, but I just couldn’t remember.

“Hey,” I whispered. I nudged her ankle with my foot. “Did Sam—” I was about to ask her when I realized that she was breathing slow and regular, her mascaraed eyes firmly closed. Sloane could always drop off to sleep immediately, something she attributed to Milly and Anderson never giving her a set bedtime when she was little. “So you learn to sleep when you can,” she’d explained to me. “None of this story-reading, glass-of-water nonsense. I was always the one falling asleep on the pile of coats at a party.”

I waited to see if she was out for good, giving her one more gentle nudge. But she didn’t stir, so I figured I’d just ask her in the morning. I closed my eyes, and felt myself drift off, somehow comforted by the knowledge that when I woke up in the morning, Sloane would be there.

* * *

I woke up with a start. I looked around, trying to figure out why I wasn’t still sleeping. It wasn’t that the cat had fallen asleep on my head again, or that either of my parents were yelling at me to wake up. Pieces of the night before came back—delivering pizza with Dawn, Jamie Roarke, hugging mini-mart James—and I realized, with some surprise, these weren’t dream fragments. They had actually happened. I was about to try and go back to sleep, when the phone on my nightstand lit up.

A text.

I grabbed it and saw I had two—the first one must have been what woke me up. But despite the fact it wasn’t even eight yet, as I looked down at the phone, I was wide awake. Both texts were from a number I didn’t recognize. And as I held the phone in my hand, it buzzed with a third.

Emily. You awake?

I’m outside.

Let’s go.

It was like my brain short-circuited for a moment, then started working again, double-time. It was Sloane.

She was back.

I was out my door and down the stairs in a flash, not putting anything on over the T-shirt I’d been sleeping in, not trying to be quiet, not caring if I woke the whole house as my bare feet pounded down the stairs. Sloane was here, she was waiting for me, and she could tell me what had happened, where she’d gone—actually, I realized as I jumped down the last two steps to the first floor landing and launched myself into the mudroom, I didn’t even care about that. All that mattered was that she was here, and things could go back to how they’d been.

I pulled open the front door and stopped short. Frank was sitting on the steps, wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers, iPod strapped to his arm, and he stood and smiled when he saw me. “Hey,” he said. “Ready to go for a run?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it when I realized I wasn’t exactly sure what to say. I just stared at him as I felt my heart rate start to slow, my hopes fall. It wasn’t Sloane. She hadn’t come back.

She was still gone.

“Uh,” Frank said, and I noticed for the first time that he looked confused and a little uncomfortable.

I looked down at myself and suddenly realized that I had bigger problems. I was standing in front of Frank Porter—Frank Porter—in my nightshirt. Though it was slightly longer than a regular T-shirt, it wasn’t by much, and I quickly tugged it down. I was barefoot, and—oh god—I still had on some of the zit cream I’d put on my face the night before. I wasn’t wearing a bra. I quickly crossed my arms over my chest, then regretted this, as it caused the T-shirt to ride up higher.

“Sorry,” Frank said, and while I had a feeling he was trying to sound contrite, this was undercut slightly by the fact that he also looked like he was on the verge of cracking up. “I got your cell number and address from the school directory. I didn’t mean to wake you up—I guess I figured that if you weren’t awake, you wouldn’t . . . you know, come outside.”

I nodded, like this was a normal conversation. But part of me was still reeling at the fact that this was happening at all. I honestly couldn’t understand how I had gone, in the course of a week, from not speaking to Frank Porter, to knowing he had a sneaky hot body, to standing half naked in front of him.

“So,” he said, glancing down at my feet with a smile, “is this the barefoot running trend I keep reading about?”

“Oh,” I said. My face felt hot, like it was on fire, and I had a feeling it was bright red, which probably looked just fantastic with the white zit cream. “Um, no. Ha ha. I just . . .”

“Emily?” I turned and saw my dad standing behind me, wearing his robe and slippers and carrying his laptop, his glasses perched on top of his head. I truly hadn’t thought this could get any worse. But apparently Frank Porter was going to see the entire Hughes family in their pajamas this morning.

“Dad,” I said, hearing how strangled my voice sounded.

“Have you seen my glasses?” he asked, not, apparently, thinking anything was strange about the fact that his daughter was awake at eight a.m. and standing in the doorway in her pajamas, talking to a boy he’d never met.

“They’re on your head, sir,” Frank supplied from the porch.

My father reached up and patted his head, then nodded and put them on. Then he squinted out at Frank. “Do I know you?”

“That’s Frank,” I managed. It was possible to die of embarrassment, right? The expression had to have come from somewhere. “We were just, um, going running.”

“Oh,” my dad said. He stared at Frank a moment longer, then looked at me and frowned. “Well, be sure to put some shoes on.” Then he continued on inside, no doubt heading to the dining room to start working.

“Okay,” I managed. “I’ll just go upstairs and put on something to run in. And then I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be here,” Frank said, and it looked like he was trying—though not very hard—to suppress a grin.

I nodded but, not wanting to turn around, backed up until I reached the doorway, then took a big step backward and shut the door. I leaned against it, closing my eyes, wondering for just a moment if I was actually in a nightmare. Surely this qualified.

Ten minutes later, I’d washed my face and put on a long-sleeved T-shirt and long leggings with my running shoes. It was already getting hot outside, but I felt that I needed to balance out the accidental half-nudity that had started my morning. “Ready to go?” I asked as I joined Frank outside, iPod in hand. I was hoping that if I was brusque and businesslike, he’d forget all about the state I’d shown up in.

“Sure,” he said, walking to the end of the driveway with me. I could tell that he was trying to catch my eye, but I busied myself with selecting my new playlist and adjusting the volume, not putting in my earbuds yet or pressing play, since I still wasn’t sure what the etiquette with that was.

“Ready?” I asked. Frank nodded, and we started running, me on the outside like before. I kept the pace slower, knowing that I certainly needed a warm-up, as my muscles were cold.