“Sorry,” I said. Feeling a little better, I dumped my drum into the storage room and came back outside. “So, what’s this I hear about you being the perfect couple with Brody Larson? You’re both dating other people, and you hardly know him. You move fast, don’t you? Slut.”

“Shut it.” She removed one of her hands from the side of her head and placed it over my mouth. Then, as I walked through the courtyard to retrieve my own bike, she pedaled beside me. “The artistic side of me says, ‘How cool and random for a boy I hardly know, some jock who isn’t on the yearbook staff or the newspaper staff or even in the drama club, to be chosen as my perfect boyfriend!’ The artistic side of me wants to write a poem about it. Meanwhile, the rational side of me is saying, ‘What the fuck?’ Also, ‘His girlfriend is going to kick my ass.’ ”

“I’m not rational at all,” I pointed out as though this were not obvious, “and I’m saying ‘What the fuck?’ also. But the difference between you and me is, the second he and Grace broke up—and this is probably going to happen, because Brody never dates anyone for long—I would try to hook up with him just out of curiosity.”

“You’re forgetting Kennedy,” Harper said.

I was not forgetting her boyfriend, Kennedy. I simply thought if her choice was between responsible Kennedy and wild Brody, there was no contest. Bring on the hot mess! But that was me, and Harper was Harper. I figured I’d better let the subject drop before I got myself in trouble.

As we emerged from the courtyard again, I gazed across the parking lot, which was almost empty of students’ cars now. Of course Will had not waited to watch me emerge from the school so he could rush over and apologize. His car was gone. He’d probably picked up old Angelica on his way off campus. I bet she’d slipped her little hand in his before they even passed the HOME OF THE PELICANS sign.

“Worry about your own mismatched boy,” Harper said. “Tell me what happened between you and Will. You were elected Biggest Flirts, and that’s why he kicked you out of his trunk?”

“Yes! He broke up with me!” As I unlocked my bike from the rack and launched myself down the palm-lined street, I told her all about my argument with Will.

“Let me get this straight,” she said. “You want him to like you enough that he doesn’t ask anyone else out, even though you’ve turned him down because you don’t want a boyfriend.”

“Correct.”

“That’s just selfish of you.”

“I agree.”

“You’re not a selfish person.”

“Apparently Will’s my downfall.”

“But . . .” Harper pondered this for a couple of blocks before finally asking, “Don’t you think it might be worth considering bending your no-boyfriend rule for Will? People at school are talking about you two a lot. It’s hard to believe this is just a passing hookup.”

“A past hookup,” I clarified. “I’m sure he wouldn’t even take me back now. He wants exactly what he has. Angelica is a tiny blond girl. I’m a gangly puertorriqueña.” We’d reached a row of shops where we had to get off the sidewalk and stick to a narrow bike lane. I shot ahead of Harper, trying to escape this discussion.

“Tia,” Harper called, “that’s just weird. If Will has a problem with you being part Puerto Rican, you don’t want him anyway.”

“I don’t want him anyway,” I threw over my shoulder.

“And you’re not gangly. You’re tall, which would be an asset on the modeling runway.”

“I am not on the modeling runway, however. I am riding a bike through suburban Tampa/St. Petersburg, and my knees are touching my ears.” As I pedaled, I bent my head to try to make this happen. I swerved dangerously toward the comic book store we were riding past and straightened just in time to avoid crashing through the window and shocking the nerds.

Harper was laughing her ass off behind me. “I promise you’re not gangly. To be considered gangly, you would have to walk funny. In that case, Kaye would have shown up at your house before now to conduct an intervention.”

We talked about Kaye then. Harper hadn’t seen her after school. I told Harper how happy Kaye had seemed at being elected Most Likely to Succeed along with Aidan—as if either of them needed to be reassured.

Harper asked me how closely I’d listened to the announcements. She said she was taking the Senior Superlatives photographs for the yearbook starting Monday morning, and Will and I should meet her in the courtyard right at the beginning of second period.

