“Uh, okay,” he said. He gave me a nod. “See you around, Em.”

“Bye,” I called as Sam started to walk away. Sloane turned back to look at me, and we had a fast and furious conversation as we mouthed our words—Are you sure? Yes! Go have fun! Call you tomorrow? Yes!

She shot me one last happy, excited smile, then turned back to Sam, already laughing at something he was saying.

I watched them go, feeling my own smile fade until it was gone. I climbed into the open back and took a sip from my soda. But the Twizzler suddenly made the soda too cloyingly sweet, and I pulled it out, replacing it with a regular straw instead. It was pretty childish, after all. I probably should have stopped doing it a while back.

I settled into the back, sticking to my side of the car even though there was no need to, trying to tell myself that things were fine, that I should be happy for Sloane. She’d met a guy she really liked, and what kind of best friend would I be if I couldn’t be excited for her? Everything would be okay. And by the time the credits rolled, I’d even started to believe it.

* * *

Since I’d had no impending crime-committing to worry about, I’d actually been able to follow The Lady Vanishes, and I’d really liked it, though I did wonder why Hitchcock was so obsessed with trains—both of these movies had seemed to feature a lot of them.

I had stayed in my car for a bit, just looking at the darkened screen. The line leaving the drive-in was always epic, bottlenecks forming at the exit, and everyone honking, even though this accomplished absolutely nothing. Sloane and I had always just hung out in the car, lying back against the pillows and finishing the last of the snacks, discussing the movies or just talking.

When the silence got to be too much, I headed out with my trash and stuffed it into one of the overflowing cans. Now that the parking lot was emptying out, I could see Frank and Collins standing by Collins’s minivan. Not feeling the need to keep humiliating myself in front of Frank—I figured that quota had pretty much been met tonight—I turned my head away and was halfway to my car when I heard Collins calling me.

“Emma!” he yelled, and then I saw Frank lean over and say something to him, and Collins nodded. “Emily!” he called, finally getting my name right. “Come here!” I just waved at him and continued over to my car, hoping that he would buy that I hadn’t heard him. “No,” Collins shouted, louder than ever, now incorporating large hand movements, pointing at me, then at him, and miming walking. “Come over here!” People were starting to turn and look, and I knew there was really no way I could keep pretending.

I let out a long breath and headed over to them. Frank and Collins were having what looked like an intense discussion that stopped abruptly when I reached the minivan. “Hello,” Collins said, giving me a theatrical wink. “Don’t you look lovely tonight. It would have been a fetching ensemble for a mugshot.”

I could feel myself blush and looked over at Frank, who glared at Collins, who didn’t seem to notice. I knew that I probably couldn’t be mad at Frank for telling him. If the situation had been reversed and I’d been here with Sloane and caught Frank Porter trying to steal something, I wouldn’t even have waited until I saw her—I would have been calling her on the walk to the car. “Nothing to be ashamed of,” Collins went on, smiling wisely at me. “Sometime, when the moment is right, remind me to tell you the story of my time in Disney jail.” He lowered his voice and leaned closer to me. “Spoiler alert—not the happiest place on earth.”

I just blinked at Collins. Had he called me over here so that he could make fun of me? I crossed my arms over my chest, and looked back at my car, wishing I hadn’t stopped, just kept on walking. I would have been halfway home by now.

“Matt,” Frank said. His voice was serious, and this—calling Collins by his real name—seemed to focus him.

“Right!” he said, clapping his hands together. “Okay. So I have managed to make plans with the lovely Miss Gwen for tonight,” Collins said, and I noticed for the first time that a dark-haired girl was leaning against a sedan a few cars away, smoking a cigarette and talking on her phone.

“Oh,” I said, remembering what Frank had said about Collins liking the projectionist. “Um, good for you.”

“Why thank you.” He straightened his neon-green polo and smoothed down his hair. Now that I’d seen him a few times this summer, I was beginning to understand that this was his summer uniform—a slightly too-tight bright-colored polo shirt, shorts, and beaten-up flip-flops, making him somehow always look like he’d just gotten off a poorly maintained boat. He smiled at me. “My charms, they’re hard to resist.”

“Dude, she’s using you for a ride to this party,” Frank said, shaking his head.

“I believe you mean she invited me to this party,” Collins corrected. “And asked if I could drive her. Which, being a gentleman, I agreed to do.”

