Gemma was sure that even if she were five-eleven and a supermodel look-alike, her parents’ absurd beliefs about social media (It rots the brain! It’s bad for self-esteem!) would have ensured she stayed on the bottom of the social food chain. She was also sure that when her mom and April’s got together, all they did was brainstorm elaborate and ever more absurd ways to make sure that both April and Gemma stayed safe, friendless except for each other, and totally miserable.

When half the junior girls decided to spend spring break in Miami, Gemma hadn’t even bothered petitioning her parents to be allowed to go. She knew she had just about as much chance of being named the first female president of the United States . . . at age sixteen. Besides, she had no desire to spend her vacation bumping into the same predators she spent all her time deliberately avoiding at school.

But April—who was not only prettier, smarter, and far more optimistic than Gemma, so much so that had they not been absolute, sworn lifelong best friends, co-aliens, outcasts together, Gemma would have despised her—hadn’t given in so easily. She’d begged her parents. She’d cried. She had thrown a tantrum—a risky proposition, since her mother, Angela Ruiz, a renowned prosecutor for the state, had been known to frighten grown men into confessions at their first meeting. (And her other mother, Diana, was a computer programmer who had won several kickboxing competitions in her early twenties.)

Then the miraculous had happened. April hit on the magic word: sexism.

It was sexism, April claimed, that her older brother, Ryan, got to go on spring break with his friends. It was sexism that he got to drive a Lexus while she was stuck with the Green Giant, an ancient chartreuse station wagon. And even though Ryan was two years older, and the Lexus had been a congratulations gift for getting into Harvard early action, suddenly April’s moms had generated a counteroffer: April and Gemma could take the car and drive down to Bowling Springs, Florida, for a week, where April’s grandparents lived.

Even better, they had convinced Gemma’s parents that it was a good idea.

And, yeah, sure, maybe hanging out in a community known for its 65+ dating scene and competitive weekly badminton tournament wasn’t exactly the spring break of every girl’s dream. But it was better than nothing. They could stay for a whole nine days, paddle around the pool, walk down to the community tennis courts, and take their car to the beach. They could drink virgin piña coladas and sample fried gator at the local restaurants. Still better, they would have the house to themselves for three full days while April’s grandparents were off attending some weird Positive Visualization Health Retreat that involved a lot of yoga and deep breathing—a minor detail Gemma had managed to avoid in all of her conversations with her parents.

Discussing spring break plans with her best friend made Gemma feel all-American, beauty-magazine, country-song normal. So much so that she wasn’t sure she actually wanted to go, just so she could keep talking about it.

April had to hop, haul, and wiggle to get into her jeans. Her preferred fit, she always said, was human sushi roll. Gemma’s was airy trash bag. “I’ll pick you up Saturday at eight a.m., got it?”

“Got it,” Gemma said. They’d agreed on Saturday, March 19, eight a.m. weeks ago, but reconfirmed almost every day. Why not? This was the first adventurous thing either of them had ever done in their lives, unless you counted microwaving Peeps at Easter to watch them explode.

Gemma wished she only felt excited. She wished, more than anything, that her parents’ words and warnings hadn’t over time worked their way like a virus into her cells, replicating there.

She wished she wasn’t also just the littlest, tiniest bit scared.

But she told herself nothing would happen. After all, nothing ever did.

Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 2 of Lyra’s story.

THREE

A LIST OF ALL THE medical conditions Gemma had had since she was born:

1. two broken tibias

2. one collapsed lung

3. congenital heart failure

4. pneumonia

5. poison ivy (on her butt, of all places)

6. pneumonia again

7. a fractured wrist

8. hypothyroidism

9. pneumonia, a third time

A list of some of the medical conditions she had not had:

1. the bubonic plague

2. that disease where you stay really skinny, no matter how much you eat

Every so often, when Gemma approached the massive iron gates that encircled her property, she got a flash of something—not memory, exactly, but something close to it, like the sudden recollection of a song you heard someone sing only once. There was a high fence lost somewhere in the wild tangle of fever-dreams that had so often been hers as a very young child—a high fence, a giant statue of a man kneeling in the dirt, reaching, it seemed, simultaneously for heaven and hell.

The driveway was exactly one-quarter of a mile long. Gemma knew because one time she had asked her mom to measure it in the car. It bisected an enormous lawn spotted with ancient spruce trees and flowering dogwood. On days when April had chorus, taking the bus and walking the quarter mile up the driveway was infinitely preferable to having her dad’s driver pick her up, which would require that she wait at the student drop-off area, in full view of the senior playing fields, and would be a tacit admission that she had only one friend to drive her.

Besides, it was practically the only exercise Gemma got. On nice days she walked deliberately slowly, making it last, enjoying the smell of freesia and honeysuckle and listening to the faint whine of the mosquitoes clustered in the shade.