AP History had never been so tedious, and that was saying a lot. The secondhand on the clock above the door moved about as fast as Progress, the class pet everyone called a turtle but was actually a tortoise. Mr. Caws was so monotone, he could dull anything, even the ache in my heart some days. But not today. Today, my chest hurt implacably, unyieldingly . . . and for good reason.

Vickie leaned over to my desk and whispered, “Let’s go to Starbucks after school. I want to try that new Frappuccino thing.”

“I can’t.”

“Dairy Queen?”

“I asked you Monday if you could take me home today.” I fisted my pencil at both ends, fighting the urge to snap it. “You said you could.”

“Well, sure. I thought you meant hang out. I’m not, like, your chauffeur.”

“I know, but I really need to go straight home.”

She shifted her eyes to check the front of the classroom. Mr. Caws droned on with his back to us, so she continued, “How come?”

“We’re having a family dinner tonight.”

“So? You already do that weekly. Why is today important?”

Why was today important? She honestly had no clue about anything. I mean, I hadn’t actually mentioned today to her or anyone else for that matter. It felt too personal, too raw. Not something I could just bring up randomly in everyday conversation. Even the thought of it made my heart pound. I kept my eyes on the teacher. “We’re having company.”

Vickie gasped. “Is today—”

Mr. Caws stopped talking to look at us. “Girls,” he warned.

“Sorry, Mr. Caws,” we both replied.

He turned his back to write on the whiteboard.

“Tiffany’s boyfriend gets out of jail this week, right?” Vickie whispered.

Tick tock. Tick tock. I swear, time hadn’t progressed. The clock had to be broken.

By now, Tiffany would be on her way to pick up Manning. I wanted it to be me. I wished I wasn’t too afraid to cut school. I wished I had my license. I wished Tiffany hadn’t caught me getting into Manning’s truck and found both a reason to be suspicious and leverage over me. “He’s not her boyfriend,” I said.

“Sure seems like it the way she talks about him.”

“Well, he’s not. Tiffany’s delusional.” She exaggerated about everything. She only had him because he was trapped. I knew Manning wouldn’t forget me, even though he hadn’t bothered to write me back. The way he’d touched me—even just for a few seconds—I could feel it in his hands. He wanted me. He cherished me. That didn’t go away just because of some time apart.

If anything, that desire got stronger.

Tick tock. Tick tock. There were still five fucking minutes until school ended. Four hours until Manning would be at our doorstep. Dinner was Mom’s idea, one Dad had called “fucking dumb” right in front of me, which meant he’d been really angry. He’d eventually caved. Not to Tiffany but to Mom. In the time Manning had been away, Tiffany had managed to convince Mom he was innocent without revealing the truth about Manning and me. Dad didn’t buy it. Manning had walked into our home uninvited, why wouldn’t he walk into someone else’s? But Mom wouldn’t hear it. The man had been incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit, and he had no family to come home to but us. He deserved a home-cooked meal.

Tiffany thought so, too, even though she had her own place and could cook him a meal in her own kitchen, not that she knew how. Dad was outnumbered, even without my vote.

For the hundredth time today, I ran through all the things I planned to do as soon as the bell rang.

Go for a long run to calm my nerves.

Help Mom make the best food Manning would ever put in his mouth.

Make myself beautiful. Truly beautiful.

All of that would keep me busy until Manning got to the house. I needed to be doing, not sitting here thinking. I hadn’t done anything good for Manning in too long. I’d only gotten him into trouble, damaged his life, his future. I wanted to serve him something wonderful, like the time I’d made him the Lake Special, my monster sandwich.

I had to show Manning I wasn’t a kid anymore. That I wouldn’t make any more mistakes. I was older, wiser, and my boobs were bigger. He couldn’t miss that.

Mr. Caws checked the clock. “We still have five minutes.”

God. What, was time going backward?

“Let’s do some quiet reading,” he said.

Time in 1995 was weird. It’d been killing me in all kinds of different ways ever since Tiffany had finally spilled the beans—Manning was coming home today, January twenty-third. Just like that, a year and five months into his sentence, Manning would be out. Time had come to a screeching halt right then and there and had been creeping along ever since.

