EVEN THOUGH THINGS ARE STILL shaky between my dad and me, he agrees to let me spend the night at Lin’s on Saturday. We debated going to the homecoming dance, but in the end decided to skip it in favor of a long overdue sleepover. We did, however, help Raegan set up the decorations in the gym while blasting Beyoncé, which was more fun than I expected. She even ordered pizza and wasn’t too controlling about how the streamers were hung.

We’re decompressing in Lin’s room, and I’m painting my toes a bright shade of yellow I bought only because it was called Pineapple Paradise.

“David was brilliant, of course.” Lin swipes a splash of coral polish on her pinky. She was at another mock decathlon competition this morning to prepare for the real one in January—the first one of the year. “But I kept second-guessing myself. I felt so dumb. Also, Breck sort of killed it? Especially with the science questions.”

I hold my foot carefully over my paper towel. Her room looks more like a hotel than a teenage haven. She has thick, navy curtains that match her bedspread, which is tucked and smoothed over so tightly someone could probably suffocate under there. There is nothing on her desk aside from a lamp with a depressing gray lampshade. Her mom makes her keep all her textbooks in her closet to keep her room from looking disorderly. She’d probably have an aneurysm if she came in here and saw us with the nail polish.

“First of all, you’re not dumb,” I tell her, because it’s the truth. She’s in the top twenty percent of our class. “Try and let go of your nervousness, you know? You’ll be more confident next time.”

“True. I’m always nervous when we first start practicing.” She caps the coral polish. “God, I’m starving. I want pizza rolls. And a Slurpee.”

Lin’s parents don’t believe in junk food. Their pantry is always stocked with healthy snacks like mixed nuts and dried seaweed. It’s one of the reasons she hates having sleepovers at her place. That, and we’re not allowed to leave the house after ten.

It’s ten thirty now.

“Let’s go to 7-Eleven,” I say. “Stock up.”

She checks her phone. “Yeah, right. They won’t let us leave.”

I stare at her. “But if they don’t know we’re gone—?”

“Sneak out?” She looks uneasy. “Really? For food?”

“They’ll never know. We’ll make it a ninja mission.”

She laughs. “Some girls sneak out to go to parties, and we’re sneaking out to get snacks.”

We wait until our nails dry. I use her laptop and open iTunes, then I click the first artist and let it play on low. Too much quiet will make them suspicious, so I set it close to the door. They hardly ever come in to check on us, which is why I think Lin is okay with this plan.

I pull on my black sweatshirt and zip it up to my chin, then I yank the hood over my head. “Ready?”

“Out the window?” She says it like we’ll be scaling a fourteen-story building.

“You’re on the first floor!”

“There’s still a drop.”

“Oh my god. It’s like, two feet.”

I climb out first. She follows. Five minutes later, we’re giggling like five-year-olds as we sprint down the sidewalk and around the corner out of her neighborhood.

“I’ve never done that before!”

Laughter bursts from my lungs. “We should really get you out more.”

It’s a perfect autumn evening. There’s a crisp chill in the air and even though it’s dark, the streetlights illuminate the fact that the oak trees around us are changing colors. It’s funny—autumn used to be my least favorite season. Now I’m finding I don’t mind it.

The door to 7-Eleven chimes when we walk in. I breathe in the sticky scent of artificial syrup and leftover glazed donuts. Lin walks toward the back to grab a Slurpee. I’m about to make my way toward the candy aisle when I hear someone call my name.

I freeze.

Oh no.

No no no no no.

I turn and face the register, but I already know who’s standing behind it. Saylor. He’s wearing his starchy uniform shirt and plastic name badge. And waving. Enthusiastically. In my direction.

I give a pathetic half wave before ducking into the candy aisle.

Crap. How could I be so careless? Of course Saylor is working tonight. He works almost every night shift.

This is bad. This could blow my entire cover.

I don’t know what to do. If I duck out now, Lin will be forced to interact with Saylor when she pays for her food. He could bring up the fact that he knows me—that he’s been living in our house for the last two months. And I can’t let anyone discover that piece of information. I already had a close call with Margaret and Saylor, but if the fact that they’re staying with us gets back to Margaret, I can lose my dad, my friends, and my life all over again.

Lin finds me frozen in the candy aisle. “Aren’t you getting anything?”

Her arms are loaded with snacks. I grab the first thing I see—chocolate-covered pretzels. “Um. Yeah, this.”

Lin raises an eyebrow, but she doesn’t say anything as she walks toward the register. I follow her, looking anywhere but at Saylor.

She sets her loot on the counter.

Saylor begins ringing her up. “This looks a lot better than a dance.”

Lin glances up, then continues to pull out bills from her wallet. “Yeah. We think so.”

Okay, this is fine. We clearly look like high schoolers who are not at the homecoming dance. It’s a completely normal comment.

Saylor looks at me. “I wasn’t much of a dance guy, either. Drove my mom nuts. She practically had to force me to go to the prom.”

I let out an unintelligible, choked noise just as Lin drops a handful of change on the ground. “Aw, crap.”

I’m sweating. Profusely. I have to get out of here, so I start pulling out bills from my back pocket. “Here.”

“I got it,” she says from the ground.

Saylor scans her chips. “Oh man! Sweet Jalapeño flavor? I should bring some of these home.” He looks at me. “You think your dad would eat them?”

All the blood in my body freezes. Time stops.

Lin stands back up, pushing the handful of her fallen change toward him. “Why would her—?”

“My dad! Yes! He would!” My words are too clipped. Too loud. “You should tell him the next time he comes in!”

