“Hey, dipshit—sixth graders don’t sit with us,” Rick said. He and I were dicked around enough by eighth grade jocks without welcoming guys who’d just be a magnet for more of their shit. I glanced up, expecting to see some skinny kid moving his ass along. But the person sliding her tray off the table was Pearl Torres.

“Shut the fuck up, Thompson,” I said, looking into Pearl’s dark eyes, which were almost obscured by glasses so large they hijacked her face. Her hair was wild—free of the braids or hair ties she’d always worn. “Stay,” I told her. “It’s okay.”

She nodded and sat. Every day for two school years, she sat at the end of our table, shoulders hunched, hair partially obscuring her face, silently eating her lunch and reading a novel or doing homework. No one bothered her unless they wanted to pass through me. I didn’t get in many fights in middle school. Brent had made me swear to stay out of trouble when he went to boot camp, and my dread of Dad getting called to the school went deep. But I was bigger than Rick’s big brother, Randy, who was old enough to drive, so most kids just weren’t that interested in pissing me off.

Pearl

“Evan arrived last night with his mannequin-to-be in tow.”

I was almost reacquainted with the way Melody launched into impassioned conversations the second she slipped into my car, before she’d even fastened the seat belt or asked where we were going.

She yanked the door shut on my GTI, and I flinched at the force of the door slamming into the frame. “She’s a Barb Dover replicant! All Yes, honey and Whatever makes you happy, Evan, like she has no damned opinions of her own and no intention of forming any.”

Now probably wasn’t the time to point out the hypocrisy in her judgment of her future sister-in-law.

“But hey—my parents are thrilled shitless. They’ll finally have the daughter they always wanted. Evan even proposed with Grandma Bea’s three-carat emerald.”

I gasped. “What? But she bequeathed that ring to you in her will!” Melody’s outspoken force-of-nature grandmother was the only member of her family who’d ever encouraged Mel to stand up for herself. She’d also suffered no qualms encouraging her favorite grandchild to rebel more often, claiming that her parents deserved it.

“Right. And what am I supposed to do? Sue my parents, my brother, and his Mom-clone to get it?” She choked up, and I didn’t know what to say.

Mama and Barbara Dover had been in the same social circle since Mama married Thomas. Mama took pains not to gossip, but sometimes she’d come home from lunch or a Junior League meeting muttering in Spanish, and even if she spoke too quickly and softly for me to translate, I’d caught the word Barb on a few occasions.

“They know I can’t do anything about it. This is how they punish me for breaking up with Matt instead of extracting a marriage proposal out of him.” Her mother actually expected Mel to be engaged by twenty-two. Who did that?

“I thought Matt broke up with you?” After your mother gave you a bridal magazine subscription for Christmas, I didn’t say.

She huffed a sigh. “No. He just didn’t want to get married in the near future, or maybe ever, so I broke up with him. Mama had convinced me that if I did it right, he’d propose. But instead I spent two weeks with Ben & Jerry and Jose Cuervo, and nothing to show for it but an extra inch on my ass.”

“So he didn’t want to break up—he just didn’t want to get married? Oh, Mel.”

“Yeah, can we not discuss what a moron I am? I had a good relationship with a decent guy and I blew it. Again.”

When we were in high school, Melody—and half the town along with her—caught her boyfriend cheating on her. Clark Richards and three of his varsity baseball bros had a visiting-college-girls orgy in a beach rental his father owned. One of the guys took video clips, which made the rounds of the student body like a lit fuse. It wasn’t the first time Clark had cheated on her, but it was the only one caught on film, witnessed by just about everyone. I was never more proud of her than when she broke up with him.

She started going out with Boyce’s best friend, Landon Maxfield, which I warned her against doing because I was afraid she was just going for a bad boy and she might get hurt again. But then she told me about their conversations. How he wanted to know her opinions and cared about her feelings. How he made her laugh. How his kisses did things to her that Clark’s had never done.

Clark found out immediately, of course. No matter how sizable the population of this island becomes during tourist season, it remains a small town to those of us who live here, and nobody keeps anything private for long. He had batches of roses delivered to her house. He gave her a diamond-studded charm bracelet in a pink satin box, begging her to take him back and swearing to never screw around on her again. Her parents approved of him; his daddy was a big developer, even richer than they were. He was a year older, popular, and hot in a conventional, old money sort of way.

He was also a rat bastard cheater, but I couldn’t convince her that even if once a liar, always a liar might not be a surefire judgment, it was a damned good presumption.

She didn’t even tell Landon herself. In the west hallway the following day, her boyfriend informed him he’d been a rebound and nothing more. I didn’t know Landon well then, but I knew he didn’t deserve my best friend staring at the floor while her boyfriend told him he was trash.

Then Clark graduated and dumped Melody like their two-year relationship and all his promises meant nothing. I hadn’t wanted to be right. I hadn’t wanted proof that what goes around comes around.