December had passed like normal, but January was almost over, and we still hadn’t heard from USC. My dad’s panic made me panic. It wasn’t standard for packets to come before March, but Dad didn’t see any reason I shouldn’t get accepted early. Lots of my friends had heard from schools all over the country. Mona’s mom had shown up in the middle of English and dropped a fat envelope on her daughter’s desk. Vinny Horton was a scrawny, bespectacled nerd, but he’d put his fist right through a wall when he’d found out the quarterback had been accepted to Stanford on a football scholarship while Vinny had been rejected. College was everyone’s world. It was my world. Every day that passed without a packet in the mailbox, I was letting my dad down.

And now, today, time was failing me again. I wasn’t sure I could stand to sit here two more minutes, much less wait a full four hours to see Manning. Knowing he was coming was the best kind of torture. I packed up my Jansport and stared at the clock.

Vickie tapped the eraser of her pencil against her desk. “Don’t most schools have a Sadie Hawkins dance for Valentine’s? Why aren’t we?”

Mr. Caws looked up. “Girls. Don’t make me tell you again.”

Vickie opened her spiral-bound notepad and scribbled with the concentration of a doctor performing surgery. She tore the page out fast, the only way to do it in a quiet classroom, but Mr. Caws still looked up. Vickie put her hands in her lap, expertly folding the note into squares until Mr. Caws returned to grading papers. She passed it to me.

I bet Corbin sends you flowers for V-day. I need a Valentine so I’m not a total loser. Maybe we can go—

I balled up the note. What was she even talking about? Her note, this classroom, this desk, the Battle of Saratoga, seemed so unimportant. Vickie looked horrified. The bell rang, and I bolted up from my chair.

“What’s your deal?” Vickie asked. “You’d think it was Corbin coming over for dinner, not some criminal.”

“You don’t understand,” I said, slinging my bag over my shoulder. “You just don’t. You’re completely dense.”

In the hallway, Vickie tucked her binder under her arm. “You’re right, I don’t. But I do understand I’m not driving you home. Find your own ride,” she said, walking off.

“No, Vickie, wait.” The hallway filled with students. I held my history book to my chest and did my best to push through. “I’m sorry,” I said as I caught up, matching her long strides. “I didn’t mean to—”

I nearly ran headlong into Val coming out of Physics. “Hey,” she said.

I grabbed Vickie’s elbow at the last second, and she whirled around. “Seriously, Lake. You’ve been such a bitch lately.”

“Whoa,” Val said. “Totally uncalled for.”

Stopped in the middle of the hall, our classmates were forced to scatter around us. “You’re right, I have,” I said. “I’ve been under so much pressure.”

“So have I,” Vickie said. “You think just because you’re going to a top college that nobody else’s life matters.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

She took her arm back. “You haven’t even asked how this has been for the rest of us.”

“That’s not true. You want to go UNLV and major in communications. What else is there to know?”

“Um, I don’t know. Maybe that I’m not going to get in. That I’ve also applied to ten other schools as backups.”

“Ten?” I shouted, causing people to look over at us.

“Yes, ten. That’s totally normal, Lake. You’re the only one who applied to one.”

That was because I could only go to one. I wasn’t going to jinx myself by even considering other schools. I looked at Val, surprised that I hadn’t ever asked her how many schools she’d applied to. “What about you?”

She twisted her lips. “Five or six,” she said. “I lost count.”

“Which ones?” I asked them.

As we headed out to the parking lot, they listed off fifteen schools they’d applied to between the two of them. The thing was, while I’d been sick over applications, they actually sounded excited. They had options. Their futures were wide open. As of now, neither of them had any idea which city they’d be moving to at the end of summer. There was nothing mysterious about my plan. None of this process had made me giddy. It’d felt about the same as having an elephant sit on my chest, getting heavier and heavier the longer I didn’t hear anything.

While they argued over the differences between University of San Diego, San Diego State University, and University of California San Diego, I thought back to the similar conversations I’d had with Corbin about NYU. All this time, I’d thought he’d just wanted me to be where he was. I hadn’t seriously considered picking up and moving to a completely different place.

“Lake?” Val asked, lowering her sunglasses to squint at me.

“What?”

“We asked where else you would apply.”