News to me. I wondered whether I should call Will to pass along the information. This would violate our new pact to cool it. Angelica would interpret phone call as hot sex and Will would hate me. No, I would not call him. I could go into the yearbook under the heading Biggest Flirt by myself.

As we approached the antiques store, Harper waved and said brightly, “Ta! See you Monday,” as though the coming photo session sounded like good times.

“Ta.” I didn’t want her to look back and see me watching her mournfully. I locked my bike in the rack and went into the shop.

When we’d first started riding our bikes together, and I’d been headed home instead of to work, I’d always begged Harper to come inside with me—if she would be very, very quiet and not wake my dad—or I would suggest we hang out at her mom’s bed and breakfast. She’d explained that I was an extrovert, and extroverts got their energy from being around other people. She was an introvert, and introverts got their energy from being by themselves. She needed to go home, be by herself, and work on her photography project of the moment so that the next time we saw each other, she would have more energy to give me. This scenario made me sound like an alien sucking her brains out through a straw, but it also kind of made sense. It explained why, now that my sisters had moved out and my dad was always at work or asleep, I felt so down at home. But that knowledge wouldn’t do anything to fix a long, lonely weekend.

Luckily I was super busy at work, dealing with customers while simultaneously finding things in inventory for Bob and trying to explain to Roger how computers worked. Three hours flew by. Then we closed, and I was out on the sidewalk again, unlocking my bike. I gazed down the street at the salon where Izzy worked. I could forgive her, I supposed, for what she’d said to me months ago about watching her kids. But Izzy could be harsh, and the idea of her saying something else snide was enough to keep me away. Besides, if she’d been at work to cut Will’s hair at seven this morning, she was long gone now.

I rode to my house, lifting my bike over the front lawn so I wouldn’t crash through the magnolia leaves and wake my dad. The house was deathly quiet, and I hated it. Much as my sisters had annoyed the crap out of me while they lived at home, I would have given anything to ignore Izzy’s orders as I walked in the door, and tease Sophia about the fantasy novel she was reading on the sofa, and yell at Violet because I caught her stealing a shirt out of my closet in the room we shared.

It wasn’t going to happen. With a deep sigh that nobody heard but me, I nuked a frozen dinner, cleared off a space at the kitchen table, and drew my calculus book out of my backpack. This actually happened. I thought about Will, and what a good student he was, and what a good student old Angelica was, diligently ciphering in anticipation of that bright, shining day in spring when she could take the AP test. Maybe Will would like me better if I wasn’t so lame in school.

But I knew I shouldn’t do stuff just because Will would like me better for it. That was exactly why I didn’t want a boyfriend. There were other reasons to do my calculus homework, such as not flunking. I pulled out my notebook and turned to the page where I’d written down the assignment. This was more difficult than it sounded. Usually I wrote things down on whatever page I opened to rather than starting from the beginning and working through to the end like some academically obsessed drum captains. I took a bite of dinner, started the problem . . . and then lost myself in it. I had a hard time starting my homework because I dreaded it, but once I got into it, I forgot what I was doing and didn’t mind so much. Until—

HOOOOOOOOOOONK.

I scraped back my chair and ran outside without even looking to see who’d pulled into the driveway. The only important thing was to get the horn stopped before it woke my dad. I rushed blinking into the dusk. When I was halfway across the lawn, I saw Sawyer grinning at me from the cab of his truck.

I sliced my finger across my throat. “My dad’s asleep.”

Sawyer took his hand off the horn. “Sorry.” He wagged his eyebrows at me. “Does that mean I can come in?”

“No.” I didn’t have to think about that one. Except for Harper, my friends always assured me they could come inside my house and be quiet. They were wrong. They always forgot, somebody laughed really loudly, and my dad woke up.

“You’re afraid we’ll make some noise?” Sawyer asked.