Frank just sighed and looked down at the ground.

“Mike!” the projectionist yelled, stepping on her cigarette and lowering her phone. “Are we going, or what?”

“Coming,” Collins yelled, not seeming to care she’d gotten his name wrong. “Anyway,” he said, turning back to us, all business. “Emily.  You can drive Porter home, right? Don’t you guys live near each other?”

“Oh,” I said, looking over at Frank, finally understanding why I’d been summoned. “Sure. No problem.”

I had barely gotten the words out before Collins grinned, slapped Frank on the back, and clicked open the sliding minivan door with a flourish, motioning for Gwen to come over. She ignored the sliding door, got into the passenger side, still carrying on another conversation, and Collins got into the van through the side. The van peeled out of the lot with a screech of tires, leaving Frank and me alone.

“Sorry about this,” Frank said, as we walked toward my Volvo, now one of the few cars left on the field.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I owe you anyway.”

“Well, I appreciate it,” he said. I unlocked the car and, when we were both inside, started the engine and headed toward the exit. I tightened my hands on the wheel, then released them, trying to figure out how to thank him for what he’d done for me. “Frank,” I started, then I looked over to see that he was staring down at his phone.

“What?” he asked, looking over at me. “Sorry. I’ve been trying to get Lissa all night. I haven’t been able to reach her, so I’m just going to shoot her a text. . . .”

“Right, of course,” I said, looking back toward the road. “Sorry.”

The faint tapping on his keypad filled the car, and I didn’t want to turn on my iPod and disturb him—not to mention the fact that I also didn’t want him to make fun of my music. Even when the texting sounds stopped, Frank was just looking down at the phone, like he was waiting for a response, and I wasn’t sure it was the right moment to interrupt him. By the time I’d reached his house, though, he’d put the phone away, and I couldn’t help but notice that I hadn’t heard the cheerful beep sound that would have meant Frank had gotten a reply back.

“Thanks, Emily,” Frank said as I pulled in the driveway.

“Sure,” I said. “It was no—” Whatever I was about to say was lost, though, as I took in the view of Frank’s house at night for the first time. The whole house was dark, but I could see that it was right on the water, something I hadn’t been able to tell before from the road. Moonlight was shining down on the house and reflecting off its chrome and glass surfaces, seeming to light the whole thing up from the inside. “Are you right on the beach?”

“Yeah,” Frank said. After a tiny pause, he added, “You want to see it?”

“Oh,” I said, sitting back in my seat a little. I suddenly worried that I’d seemed too interested, and that he felt like he had to invite me in out of politeness. “No, that’s okay. Plus, it looks like your parents are asleep.”

“Nope,” Frank said, and it sounded like he was trying to keep his voice light. I noticed this, and wondered when I’d started to be able to tell the difference. “Not home.”

“Oh.” I glanced at the clock on my iPod—the clock on my dashboard was forever stuck at 8:19. It was almost midnight, so this surprised me, but I certainly wasn’t going to comment on it.

“Yeah,” Frank said with a shrug. “My dad’s in Darien, working on a house, and my mom has a decorating project in the city. And they’re not supposed to be in the house together anyway, because . . .” He glanced at me, and suddenly I remembered his parents, red-faced and screaming at each other, Frank’s expression as he listened to it. “So that’s why nobody’s there,” Frank said in a quieter voice, and I suddenly understood what he was saying. That he was staying here alone. And even though my parents were still physically in our house, I knew what it was like to come home and have nobody be worried about you, or asking you about your day. All the stuff you can’t wait to get away from, until it’s not there anymore, and then you miss it like crazy.

“I’ll come in,” I said, surprising myself—and Frank, by the look of it. “Just for a little bit.”  With any other guy, I might have been worried there was some sort of ulterior motive—asking me in, late at night, to an empty house. But that wasn’t even anything I considered with Frank—long-term boyfriend and all-around good guy—except to realize it wasn’t an issue.

“Great,” Frank said, giving me a surprised, happy smile. “Let’s go.” I followed him around to the side door he’d gone in before. When he opened the door, a loud, persistent chime started, until Frank entered a code into a keypad I hadn’t even noticed by the door. The beeping stopped and Frank moved forward, turning on lights as he went, and I followed, but then stopped short, looking around, really seeing his house for the first time, my jaw falling open.