“Where else?” Could I see myself as anything other than a Trojan? USC football or basketball or baseball had been playing on TV since I could remember. We had flags we hung outside the house during big games. My dad hated that Tiffany hadn’t gone there, and I suspected he even resented my mom for not attending USC, which made no sense because they hadn’t met until after she’d graduated college. My chest constricted at just the thought of asking about other schools.

Val’s eyebrows gathered as she inspected my face. “Are you okay?”

“Her dad would never go for it,” Vickie explained. “He puts her under a lot of pressure.”

“Yes, I’m aware,” Val said. “I have eyes and ears.”

“USC is all he’s talked about for months,” I said, my voice sounding far off. “For my life.” This had happened a few times lately, this rise of panic in my chest. I thought about USC a lot, but when I began to really think hard about the details, all the ways it could go wrong, my breathing became shallow. What if it wasn’t enough? All the volunteering, studying, rigorous SAT prep and near-perfect score. What if my letter never came? What if it did, and the classes were so hard that I flunked out my first semester? Would Dad begin to look at me the way he did Tiffany, distantly, as if she’d wound up in his presence by mistake somehow?

“He doesn’t have to know about it,” Val said. “You could always apply without telling him.”

“You can use my address,” Vickie said excitedly.

“She’d use Tiffany’s obviously,” Val said. “She’s her sister.”

Oddly, their bickering calmed me a little. It wasn’t like giving myself options, adding a little unknown to my life, was a crime. Surely, my dad would see that . . . but what if he didn’t? If I asked to apply somewhere else and he said no, pursuing it would be defying him. But if I never gave him the chance to say no . . .?

There were other things he didn’t know about the past few months—like how I’d stopped showing up to piano because I hated piano, and it was already on my application so who cared? Or that I’d spent the night at Val’s a few times when her mom wasn’t home so Val and I could stay out on the boardwalk until midnight or drink wine coolers on her couch and watch Party of Five.

I hadn’t wanted to lie to my parents, but Val had made a valid argument. “You’re going to be on your own soon anyway,” she’d said. “If you don’t start slowly, you’ll go crazy when college starts and eventually have to drop out because you can’t control yourself.”

It’d made sense to me, but I knew it wouldn’t to my dad, so I’d done it behind his back.

I supposed this was kind of the same thing. I’d gotten a job before the holidays serving yogurt and smoothies at a country club, so I had a little money saved I could use for applications.

“I think we lost her,” Val said.

I blinked a few times. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. You need a ride?”

Vickie blanched. “I already said I’d give her one.”

“She’s on my way home.” Val pulled my elbow. “Come on.”

“Are you sure?” Vickie asked. “I could always stay for dinner in case things get weird.”

“Weird?” Val stopped pulling. “Why? What’s for dinner?”

“Six-foot-five inches of delicious man meat,” Vickie said.

I looked over at her. “You’ve never even seen him.”

She shrugged. “I’ve heard rumors. Tiffany said he was that tall, at least, and that he looks like he should be riding a horse across a Tuscan landscape. Like an Italian model.”

“Wait, Tiffany’s boyfriend is coming over?” Val asked, bouncing on her toes.

I wrinkled my nose at Vickie, irritated. She was being rude and flippant about something that really mattered. Manning was so much more than a handsome face. “What Italian models do you even know?”

“Please let me come for dinner,” Val said.

“No,” I said. I hated them both in that moment for making light something I’d been agonizing over for more than a year. “It’s not that kind of dinner. It’s for family.”

“Yeah,” Val said and resumed pushing me toward her 1979 convertible Beetle. “Family only, so run along, Vickie.”

Vickie scowled, watching us go. “Fine. I have better things to do anyway.”

Val had a noisy car you could hear coming from down the block. My dad hated it, said it left grease stains on the street outside our house. By all reasoning, he should’ve hated her, too. Her skateboarding in our driveway, her revealing outfits, and her single, airhead mom who wore red lipstick to match her Mustang. He’d met Val a few times, though, and called her “a smart girl,” nothing more. That meant he liked her. He rarely volunteered much about any of my friends.

Val and I tumbled into the house. I threw my backpack onto the kitchen counter and opened the fridge.

