There was a knock on the passenger side window, and I shook my head without looking up from my phone. “I’m not leaving,” I called.

“Good to know,” Sloane said through the glass. I looked up and saw her standing by the passenger side door, and I reached over to unlock the car, and she got in. “Hey,” she said.

“Hi,” I said, sitting up straighter and setting my phone down. Things felt strange and tentative between us, in a way they never had, not even when we’d first met.

“Thanks for waiting,” Sloane said. She leaned forward, not meeting my eye, and pulled my iPod out of the glove compartment, hooking it up to the line in.

“Sure,” I said, hating how stiff and formal this seemed, wishing we could just go back to being us again. “Did you . . . have fun?”

“Yeah,” she said, glancing out the window. “It was okay. You know.”

I nodded and started the car, even though I didn’t know, and that was apparently the whole problem. We drove in silence, Sloane’s face lit up by my iPod screen as she flipped through the mixes she’d put on it, all her music. I swallowed hard as I turned the car onto I-95. I didn’t know how to fix this, what to say—I just wanted things to go back to how they’d been a few hours ago. “So what was it like?” I asked when I couldn’t stand the silence any longer. I could hear how high and forced my voice sounded, like my mother when she was trying to get Beckett to tell her about his day at school.

Sloane sighed and looked out the window. “Just don’t,” she finally said.

“Don’t?” I repeated, feeling my stomach sink.

“If you’d wanted to know what it was like, you should have come in with me,” she said, shaking her head as she spun the track wheel, going too fast now to even see any of the song names. “I mean, I put a lot of work into tonight. I bought our IDs, I planned the outfits, I arranged all this, because I wanted to see the band with you. Not by myself.”

I glanced away from the highway and at my best friend for just a moment. “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t have come!” Sloane almost yelled this, and I think it surprised us both, as silence descended in the car for a moment. “And I was right, wasn’t I?” I tightened my hands on the steering wheel, gripping ten and two as hard as I could, willing myself not to cry. “You’re so scared of things sometimes, and for no reason,” Sloane said, her voice quieter now. “And sometimes, I wish . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence, just let it hang in the car between us.

I wished it too—whatever it was that in that moment Sloane wanted me to be, that I was falling short of. I took a shaky breath and said, “I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said immediately, easily, and I knew she meant it. It was something that still amazed me about her—how quickly she was willing to forgive. Since everyone in my family—including the cat—was a grudge-holder, I couldn’t quite believe it sometimes.

“Next time, right?” I gave her a quick smile, and I could hear how I was forcing my voice to be cheerful. But Sloane just smiled back at me.

“Sure,” she said easily. She spun the track wheel once again and then clicked the center button, and “With You,” her favorite Call Me Kevin song, began to play.

“Did they play it?” I asked, nodding toward the stereo.

“Third song,” she said, as she smiled at me and settled back into her seat, tucking her legs up underneath her. “And I think it must not have been on the set list, because the drummer was totally off until the bridge. . . .”

She started talking me through the night, moment by moment, the adventure she’d had without me, pausing only to sing along to the refrain. And by the time the last chorus played, I had joined in.

* * *

“Penelope Entwhistle,” I muttered under my breath. I hadn’t had the same good luck this time, and I’d had to park in one of the ten-dollar lots. I’d gotten cash out of the ATM on the way over, when I’d realized halfway there that I couldn’t use my debit card, since the name printed on it wouldn’t match my ID.  And I had a feeling that leaving a paper trail was not the best idea, considering that I was about to break the law. “Penelope Entwhistle,” I said as I walked down the street on shaky legs toward McKenzie’s, trying to make it sound like it was a name I’d said for years and years. “Twenty-one Miller’s Crossing, Reno, Nevada. Eight nine five one five.”

I’d checked McKenzie’s website, and tonight was the only night they had a band playing. It wasn’t Call Me Kevin, of course—it was some band I didn’t recognize called the Henry Gales. But it had forced me into doing this tonight, since if there was a band, at least there would be something to do, and I wouldn’t just be at a bar . . . and what? I had no idea. I couldn’t even finish the sentence, as I’d never been in a bar that was only a bar. But if there was a band, even if it turned out to be a terrible band, it somehow made this feel more okay, like I was just seeing a concert. While pretending to be someone named Penelope.