Saylor throws me a peculiar look.

“You know what?” I set my chocolate-covered pretzels aside. “I’m not in a chocolate mood. Uh—” I pat my stomach. “Too much pizza earlier.”

Now it’s Lin’s turn to throw me a confused stare. “Are you sure?”

“Yes!” I’m itching to get out of here. One more close call and my carefully concealed lie could unravel. “Totally.”

Saylor hands Lin her receipt. He won’t look at me. Maybe he’s hurt that I’m pretending not to know him, but whether I want to let him in my personal life is my business. I already had a close call with Margaret. I’m not about to let that happen again.

I quickly head out the door.

Lin jogs to keep up with me. “Do you know that guy?”

“Um,” I say. “Kind of. My dad goes in there a lot.”

It’s part of the truth, anyway.

“Oh.” She looks back. “He seems kinda weird. Did you see all those leather bracelets on his wrists?”

“They’re intention bracelets,” I say without thinking.

Lin raises an eyebrow. “How do you know that?”

I freeze. God, Kira. Just shut up.

“Uh. Because he’s usually working when I stop by after school sometimes. And I asked.”

“Oh,” she says again.

We fall quiet. I hate lying to her, but I can’t risk telling anyone about them. Especially now that I’m on the verge of getting my best friends back and reconnecting with my dad.

And maybe, maybe Alex has something to do with me wanting to stay.

We’re rounding the sidewalk back into her neighborhood when I say, “Can I tell you something?”

Lin grins. “About how you totally skipped school with Alex Ramos yesterday?”

My mouth drops open. “How did you—?”

“David told me. He was in the parking lot and saw you guys drive off together.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

She shrugs. “I wanted you to bring it up, I guess. You tell Whitney and Raegan everything because you’re with them all the time, and I’m always the last to know stuff.”

My gut twists with guilt. That happened a lot freshman year, but now it’s different. She has to know it’s different now.

“It’s not really like that,” I say. “I don’t know… I don’t feel as close to them anymore, especially Whitney. I feel like it’s my fault.”

Lin sips her Slurpee and casually says, “It’s not.”

I’m surprised to hear this. “What do you mean?”

She passes me her cup, and I take a swig of the cola flavor she chose. “I see you at lunch. You try really, really hard to make the whole situation not awkward. Whitney still doesn’t tell you how she really feels about everything. She probably doesn’t tell you anything about her relationship with Jay because she feels guilty.” She pulls a piece of stray hair behind her ear. “And all of Raegan’s energy is in her presidential duties. She doesn’t have time for friendship. Don’t take it personally.”

I want to laugh. And cry. Because she’s right. She’s so right. We’re all not as close as we used to be, but it’s not for my lack of effort.

“Do you think we’re drifting apart?”

She falls quiet for a moment. “Sometimes, yeah.”

This sends a wave of sadness through me.

“But not because we don’t care about each other,” she explains. “Just—I don’t know—maybe we have different priorities right now.”

I think back to middle school when we wouldn’t even think of spending a weekend away from each other. Shopping trips, birthday parties, movie nights, sleepovers—we always had something planned. It seems so far away now, like it’s impossible to get back to the way things used to be.

Lin links her arm through mine. “But anyway. Are you going to tell me about Alex?”

I immediately grow flustered. “I—I don’t know how it happened.”

“Oh, come on.” Lin stares at me. “Really? He’s had a crush on you for ages.”

“I know,” I blurt, then shake my head. That sounded vain. “It’s just—I haven’t treated him very well.”

I tell Lin about his text confession all those months ago, and how he was so kind when we talked yesterday. I tell her how he’s been so understanding and patient with me over the years, and how my feelings have unexpectedly started to grow stronger for him, too.

“What about Jay?” she asks.

Hearing his name used to send my heart soaring. It’s strange—not feeling anything for someone you once felt so much for. Like listening to your favorite song on repeat for too long. It loses the magic you once felt in the beginning, but it’s not terrible. You’re just indifferent toward it.

“He’s not the person I thought he was, I guess. It’s like we’re both two totally different people now. I don’t know,” I hear myself say. “I feel like I’ve moved on.”

“Wow, that’s big.”

Is it? It feels like a gradual change, not like I woke up and—bam!—my feelings were automatically gone. They trickled away like sand in an hourglass. I still care about him, but not the same way as I used to.

Lin takes another sip of her Slurpee. “Alex is a good guy.”

That’s what I’m worried about. Do I really think I deserve someone like that when I’m attempting to be the person I was eleven months ago? I’ve hurt him before. He doesn’t deserve to have that happen again.

The sidewalk is illuminated by the orangey glow of the overhanging streetlamps as we round the corner to her neighborhood. We walk in silence, arms linked, keeping each other warm from the chill. There are no crickets tonight.

When we get back to Lin’s house, we climb back through the window, laughing at ourselves. Lin swings her leg back inside, knocking a few picture frames off her nightstand. They land on the floor with a loud crash, but miraculously they don’t shatter.

I snort out a laugh as she closes the window only to hear footsteps coming down the hall.

“Crap!” Lin hisses, diving for the laptop that’s still playing music in front of the door. I shove the stash of junk food under the bed, careful not to knock over her Slurpee. We hold our breath, listening as the footsteps grow lighter as they come down the hall.

Lin lets out a breath. “I could have been so grounded.”

“But you’re not,” I say, tossing the bag of sour jelly rings in her direction.

She smiles, and I can’t tell if it’s because she’s proud of herself for getting away with it or because she enjoyed the whole excursion. I hope it’s both.