“I know we will.” Bantering with him was easier than explaining that no, I was serious, my dad actually had to work tonight, and this was the last sleep he would get. Sawyer understood a lot about life—way more than he probably should have at seventeen—but he didn’t understand factories that ran all night, or trying to support a family on third shift.

“Why’d you give me such a hard time about Biggest Flirt today?” I griped. “And you called me your girl in front of Will. What was that about?”

“You need to stay away from that guy,” Sawyer said. “He’s a player.”

“He’s not,” I said. “You are.”

“But you like him,” Sawyer pointed out. “That makes him dangerous. I don’t matter. So come out with me.”

“Can’t,” I said. “Homework.”

“You?” he asked, astonished. “Are doing your homework?”

Normally I wouldn’t have been offended by a comment like that, but what Will had said about me making so many mistakes—that must have gotten to me. “It’s been known to happen,” I said haughtily.

“I’m more fun than homework,” Sawyer said.

I was about to point out that cleaning the toilet was also more fun than homework, and I had no intention of doing that, either.

Then an airliner roared over us, bringing the last of the season’s tourists. Labor Day was coming up in two weeks, signaling the end of summer—for Yankees, anyway. I cringed at the noise, crossing my fingers that it wouldn’t wake my dad.

Yeah. Sawyer was better than homework. He was way better than another night of staying very quiet until my dad finally dragged himself up grumpily, refused to eat what I’d heated for him because he wasn’t hungry when he first woke, and left. It was like living by myself except for an outdoor cat we’d once had that passed through the house only to use the litter box.

“Come on,” Sawyer said. “My brother’s bartending tonight. Come sit on the back porch of the Crab Lab and get wasted with me.”

I said, “Just let me lock up.”

9

ONCE I’D GIVEN IN TO Sawyer Friday night, it didn’t make sense to turn him down Saturday night or Sunday night. That’s why, when Will and I sat on a bench in the school courtyard Monday morning, waiting for Harper to finish photographing Mr. and Ms. Least Likely to Leave the Tampa/St. Petersburg Metropolitan Area, it was like he and I had traded personalities. I was a little hungover, so I wasn’t my usual laugh riot. And Will must have had a banner weekend with old Angelica. He was in a great mood, regaling me with all his ideas for the picture being taken in front of us.

“Chain them to the palm trees,” he said. “Build a box and pour concrete around their feet.”

“Have them get married at seventeen,” I suggested. “Find the guy a factory job with lots of overtime and give them so many kids that he keeps the factory job and takes all the overtime he’s offered so he can feed everybody.”

Will frowned at me. “Who are you talking about?”

“My dad.” I pressed my fingertips to my throbbing temple.

“Did something happen? What’s wrong?” His brow furrowed, and he took a closer look at me, his gaze lingering on my mouth. Which made me look at his mouth. Which made me mad.

“Yes, something happened,” I snapped. “You broke up with me Friday. You can’t decide to be friends with me again today. Go over there.” I pointed to a bench on the opposite end of the courtyard. I’d spoken loudly enough that Harper looked up from her camera and raised her eyebrows. I shook my head at her.

I thought Will would be offended all over again. Maybe I wanted him to be offended. It was kind of a letdown that he gamely crossed the courtyard and sat where I pointed. Then he called through his cupped hands, “Do we have to stay in the courtyard? We could take them to the beach and bury them up to their necks in sand.”

He grinned at me, but his smile faded as I glared at him. Harper was dismissing Mr. and Ms. Loser. They disappeared back inside the school as Will and I continued to watch each other. I didn’t know what he was thinking. I was thinking that he was the hottest guy I’d ever known, slouched on the bench with one ankle crossed on the other knee, his arms folded defensively, and his pirate earring winking in the sun. I wished he would go back to the frozen tundra and leave me alone.

He called, “You ruined the curve, didn’t you?”

He was talking about the test in our AP calculus class. I shifted uncomfortably. The concrete was awfully hard all of a sudden. “That is an ugly thing to accuse me of.”