HALLE

IF THERE’S A HIGHER POWER, it fucking hates me.

There’s no other explanation for why my worst nightmare has dropped on my doorstep a day earlier than planned. Not even my doorstep—they’re in my house. Because apparently my parents think it’s totally normal to let themselves into a house they don’t live in. Okay, maybe Mom owns the house, but still. I could have been here walking around naked. Henry could have been here walking around naked.

My mom takes great joy in explaining that Will’s coach let him travel early since his parents were Rying in for the game. She says it like it’s a wonderful thing, and I can’t process the words to express how it does not feel like that. I want to ask why they didn’t just Ry to Will’s house and travel with him tomorrow, but it feels like a hallucination and I’m not quite sure how to deal with it.

I wait until they’re all talking about how excited they are to go to the game before pulling my cell phone out of my pocket. I bring up my chat with my friends.

SPICE GIRLS

HALLE JACOBS

What’s the code for when you get home and your ex, his family, and your parents have let themselves into your

house?

POPPY GRANT

Is there a color more urgent than red? Like code super red?

CAMI WALKER

fuck the code babe, RUN

EMILIA BENNETT

Do you want us to come and save you? I can call in a gas leak and get your street evacuated

AURORA ROBERTS

leave them in your house and we can have another sleepover at the hotel!!! don’t forget Joy though

HALLE JACOBS

I’m wearing Henry’s Titans T-shirt and Will is just

STARING at me

HALLE JACOBS

It literally says HENRY right on my breast

POPPY GRANT

Bark at him

AURORA ROBERTS

bark at him

EMILIA BENNETT

Bark at him!

CAMI WALKER

woof woof woof woof woof

POPPY GRANT

HALLE JACOBS

He’s asking what I’m laughing at

Tell him you’re laughing at his absolute audacity to turn up at your house

EMILIA BENNETT

Have you told Henry?

HALLE JACOBS

No. I literally just took my phone out to text you guys

AURORA ROBERTS

yeahhhhhh. maybe like, don’t? unless you want him to turn up

CAMI WALKER

agreed. i mean as a spectator, i would like to see it…

CAMI WALKER

but as your friend, i would not

HALLE JACOBS

I have paint in my hair and my mom wants to know

what it’s from

HALLE JACOBS

She does not want to know what it’s from

AURORA ROBERTS

tell her you’re letting an arty guy rail you and see what she says

CAMI WALKER

HALLE JACOBS

Would rather die

HALLE JACOBS

Putting my phone down

HALLE JACOBS

Pray for me

i’ll ask my granny to light a candle for you

CAMI WALKER

it’s the middle of the night in ireland though so you’ll have to wait

POPPY GRANT

I have a Dolly Parton candle will that work

HALLE JACOBS

I think so because this can’t get worse

Tucking my phone away, I start trying to mentally run through all the things in the house I would have hidden if I hadn’t been blindsided. Laundry on the guest room bed, litter tray that needs to be cleaned, various books decorating every surface. Oh God. There are condoms in the bathroom. Apparently it can get worse.

It’s like someone lit a 1re under me as I spring from my seat.

“Honey, where are you going in such a rush?” Mom asks, freezing me on the spot.

“I need the bathroom, sorry. Be right back.”

I’m practically an Olympian the way I sprint up the stairs. Maybe I was wrong, maybe Grayson didn’t get all the sporty genes. When I throw myself through the bathroom door, the oIending black box is staring back at me. I

think if it could talk it would tell me to grow up, but it doesn’t stop me grabbing it to hide from my parents.

What I don’t expect to 1nd is that the box is empty.

HENRY TURNER

Did we use all the condoms in my bathroom?

Are you hitting on me?

No, made a pretty big dent though. We can try harder next time.

I’m being serious.

The box is empty.

Weird. Maybe Mrs. Astor doesn’t want me to hook up with you.

I have some. Come over and I’ll show you.

I believe you. I have the paint in my hair to prove it

& I left like fifteen minutes ago!

Why leave at all? That’s what I want to know. Come back. I miss you. Bring Joy.

Robbie probably won’t die.

I can’t

My mom and stepdad surprised me by coming

early It wasn’t them though don’t even say it.

Don’t even think it.

After my Christmas present, I now know that Mrs. Astor uses her emergency key liberally, but I can’t imagine she’d steal condoms before the mixing bowl she’s been eyeing since Nana got it in the nineties.

