Bailey says, “I heard about Jesselle.”

“It’s okay. I’m okay.” Just to drive the point home of how COMPLETELY OKAY I am, I wave my hand at the air, so carefree, like I’m smacking away a mosquito.

She says, “It’s that horrible Caroline.”

“This will just free me up to pursue other things.” Like dancing by myself in my room and creating voodoo dolls with Caroline Lushamp’s face.

As I fish through my backpack for a lip gloss, Bailey is listing all the other non-dancing, non-voodoo-doll-making activities I could start doing. My hand closes around something. An envelope. I yank it out and turn away to read it, even though I can guess what it says.

You aren’t wanted. (I told you so.)

I look up, expecting Caroline to be there watching me. Instead, Bailey is reading over my shoulder.

“Who’s that from?”

“No one.” I shove the letter back into my backpack.

I told you so.

Does she mean See there? Jack doesn’t love you. Or does she mean Why did you ever think YOU could audition for the Damsels?

“Libbs, who wrote that?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“But—”

“Please, Bailey. I’m fine.”

“I guess you’re fine about Jack too, then.”

“I don’t want to talk about Jack.”

Her mouth snaps shut. Then she says, “You can’t always be fine. No one’s always fine. And I know you’re used to being on your own, and I know I should have been a better friend so that you didn’t have to get used to being on your own, but I’m here now, and I wish you’d talk to me.”

In the car, I ask Mr. Dominguez to, for God’s sake, play some music, only I don’t actually mention God because this will only set Bailey off and I already feel bad enough for barking at her. The first song Mr. Dominguez chooses is, of course, ancient 1970s rock. “Love Hurts,” and if you don’t know it, DON’T EVER LISTEN TO IT, ESPECIALLY IF YOUR HEART IS BROKEN. Immediately I get this lump in my throat, the kind that makes it impossible to swallow or even breathe.

One minute into the song, tears are rolling down my face, but Mr. Dominguez doesn’t bat an eye.

I see Jack in the main hallway of school. He’s flanked by Seth Powell and Dave Kaminski, who looks right at me, almost through me, while Jack saunters past like I’m invisible.

And maybe I am.

Like everyone else in his life.

Just one more person he can’t see.

Conversation Circle is canceled today because Mr. Levine has some sort of staff meeting, and honestly I’m glad. I don’t want to face Libby because I’m a miserable coward, and this is what miserable cowards do—we avoid facing things. I walk out of school with Kam, who’s going, “What are you up to tonight? I hear Kendra’s having some people over.”

I can picture tonight like it’s already happened—Kendra’s enormous house, filled with yapping dogs no higher than your ankle, Caroline and the rest of them bitching about one thing and another, everyone drinking till they’re stupid(er).

“Man, I’m still grounded.” Not that I would go if I could.

He starts telling me a story about Seth, but I’m only half listening because a car comes pulling up and I watch as this girl who can only be Libby climbs in. The car rolls away, and I’m thinking, Look up, look up. But she doesn’t even glance in my direction.

I find Mom-with-Hair-Down in the kitchen, standing in front of the window, drinking one of Dusty’s juice boxes. She looks distracted and far away. I walk in coughing so I can give her fair warning.

She smiles, but it lands somewhere over my left shoulder. “What’s up?”

“Just thirsty.” I grab a juice box and lean against the counter. “Do you remember when I was playing Little League?”

“Sure.”

“You would tell me who all of the players were before practice because I could never keep them straight.”

“You were always getting them mixed up.”

“It was pretty cool of you to do that.”

“That’s what we do.” She says it so matter-of-factly that I love her more for it. She smiles into the distance, into the past, and laughs. “You were full of swagger, even then. I’m not sure where that came from. You didn’t get it from us.”

“I totally got it from you.”

She smiles. Sighs. “So what’s really up?”

“Are you and Dad getting divorced?”

“What? Why would you say that?”

This is my strong, no-bullshit mother, but there’s something scared hidden deep in her voice, like I may know something she doesn’t. It’s like a knife through the gut, and I wish I’d never heard it, because there’s no way I’m going to forget the sound of it, not if I live to be a hundred.

“You guys just don’t seem like you lately.”

“Things have been a little strained.” She is wary. It’s in her face and in her voice. It’s in the way she crosses her arms over her chest. “But you’re the child and I’m the parent, no matter how tall you get or how large you grow that Afro, which means I don’t want you to worry.”

Her smile is the punctuation, the thing that tells me we’re done here. There’s something in its protectiveness that brings on this wave of déjà vu, and suddenly I’m six years old and lying in the hospital. My mom is holding my hand. She’s talking to my dad, and they’re happy and relieved because I’m going to be okay and he doesn’t have cancer yet and he hasn’t even met Monica Chapman. Mom glances at me and then back at my dad, and her face seems different every time. Is this when it started? But her smile is the same.