“Hardly,” I say. “I look like a drag queen.” Already I’m sorry I agreed to let Dara do my makeup. Normally I use ChapStick and mascara—and that’s only for special occasions. Now I feel like a kid who went crazy at a carnival face-painting booth.

The funny thing is that Dara and I do look alike, mostly—and yet, everywhere she’s delicate and well-made and pretty, I’m lumpy and plain. Our hair is the same indeterminate brown, although hers is currently dyed black (Cleopatra black, she calls it) and has previously been platinum, auburn, and even, briefly, purple. We have the same hazel eyes spaced a little too far apart. We have the same nose, although mine is a teensy bit crooked, from where Parker accidentally clobbered me with a softball in third grade. I’m actually taller than Dara is, though you’d never know it—currently, she has on a pair of crazy wedge platform boots with a translucent dress that barely clears her underwear, plus black-and-white-striped tights that on anyone else would look idiotic. Meanwhile, I’m wearing what I always wear to the Founders’ Day Ball: a tank top and skinny jeans, plus comfortable ankle boots.

That’s the thing about Dara and me: we’re both similar and worlds apart. Like the sun and the moon, or a starfish and a star: related, sure, but at the same time totally and completely different. And Dara’s always the one doing the shining.

“You look beautiful,” Dara says, straightening up. On the sink, her phone starts vibrating and does a half turn next to the toothbrush cup before falling silent again. “Doesn’t she, Ari?”

“Beautiful,” says Ariana, without looking up. Ariana has long, wavy blond hair and a facial-cleanser-and-Swiss-Alps kind of complexion, which makes her tongue ring, nose ring, and the tiny stud above her left eyebrow always seem out of place. She’s perched on the edge of the bathtub, stirring her warm vodka orange juice with a pinkie. She takes a sip and gags expressively.

“Too strong?” Dara asks, faking innocence. Her phone starts going again. She quickly silences it.

“No, it’s great,” Ariana says sarcastically. But she takes another sip. “I was looking for an excuse to burn away my tonsils. Who needs ’em?”

“You’re welcome,” Dara says, reaching for the cup. She takes a big swig and passes it to me.

“No, thanks,” I say. “I’ll keep my tonsils.”

“Come on.” Dara hooks an arm around my shoulder. In her heels, she’s even taller than my five-seven. “It’s Founders’ Day.”

Ariana stands up to take the cup back. She has to pick her way across a bathroom floor littered with bras and underwear, dresses and tank tops—all discarded outfit selections. “Founders’ Day,” she repeats, in her best impression of our principal’s voice. Mr. O’Henry not only chaperones the dance, which takes place every year in the gym, he participates in the lame historical reenactment of the Battle of Monument Hill, after which the original British settlers determined all the area west of the Saskawatchee a part of the British Empire. I think it’s a little politically insensitive to basically mime the massacre of a bunch of Cherokee Indians every year, but whatever. “The most important day of the year, and a seminal moment in our proud history,” Ariana finishes, hefting her cup in the air.

“Hear, hear,” Dara says, and mimes drinking from a glass, keeping her pinkie high.

“They really should have called it Royal Fuck-Up Day,” Ari says in her normal voice.

“Doesn’t have the same ring to it,” I say, and Dara giggles.

Three hundred years ago, colonial explorers looking for the Hudson River believed they’d found it and settled instead on the banks of the Saskawatchee, chartering the town for England and inadvertently forming what would later become Somerville, about five hundred miles southwest of their initial destination. At some point, they must have realized their mistake, but I guess by then they were too settled to do anything about it.

There’s a metaphor in that somewhere—like all of life is about ending up somewhere you didn’t expect, and learning to just be happy with it.

“Aaron’s going to freak when he sees you,” Dara says. She has the uncanny ability to do that: to pluck a thought out of my head and finish it, like she’s unspooling some tangled invisible sweater. “One look, and he’s going to forget all about the promise club.”

Ariana snorts.

“For the last time,” I say, “Aaron’s not in the promise club.” Ever since Aaron was cast as Jesus in our Christmas pageant—in first grade—Dara has been convinced that he’s a religious freak and a sworn virgin until marriage, an idea confirmed, in her mind, by the fact that we’ve been together for two months and haven’t gotten much past second base.

I guess it hasn’t occurred to her that the problem might be with me.

Thinking of him now—his long dark hair, the way he always smells, mysteriously, a bit like toasted almonds, even after his basketball games—makes something squeeze up in my stomach, half pleasure, half pain. I love Aaron. I do.

I just don’t love him enough.

Dara’s phone starts vibrating again. This time she snatches it up, sighs, and drops it into a small sequined bag, patterned all over with tiny skulls.

“Is that the guy who—?” Ariana starts to ask, and Dara shushes her quickly.

“What?” I turn to Dara, suddenly suspicious. “What’s the big secret?”

“Nothing,” she says, giving Ariana a stern look, as if daring her to argue. Then she turns back to me, all smiles, so beautiful, the kind of girl you want to believe, the kind of girl you want to follow. The kind of girl you want to fall in love with. “Come on,” she says, taking my hand and squeezing it so hard my fingers ache. “Parker’s waiting.”