As I exit the bathroom, box in hand ready to go into my bedroom trash, I decide that I have a ghost. Which is what causes me to jump out of my skin when I venture into the hallway and Will appears from the darkness like a freaking ghoul. “Oh my God, you made me jump.”

He laughs and holds up his hands defensively while I hide the box in my hands behind my back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I wanted to use the bathroom.”

“Did you not want to use one of the other ones?”

Will shrugs, looking toward the staircase then back at me. “Let’s talk in your bedroom, Hals.”

“Let’s talk right here. Or you can just meet me downstairs after you’ve used your bathroom of choice.”

“I didn’t know you didn’t know we were coming. Nobody told me it was a surprise for you. I would have given you a heads-up if I’d known. I wasn’t trying to catch you oI guard.”

The tenseness in my body relaxes a little. My shoulders drop an inch. “Oh. Don’t worry about it. Their intentions were good and it’s nice to see everyone.”

He nods. “Yeah, we missed you a lot at Christmas. Dinner was a disaster without you making everyone stick to the schedule; we ate two hours late. I texted you. Didn’t get a response, though.”

I wish I’d barked at him when I 1rst stepped out of the bathroom. “Yeah, Gigi told me it was pretty stressful. And sorry, worked double shifts. I must have read it by accident.”

“No worries, no worries. How long have you been with your new boyfriend?”

It’s a funny thing when your gut picks up on something before the rest of you does. This is why I feel so unsettled around him. “I don’t have a boyfriend, Will.”

“Don’t treat me like I was born yesterday, Hals. The condoms and the guys’ name on your tits suggest otherwise.”

“Okay, this conversation is over.”

I step around him to head into my bedroom; he thankfully doesn’t follow me in. After disposing of the box, I quietly realize as it stares back at me from the wastebasket that I don’t have a ghost, I have an ex.

I leave to get downstairs quickly in case he actually did need the bathroom, but he’s still in the hallway waiting for me. He is leaning against the wall with his

arms folded, only standing up straight again when he spots me. I’m fully intending to ignore him and go downstairs, until he speaks.

“I feel like every time I see you, you’re diIerent.” The question stops me in my tracks. “Excuse me?”

“You cut your long hair. You changed your makeup. You started wearing jewelry. You’re obviously having sex now. You even smell diIerent. Did you change your perfume for him, Hals?”

My hand closes around the H hanging from my neck. “I wanted to do those

things for me. Nobody asked me to. Nobody made me.”

“I see your stories, and you’re out all the time. Even when I don’t look, I fucking hear about it thirdhand from my mom. Halle’s new friends got her VIP tickets to a concert; Halle’s new friends invited her to Europe to go to a Formula 1 race in the summer; Halle’s new friends took her to a fancy restaurant in LA; Halle’s new friends took her to an NHL game. Do they even know the real you? Shit, do you even know the real you at this point?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Will. Let’s go downstairs.”

I wish I’d stayed at Henry’s house. At least if I had I could have avoided this conversation. “Why am I the only person you wouldn’t put 1rst?”

It’s the softest he’s sounded, and yet it makes my blood boil beneath my skin. “What are you even talking about? I put you 1rst with everything! I didn’t cut my hair when I wanted to. I planned my schedule around you and hockey. I spent hours in the car driving to see you. I worked my ass oI trying to be nice to your friends so they’d like me! If I didn’t put you 1rst in everything then we wouldn’t even be friends in the 1rst place!”

“Whoa, that’s not true or fair! I was your friend when you had zero. Maybe you don’t remember that now that you have the Maple Hills friends you always wanted.”

There’s a sliver of hurt in his voice, and that’s what tells me something deep down I’ve always known: he has no idea the type of friend he is. “Will, if we weren’t neighbors or our parents weren’t best friends, and I didn’t overcommit myself for other people’s bene1t, we would have stopped being friends when we were, like, I don’t know, twelve? Thirteen?”

“That’s not true, Hals.”

“If I didn’t practically do your homework for you for eight years, let you copy my test answers, be your designated driver, or give you an alibi because your parents thought if you were with me then you de1nitely wouldn’t be getting into trouble… we would not be friends.”

“Halle…”

“If I didn’t help you with every single college application, we would not be friends. If I didn’t babysit your siblings with mine so you could go out, you and I would not be friends.”