“Lake?” Mom said from upstairs. “Is that you?”

“And me, Mrs. Kaplan,” Val called.

“Oh, hi, Val.” Mom came down with a mild grin, dressed in a gray skirt and blouse. “What are you girls up to?”

“When are you starting dinner?” I asked, handing Val a Yoo-hoo.

Mom checked her watched. “I have a house to show right now, and then I’ll be back. Probably around five. Tiffany wants to eat early because she thinks Manning will be exhausted. Do they not get to sleep much in prison? I would think so. What else do they do?”

Val looked at my mom blankly, and I imagined my expression was the same. It was weird to hear her say it so casually. In the library, I’d tried looking up information about prison. There were things to do like jobs and exercise and even TV, but I wasn’t naïve enough to think I understood anything about the experience.

“I’m going to go for a run,” I said. “Is there anything else I need to get for tonight? I can pick it up on my way home.”

Mom smiled and came over to fix my hair. “You’ve asked me that every day this week. We’re all set. Don’t be uncomfortable. I’m sure Manning is still the nice young man he was before all this. Try not to think of him as a criminal, but as a human being.”

Of course he wouldn’t be the same. I wasn’t, and I hadn’t been through a fraction of what he had.

“Enjoy your run. Don’t overdo it, okay?” On her way out of the kitchen, Mom patted Val’s shoulder. “Nice to see you, honey.”

Val and I went upstairs to my bedroom. At my dresser, I opened up the drawer with my running clothes.

“What’s she mean by overdo it?” Val asked.

“I don’t know.” I held up a pair of running shorts. “She’s been saying that a lot lately. She was all worried because I ran on Thanksgiving Day. And Christmas Eve. And Christmas. Like a holiday is an excuse not to exercise?”

“Well,” Val said in a tone that said, It kind of is.

I needed to run. It wasn’t really a choice at this point. When I missed a day, the pressure caught up with me. Test scores and college apps, USC and extracurriculars. Not just the pressure, but my mistakes, too. I began to think of things I shouldn’t, memories that’d gone from happy to sad, like talking to Manning on the bus to camp about his college classes and impending law enforcement career. Others haunted me—Manning being led away in handcuffs all because I’d gotten the wild idea he wanted one night alone with me. His orange jumpsuit. The judge ordering him away from us. The courtroom shrinking in the BMW’s side mirror. I pushed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets to expunge the images.

Look what you’ve done, Lake.

“Hey,” Val said. “What’s wrong?”

I turned to her. She was lying on my bed, Birdy under her bare armpit as she absentmindedly picked at the blue fur. “You’ll get deodorant on her,” I said, frowning.

“She doesn’t mind.” She puckered her lips at the stuffed animal and crooned, “Do you, Booby?”

“It’s Birdy.”

She took the toy out from under her and walked it along the bedspread. “You should’ve named her Booby, though.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what she is. A blue-footed booby.”

“She’s a pelican.”

“This is not a pelican.” Val gaped at me. “You should know that. You grew up by the beach.”

My heart panged in my chest. That couldn’t be right. She had always been a pelican, and that didn’t just change. “Why would you say that?” I asked.

“Exhibit A.” She tapped her head. “I’m a black hole of useless information.” It was true. Val was always pulling random facts out of her ass. “But even if I weren’t, see exhibit B. Blue feet.” She showed me Birdy’s webbed feet which were, in fact, blue like her beak. I’d just assumed she was colorful because she was meant for kids. “Plus, the tag says ‘Blue-footed Booby.’”

My eyes dropped to the comforter. Had I been so blind that night at the fair that I hadn’t even seen what was right in front of me? Maybe I was kidding myself thinking Manning was looking forward to tonight. What if he blamed me for what he’d lost? Tiffany certainly did. What if he wasn’t happy to see me at all? Was there any other explanation for why he’d never responded to my letters, had never bothered to even call?

I couldn’t think that way.

Tonight was not going to go wrong. Manning would see me, and just like that first day on the lot, we’d be drawn together. We’d know the truth without saying it—Manning was doing what he needed to until I was eighteen. Nothing else mattered until then.

Val was suddenly standing in front of me, my shoulders in her hands. “Hel-lo? What’s wrong?”

