"Think of all the sleepovers we've had. How many sleepovers would you say we've had? I'm not good at estimating things. Would you say a thousand?"

"That's probably close," I say.

"It's been a while since we've had one," she says.

My eyes have adjusted to the dark, so I can vaguely see her now. With her face freshly scrubbed and her hair pulled back into a ponytail, she looks like a teenager. We could be in her bed back in high school, giggling and whispering, with Annalise snoring softly beside the bed in her Garfield sleeping bag. Darcy always let Annalise fall asleep. I think she almost hoped she would. I know I sometimes did.

"You wanna play twenty questions?" I ask. It was one of our favorite games growing up.

"Yeah. Yeah. You go first."

"Okay. I got one."

"Same rules?"

"Same rules."

Our rules were simple: you must choose a person (instated after Annalise tried to do neighborhood pets), someone we knew personally (no celebrities, dead or living), and you must ask yes-no questions.

"From high school?" she asks.

"Yes."

"Male?"

"No."

"Our graduating class?"

"No."

"Class above us or below us?"

"That's two questions."

"No, it's a compound," she says. "If the answer's yes, I still have to break it down and use another question. Remember?"

"Okay, you're right," I say, remembering that nuance. "The answer is no."

Student?

"No. That's five questions. Fifteen to go."

Darcy says she knows she's on five, she's counting. "Teacher we both had?"

"No," I say, six fingers hiding under the covers. Darcy has been known to "miscount" during this game.

"Teacher you had?"

"No."

"Teacher I had?"

"No."

"Guidance counselor?"

"No."

"A dean?"

"That's ten. No."

"Other staff?"

"Yes."

"Janitor?"

"No."

"The nark?"

"No." I smile, thinking about the time the nark busted Darcy leaving school to go to Subway with Blaine at lunch. Darcy told him to get a real job as he escorted them to the dean's office. "What are you, thirty? Isn't it time you left high school?" The comment earned her an extra pair of demerits.

"Ohh! I think I got it!" She starts giggling uncontrollably. "Is she a lunch lady?"

I laugh. "Uh-huh."

"It's June!"

"Yep! You got it."

June was a high school icon. She was about eighty years old, four feet tall, and massively wrinkled from years of heavy smoking. And her main claim to fame was that she once lost a fake nail in Tommy Baxter's lasagna. Tommy ceremoniously marched back to the lunch line and returned the nail to June. "I believe this belongs to you, June?" June grinned, wiped the sauce and cheese off the nail, and stuck it back on her finger. Everybody cheered and clapped and chanted, "Go, June! Go, June!" Other than reapplying her nail, I'm not sure what she did to earn the respect of our student body. I think it was more that somebody in the popular crowd just decided along the way that it was cool to like June. Maybe it had even been Darcy. She had that sort of power.

Darcy laughs. "Good ole June! I wonder if she's dead yet."

"Nah. I'm sure she's still there, asking kids in her raspy voice if they want marinara or meat sauce on their rigatoni."

When she finally stops laughing, she says, "Aww. This feels just like a sleepover from way back."

"Yeah. It does," I say, as a wave of fondness for Darcy washes over me.

"We had fun as kids, didn't we?"

"Yeah. We did."

Darcy starts laughing again.

"What?" I ask.

"Do you remember the time we spent the night at Annalise's house and hanged her sister's Barbie dolls?"

I crack up, picturing the Barbies, tied with yarn around their necks, dangling from the doorways. Annalise's little sister cried hysterically to her parents, who promptly met with the two other sets of parents to come up with a suitable punishment. We could not play together for a week, which is a long time in the summer. "That was sort of sick now that I think about it," I say.

"I know! And remember how Annalise kept saying it wasn't her idea?"

"Yeah. Nothing ever was her idea," I say.

"We always thought of the cool stuff. She was a big-time coattailer."

"Yeah," I say.

