* * *

On the drive home, I crank up a news station on the radio. Maybe world unrest can distract me from the chaos that has become my life. I need to ignore the disgust I feel for myself.

I am in serious like with Ezra Drummond.

Even though he’s still with Val for some unknown reason, I can’t help it. My heart and mind are conspiring against me.

“I like Ezra Drummond!” I scream over the weather report. It feels great to say it out loud. And then the dread sinks in. I roll down my window. The breeze blows against my face.

How can I be with him and hurt Val? How can I let him stay with Val? Why do none of these options end with happily ever after?

My phone rings. The second caller of the night. I am never this popular.

“Hey.”

“Hi, Rebecca. What are you up to this weekend?”

“Nothing.”

“Rebecca! You honestly have no plans this weekend?”

I roll my eyes at the comment. I’m glad one aspect of my life remains constant.

“What is it, Huxley?”

“Do you want to go down to Chandler tomorrow?”

I don’t think about the logistics, the lies I’ll have to tell my parents or the sheer lunacy of Huxley’s question. I’ve never needed an escape so badly in my life.

“What time are we leaving?”

32

On Saturday afternoons, most kids from Ashland are watching crappy movies on cable, running errands or working. (Maybe a scant few are doing homework, too. Maybe.) None of them are 35,000 feet up in the air lounging in first class, eating Salisbury steak and sipping on free champagne.

Except Huxley and me.

I told my parents I was hanging out with Huxley this weekend. I never specified where we’d be hanging out.

Huxley downs her second glass of champagne and peers out the window, something she hasn’t stopped doing since we crossed the Appalachian Mountains. It’s rare to watch her be so pensive.

“Are you okay?” I smack myself on the forehead. Dumbest question of the day. Let’s try again. “Do you want to talk?”

Worry clouds her face. “I know there’s not much we can do when we get there. I just need to see with my own eyes what he’s doing tonight, if...”

“If he’s having too much fun.”

“If he’s happy,” she says. She glances out the window again. “If he plays football for them, I don’t know if we’ll make it.”

“Don’t say that!” The flight attendant gives me the stink eye while she refills Huxley’s glass. She probably can tell I’m only in first class because of Huxley, not the other way around.

“He loves you. Remember Chris Gomberg’s party?”

She nods yes, but without conviction. “Things will be different if he goes off to school.”

“That’s why you want him to go to Vermilion.”

“I can’t lose him.”

She needs him close, needs the control. But I don’t get why she’s so intent on staying with him after he graduates. She’ll graduate a year later and go off to college and find another boyfriend. Is her senior-year status at Ashland that important?

“Maybe you two should just call it quits now. Let each other start fresh. We have brand-new lives waiting for us once we get out of Ashland.” I take a sip of my champagne. The bubbles tickle my nose, and I let out a Chihuahua yelp. The flight attendant shakes her head at me.

“I don’t want a brand-new life. I like my life with Steve. My parents were high-school sweethearts. They both went to Rutgers, got married right after and settled down back in Ashland. As old-fashioned as that sounds, it’s also incredibly romantic. They knew from the start what mattered the most. I want that with Steve.”

Diane also tried going that route with Sankresh, but it backfired. The only time when the whole high-school-sweetheart story works out is when the two people involved don’t think about it.

“Maybe you’re meant for something different. Maybe that’s not your life. You’re smart, Huxley, and you’re a born leader. Look what you’ve done with SDA. I think there’s this whole interesting future waiting for you. Do you really want to chuck it for the sake of some relationship?”

“It’s not just ‘some relationship.’” She swirls around her glass of champagne, watching the bubbles, so contemplative, as if she’s reviewing the past four years and making her own judgment.

“I began dating Steve for all the wrong reasons,” she says. “I liked him because he was Steve Overland. Now it turns out I actually love the guy.”

And I actually believe her when she says it. She sounds so natural about it, so genuine, like she’s stating a fact rather than proving a point. Unfortunately for her, it’s a fact that she can no longer control.

* * *

The warm breeze and amber setting sun of Dallas welcomes us. It makes me question living in a place that has snow.