I shook my head, clearing my thoughts away. “Nothing.”

“Not nothing. You’ve been moping since the day I met you, and I’m not going to let you get away with it anymore. Why does this pelican-turned-booby bother you so much?”

My mouth wouldn’t open. It was too weird to say out loud. I’m in love with a man my sister calls her boyfriend. If you hadn’t lived the story like I had, it sounded awful. Val was as open-minded as anyone I knew, and even this was asking for a lot of understanding.

“Is it about a boy?” she asked.

“How’d you know?”

“It’s always about a boy. Corbin?”

“No.”

“So there’s another boy.” She tapped a light fingertip on my shoulder, studying me. “Why don’t I know about him?”

I wriggled out of her grasp and went to my closet for running shoes. “Because he’s not a boy.”

She gasped. I could feel the delight coming off her in waves, even with my back turned. “He’s older?”

“Yes.”

“Older than Corbin?”

“Yes.”

“I need to know more.”

“I can’t tell you.” I sat on the edge of my bed to lace up my sneakers. “If I could, I would.”

“Please. This is too juicy. Is he in college? Is he a teacher? Is it Mr. Caws?”

I made a gagging noise, then giggled. “I’m not going to tell you.”

“I’ll tell you all my secrets.” She leaned back against my dresser. “Hmm. In sixth grade, I peed my pants at my desk and didn’t tell anyone so the next person sat in it.”

“Oh my God, how disgusting.”

“I know.” She laughed. “All right, here’s a good one. It’s not funny, though. I wasn’t completely honest with you about the first guy I slept with at my old high school. I told you it was no big deal, but I actually really liked him.”

“You said it was with a stranger.”

“I was embarrassed. He stopped talking to me after and rumors spread.”

Once in a while, Val reminded me of Tiffany. Mostly tough, but their weak spots were arguably more sensitive than other people’s. Val also had issues about her dad, who’d left her mom when Val was entering high school. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “It’s fine. It taught me some things about men.”

“Like what?”

“Mostly that they’re immature . . . which is why I’m excited about this older guy.”

“It’s not . . . we’re not, like, together or anything.”

“You have a crush. Who doesn’t? Is it the good kind of crush? Like one you want to act on or one you don’t? There’s a difference.”

“Definitely the first one.”

She went over to my closet. “Well, you never dress sexy at school—your closet is sad—but I guess that’s because he already graduated, huh?”

“How can a closet be sad?”

“Do you have anything red?”

“I don’t think so. Maybe a sports bra. How come?”

“Hmm. Red makes men horny. It’s, like, biology. Plus, it looks great on blondes.” She held out a knee-length, maroon corduroy skirt. “This is kind of red, but it’s also . . . hideous.”

“It’s from middle school. I meant to take it to Goodwill, but—”

“Perfect.” She held it up to her waist. “Cut it and wear it next time you see him.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. With a pair of Mary Janes or clogs or something, you’ll be all legs. He’ll forget his own name.”

I took the skirt, examining the button-down front and plummy color. It never would’ve occurred to me to do anything other than donate it. “Okay. Thanks. Anything else?”

“Nope. Just be yourself.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, okay.”

“What? I’m serious. You’re smart and beautiful. You hold all the power—haven’t you ever watched your sister?”

My mood dimmed. Val had only been around Tiffany a few times, but I guessed that was all it took to see her charm. I wasn’t really in the habit of emulating her—if anything, I was genetically predisposed to do the opposite of whatever she did—but in this case, I could see Val’s reasoning. Tiffany had spent the last year getting to know Manning while I’d stayed here, getting further away from him.

Val picked up her backpack. “I have to go record Wings for my mom or she’ll flip. When are you seeing this guy next?”

I turned away so I wouldn’t have to lie to her face. “Not sure. I’ll let you know.”

“’K. Later.”

As Val’s Beetle rumbled down the street, I picked up Birdy and held her to my chest. I could almost convince myself I smelled campfire in the woods, sweat and sawdust on Manning’s skin, lingering smoke on his clothes. As comforting as Birdy was, she would never be the real thing, and in just a few hours, that’s what I’d have. Manning—big, strong, and real, right in front of me.