After our run that morning, Frank had asked me if I wanted to hang out that night, and I’d said no. I didn’t want to tell him I was trying to do this, just in case it all went horribly wrong. I had launched into a series of excuses that didn’t even sound believable to me by the end—something about babysitting Beckett and catching up on reading for next year and helping my mother clean out the fridge. He’d just listened with raised eyebrows, then nodded. “If you’re organizing my surprise party, Emily, you can just tell me.” His birthday was in three days, and it had started coming up in conversation more and more.

“Right,” I said, trying to laugh this off. “Totally.” I would have worried that, after that, he’d expected me to do something for him, but I knew Collins had been planning something.

“Penelope,” I said to myself, as I noticed I was getting very close to the door guy. It was the same guy from two months earlier, although now he appeared even bigger, somehow, his phone looking tiny in his hand. I wondered if it was there so that he could call the police immediately when underage people tried to get into his bar. “Penelope Entwhistle. Twenty-one Miller’s Crossing . . .” I smoothed down my dress. I was wearing a similar version of what Sloane had picked out for me to wear, and as I put on makeup and high heels, it hit me that it had been a very long time since I’d dressed up. I’d gotten so used to spending my days in flip-flops and sneakers that my ankles were wobbling dangerously, no longer used to this.

There was no line at the door tonight, probably because it was a Thursday and there was no major band playing a secret show. Just the door guy. I made myself walk closer to him on legs that were shaking. Penelope, I said over and over in my head. Reno. Eight nine five one five.

“Hello,” I said as I got close to the guy. I was clutching my bag in one hand and my ID in the other, so tightly that I could feel the plastic cutting into my fingers.

“ID?” the guy asked, sounding utterly bored.

“Here you are,” I said, handing it over to him, hoping it wasn’t damp, as my palms had begun to sweat the closer I’d gotten to him. He shined his flashlight on it, then glanced at me, then nodded inside. “I can go?” I asked, not sure that we had finished our interaction.

“Yeah,” he said, handing me back my ID. “Have fun.”

“Thank you very much,” I said as I pulled open the door, unable to believe it had been that simple. I walked inside and looked around. I suddenly felt like I had a giant UNDERAGE sign above me, that it was clear to everyone there that I’d never been in a bar before and didn’t know what I was doing.

I took a few tentative steps in. I could see a small stage—more like a raised platform than anything else—along the back wall. There were booths on both sides of the room, and waitresses walking around with trays. And opposite the stage was a bar, with stools surrounding it, only half full. This wasn’t like the bar that was part of the country club where I’d worked, where I could grab the soda gun and refill the Cokes and Sprites my tables ordered. That had pretty much been a long counter with a harried guy named Marty working behind it, making what seemed like an endless stream of gin and tonics. This was different. The surface was polished metal, and the shelves of liquor stretched up almost to the ceiling, and each shelf seemed to be lit with its own blue light.

I drifted a little closer to the bar, not sure what to do. Since the band wasn’t on yet, I felt like I had to do something—I couldn’t keep standing in the doorway all night, especially if I wanted to be inconspicuous. But the bar was so much more intimidating than I’d realized it would be. And did I even order from it? Or was I supposed to flag down one of the waitresses with trays?

“Watch yourself, hon,” one of the waitresses said as she passed me, and I stepped quickly out of the way. I let out a shaky breath and walked up to the side of the bar that had the fewest people sitting around it, then climbed up onto a stool and rested my purse on my lap. I wasn’t sure what happened now, but at least I wasn’t standing in the way.

“What can I get you?” asked the bartender, who had floppy blond hair and a V-neck T-shirt with an extremely deep V.

“Oh,” I said, glancing up at the blue shelves of liquor, like I was actually considering getting something up there. “Diet Coke, please?”

“Sure thing,” he said. “With rum?”

“No!” I said, more vehemently than I meant to. “I mean, just, you know. Neat. Straight. Plain.” I was just tossing around words I’d heard people use in movies when they were in bars, hoping one of them would make sense to this guy.