When I turn my phone back on, I find a pair of text messages waiting for me.

Both from Ezra.


Can you meet up today? We need to talk.


I know how to fix what happened with Val. You’re the one I lurve.


Does lurve count as the L word?

“Why are you so smiley?” Huxley asks me.

I shove my phone in my purse. Heat rushes through me, but let’s just attribute that to the desert weather.

Our cab whizzes down the highway. We pass a steakhouse shaped like a cowboy hat. It’s unabashedly corny, yet endearing. Steve would like it here.

“Who was that?” she asks.

“Nobody.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t.”

“I wasn’t smiley.” I can’t enjoy this. Not when every organ in Val’s body beats for Ezra.

We drop our luggage at the hotel. Huxley sprang for a penthouse suite with a living room, kitchen and balcony overlooking the pool.

“My dad had points,” she says.

I unfurl on the king-size bed and unwrap the mint on my pillow. It pays to be Huxley’s sidekick. I sit up, a thought coming to me.

“Why did you ask me to come with you?”

Huxley stops hanging up clothes. How much did she bring for one night?

“I don’t know. For some reason, when this idea popped into my head, you were the only friend I pictured joining me.”

“Really? More than Ally or Reagan?”

“Yes. They would never go along with this. You probably think I’m insane for coming here, but you also get it.”

It’s true, in some odd way. I guess I’m used to scheming, but she doesn’t know that.

“I know I can trust you,” she says.

I gulp down a lump in my throat. “Thanks.”

We change outfits, aiming for fun yet not very noticeable, and wash the smell of airplane off our skin. I crank country music on the alarm-clock radio, but Huxley’s not in the mood to laugh. She focuses on getting ready. She’s on a mission.

I release the dead bolt and open the door to the hall, but Huxley shuts it just as fast. She’s nervous as hell.

“Don’t worry,” I say. She’s so fragile and human. Any trace of the ice queen has melted, and I can see the girl I once knew underneath. “We’ll probably find Steve sitting on a bench, bored out of his mind.”

“Thank you for coming with me.” She takes a deep breath, and I can tell she wants to say more.

“What is it?”

“I’m sorry.”

I take my hand off the doorknob. “For what?”

“For ditching you. You were a good friend.”

I don’t have some huge emotional reaction where I grab her for a hug and cry hysterically into her shoulder while music swells. I thought I would if I ever received an apology, as if those words would magically fix the past four years. The damage can’t be undone, but I’m ready to move on.

I open up the door again and give her a reassuring smile. “Let’s go do some spying.”

* * *

After walking around campus for a good forty-five minutes, a student in the middle of a Vegan Rights protest sneers and directs us to Sigma Tau Iota, the fraternity of choice for football players.

“Say au revoir to your brain cells,” he said before returning to chanting. (“What do we want? Seitan! When do we want it? For dinner!”)

The frat house could use a paint job, but its majestic front columns and wide balconies give it a powerful aura. This is the place to be tonight, probably every night. Packs of students glom on to every inch of the property, each of them with a red Solo cup in hand. It’s two girls to every guy at this soiree.

The door’s wide-open (well, actually there’s no door), and we join the dense crowd. Sweat beads form on my forehead. This is Chris Gomberg’s party times fifty, except nobody has a history here. People scope out Huxley and me, but not because they know us. There’s no decade-long backstory branded on our foreheads. It’s freeing having a clean slate for once.

We push into a narrow hall and enter the stream of people going somewhere. Huxley looks like she wants to bathe in Purell. I’ll bet more than the heat and claustrophobia, Huxley hates not being recognized.

She peeks into a common room where girls and guys dance on plaid wingback chairs and an antique wood coffee table. My phone buzzes, and I remember that Ezra texted me earlier.


Where’ve you been? We need to talk. Can I see you this weekend?


“No sign of him,” Huxley says.

I can’t ignore him forever. I don’t want to. I don’t want to hurt Val, but this is my life, too. If she’s such a proponent of love and relationships, then she will have to understand. Nobody’s perfect, even best friends. I imagine Ezra and I talking about what happens next, and some more kissing.