I am quiet, thinking about our childhood. I remember the day we were dropped off at the mall with our paltry sixth-grade savings, racing to the Piercing Pagoda to purchase our "best friend" necklaces, a heart inscribed with the two words, split down the middle, each side of the charm hanging from a gold-plated chain. Darcy took the "Be Fri" half, I got the "st end" half. Of course, we were so worried about Annalise's feelings that we only wore the necklaces in secret, under our turtlenecks, or in bed at night. But I remember the thrill of tucking my half of the heart inside my shirt, against my skin. I had a best friend. There was such security in that, such a sense of identity and belonging.

I still have my necklace buried in my jewelry box, the gold plate turned green with grit and time, but now also tarnished with something impossible to remove. I am suddenly overcome with profound sadness for those two little girls. For what is now gone between them. For what might never be regained, no matter what happens with Dex.

"Talk more," Darcy says sweetly. There is no trace of the brash, self-centered bride-to-be whom I have come to resent, even dislike. "Please don't sleep yet. We never get to hang out like this anymore. I miss it."

"Me too," I say, meaning it.

I ask her if she remembers the day we bought our "best friend" necklaces.

"Yes. But remind me about the details," she says in her charming way.

Darcy loves to hear my accounts of our childhood, always praising my more complete memory. I tell her the story of the necklaces, give her the longest version possible. After I am finished, I whisper, "Are you asleep?"

No answer.

As I listen to Darcy breathing in the dark beside me, I wonder how we got to this. How we could be in love with the same person. How I could be sabotaging my best friend's engagement. In the final seconds before sleep, I wish I could go back and undo everything, give those little girls another chance.

Chapter 17

The next morning, I am awakened by the sound of Darcy rummaging through my medicine cabinet. I listen to her bang around as I try to piece together my dreams from the night before, a series of incoherent vignettes featuring a wide cast of the usual characters-my parents, Darcy, Dex, Marcus, even Les. The plot is unclear, but I recall a fair amount of running and hiding. I almost kissed Dex a dozen times, but never did. I can't even be satisfied in my dreams. Darcy emerges from the bathroom with a happy face.

"I'm not hungover at all," she announces. "Although I took some Advil just in case. You're out. Hope you didn't need any."

"I'm fine," I say.

"Not bad for the day after a bachelorette party! What do you want to do today? Can we spend the day together? Just doing nothing. Like old times."

"Okay," I say, somewhat reluctantly.

"Awesome!" She walks toward my kitchen, starts rooting around. "Do you have any cereal?"

"No, I'm out. You want to go to EJ's?"

She says no, that she wants to eat sugar cereal right here in my apartment, that she wants it to feel just like old times, no New York brunch scene. She opens my refrigerator and surveys the contents. "Man, you're out of everything. I'll just run out and get some coffee and some essentials."

"Should we really drink coffee?" I ask her.

"Why wouldn't we?"

"Because I thought we were going to be authentic. We didn't drink coffee when we were in high school."

She thinks for a second, missing my sarcasm. "We'll make an exception for coffee."

"Do you want me to come with you?" I offer.

"No. That's okay. I'll be right back."

As soon as she leaves, I check my voice mail. Dex has left me two messages-one from last night, one from this morning. In the first, he says how much he misses me. In the second, he asks if he can come over tonight. I call him back, surprised at how grateful I feel when I get voice mail. I leave him a message, telling him that Darcy is over and plans to stay for a while, so tonight won't really work out. Then I sit on my couch thinking about last night, my friendship with Darcy. Will I be able to live with myself if I get what I want at her expense? What would life be like without her? I am still thinking about it all when Darcy returns. Bulging plastic bags hang from her forearms. I take the coffees from her hands as she dramatically drops the bags to the floor and shows me the red indentations the bags made on her arms. I make a sympathetic noise until she smiles again.

"I got great stuff! Froot Loops! Root beer! Cranapple juice! And Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream!"

"Ice cream for breakfast?"

"No. For later."

"Aren't you worried about your wedding weight?"

She waves her hand at me. "Whatever. No."

"Why not?" I ask, knowing that she will eat now and ask me later why I let her do it.

" 'Cause I'm just not! Don't rain on my parade!… Now. Let's eat Froot Loops!"

She busies herself in the kitchen finding bowls, spoons, napkins. She brings them out to the coffee table. She is in her giddy, high-energy mode.

"Would you rather eat over there?" I say, pointing to my little round table.