“Then what?”

Sloane glanced out to the brook, where I swore I could hear what sounded like frogs somewhere in the distance. As I waited for her response, there was a piece of me that still couldn’t believe that I was here, with Sloane again, on a humid night on a porch in South Carolina, finally getting my answers.

“When you move as much as I have,” she finally said, still not looking back at me, “you know how it ends. You promise to stay in touch with people, but it doesn’t work out. It never does. And you forget about what the friendship used to be like, why you liked that person. And I hated it. And I just didn’t want to do it again. Not with you.”

I looked at her, her head still turned away from me, but I knew her well enough to hear the tremble in her voice, the one she was trying to hide. “So what, then?” I asked, trying to keep my voice gentle. “You just leave without an explanation?”

“I just thought it would be better,” she said, running her hand over her face and turning back to me. “To remember it as it was. As really great. Not anything else. Just the best friend I’ve ever had.”

I felt my lip start to tremble and bit down on it, trying to marshal my thoughts. I could see where she was coming from, in theory. But only in theory.  And before I’d worked it all out, I was speaking, my words coming out in a jumble. “No,” I said, shaking my head. My honesty hat was on, and I was calling her out on this. Sloane glanced over at me, and I could see this had surprised her. “You can’t just leave people behind because you think it’s going to be too hard to commit to a friendship. You can’t live your life that way.”

“You don’t understand,” Sloane said, her voice quiet. She looked out to the water for a second, and I knew that the role I’d played in our friendship before—the one I could feel her wanting me to move back into, like the way you try and force your feet into a favorite pair of shoes even after they’ve gotten too tight—would be to let this go, not push her, smooth it over, go on to other things.

“So help me understand,” I asked, looking right at her, not letting her off easily.

Sloane let out a long breath that had a hitch somewhere in the middle. “You know why we move so much?” she finally asked. She was looking at the ground, not meeting my eye. “Because my parents blew through their trust funds and have never had real jobs. So we just go wherever people or relatives will let us stay in their summerhouses or second homes. And sometimes Anderson actually makes a good investment, and we have a little money, but of course, it’s gone immediately. . . .” Her voice trailed off, and I heard in that moment, just how tired she sounded.

I just looked at her for a moment. Suddenly, it was like I didn’t even recognize the person sitting next to me, the person I’d thought I’d known better than anyone. While I’d been sharing all my secrets with her, she’d been keeping huge ones from me.

“So you lied,” I said, and I could feel my anger start to come back again, and my voice begin to rise. I thought about how dazzled I’d been by Sloane since the first day, how much I’d wanted to be like her—and it hadn’t even been real. None of it had. “Why would you—”

“Because it’s embarrassing!” Sloane’s voice broke on the last word, and I could see her hands were shaking. “You have this perfect family. And I’ve got Milly and Anderson.” She let out a short, unhappy laugh. “You were always telling me how great you thought my parents were, how glamorous our lives were, how wonderful the house was. . . .” She shook her head. “You know it wasn’t even our house? The heirs were fighting over it, and Milly’s a second cousin or something, so she talked them into letting us be the ‘caretakers.’ And when the will was settled, of course, we were out of there.” She looked at me, then back down at her hands again. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I just . . . wanted you to like me.”

I sat back against the step, trying to process all this.  And I thought, for some reason, of the spec house—the structure that was perfect only from the outside. I looked at Sloane, and saw the hunch in her shoulders, and suddenly understood how hard it must have been for her, not letting anyone—even me—know any of this. And I realized it didn’t matter.

“I don’t care,” I said. She looked up at me, and I shook my head. “I mean, I wish you would have told me. But the house? None of that stuff’s important.”

Sloane looked at me, and I saw her eyes were wet. “Really?” she said. It was more like a whisper than a question. I nodded, and she wiped her fingers beneath her eyes.

We sat in silence for a minute, and it felt a little bit like the start of something. She was telling me the truth, and I had refused to just go along with her. It felt new. It felt like maybe now we could start the next chapter of our friendship—whatever that ended up looking like.

Sloane leaned against me, and I leaned back, until, after a few moments, you couldn’t tell who was holding up who.

“So,” Sloane said after a long moment. I saw, to my surprise, that she was looking down at the list and smiling. “Skinny-dipping,” she said, sitting up and turning to face me. “Spill.”

I laughed. “It was your idea,” I said, thinking back to the night on the beach, how I knew it was a great story, one she’d never believe.

“Emily,” she said, “I’ve never even gone skinny-dipping!”

“I can give you some pointers, if you want,” I said, with a grin. “Like . . . always keep an eye on your towels.”

She was still just looking at me like she wasn’t entirely sure who I was. “And you really used Penelope? And you kissed someone? Oh my god. Who?”

“I tried to steal your sign from the drive-in,” I said. “But it fell and I almost got caught. Frank bailed me out.” Sloane looked at me, alarmed, and I added, “Not literally. He just covered for me.”

“I really can’t believe you did all these,” she said, still sounding a little awed. “You actually rode a horse?”

“I guess I thought they would lead me to you,” I said, “somehow.”

Sloane looked at the list for a long moment, then smiled. “Maybe they did.”

I thought of how I’d gotten here—and how I probably wouldn’t have spent the summer with Frank if I hadn’t gone to the Orchard that first night. Or become friends with Dawn on my quest to hug a Jamie. I thought about all the things her list had given me over the course of the summer, and everything that had happened because of it. “Maybe you’re right.”