“Halle, stop.”

“I can keep going. I have a long list of things that I’ve done for you over the past decade because I didn’t know how to say no. If you were my friend, you would have stopped me. You’d have shaken me and told me that I didn’t need to do things for you to keep you. You’d have told me to stop letting everyone use me like a doormat.

“If you were my real friend, Will, you would have told me to make myself my number-one priority. You’d have told me to say no to people. You think you know me because you’ve known me the longest, when really all you’ve known is the person I’ve conformed to to make everyone else’s life easier.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Halle.”

“Tell me something you like about me then! Tell me something that isn’t directly related to me doing something for you, or someone else, and maybe I’ll believe that I’m wrong.”

He doesn’t have anything, and the irritation is written all over his face. “I don’t know what you’ve been dreaming up, but these new friends of yours, they’re going to drop you as soon as Henry Turner gets bored of you.”

The problem with knowing someone so long is that they know exactly what to say to get beneath your skin. “I’m not listening to this. Go to your hotel and avoid me until you fuck oI back to San Diego. We are not friends. We’re not going to be friends again.”

“You might want to rethink that, because they’re not your friends, Hals, and I’ve heard he has a reputation with women for a reason. Why would he want to keep you when he’s got what he wants from you already? I mean, props to him for getting you to fuck him when I tried for a year and couldn’t get you to do it.”

“I fucking hate you.”

“You don’t. You’re too nice for hatred. I’ll let you be mad at me for a bit because the truth does hurt, but when you realize I’m right, I’ll forgive you, because that’s what real friends do. And during spring break, I’m going to show you that I am your real friend and things can go back to normal.”

“Leave, Will. Now.”

This time, he does what I ask and heads down the stairs. I stand frozen in the same spot, rigid as I try to listen to his voice downstairs. When I hear the front door open and close I head into my bedroom. I want to cry, but nothing will come out. Shock, maybe? That certainly wasn’t a conversation I expected to have today.

My 1rst instinct is to call Henry, but I know he should be getting into the right headspace for the game tomorrow. I pull my phone out of my pocket and pull up my chat with the girls, but the idea of telling them what he just said makes me feel nauseous. Not because I think they’ll judge me for being friends with Will for as long as I was, but because what if he’s right?

If I tell them what he said, and they call him a liar, if they drop me, does that mean it’ll hurt twice as much? Is it easier to live in ignorance and hope you know the people you call friends?

When I feel ready to fake my way through the rest of the evening, I head back downstairs to the living room. To my utter dismay, Will’s parents are still here with mine. Now that the initial shock of them visiting has worn oI, it makes me realize that only my mom and stepdad are here.

“You okay, honey?” Mom asks as I reenter the room. “You’ve been gone a long time.”

“Sorry, I’ve been sick all month. I just needed a little break. Hey, Mom.

Where’s Maisie and Gianna?”

“Oh, they’re at Sylvia’s,” she says, referencing Paul’s mother. “We decided to have a mini break and do some sightseeing, and we couldn’t take them out of school.”

“Oh, I was looking forward to seeing them.”

“Well maybe you could try coming home and you would get to see them,” she says, smiling over her wineglass. “You’ll see them in a couple of weeks, Hals.”

“Wait, so you’re having a long weekend. Where are you staying?”

She looks at me like I just asked her for the nuclear codes as I take a seat in the chair opposite her. “Here, obviously.”

“You didn’t think to check that’s okay? I have plans with my friend. She’s coming over so I can help her with a group project for a class we have together. Her group is really unhelpful and she doesn’t want to fail and—”

“And you can do all those things while we’re here, Halle. We will stay out of your way,” Mom says, interrupting me.

I know she isn’t wrong, but it still bothers me that she didn’t think to ask. She just assumed I’d be okay with it—like I always am. I realize my argument with Will is making me more irritable, but I also know she’d never assume Grayson could house them for a few extra days. She’d always check with him first. “Sure.”

The tension in the room is palpable, and I don’t know how to cut through it. Will’s mom steps forward, clearing her throat as she holds up Henry’s sketchbook—something I definitely would have hidden if I hadn’t been caught off guard. “Have you taken up drawing, Halle? These are really good.”

“They are, but it’s not mine. It’s a friend’s sketchbook. They must have left it here by mistake.”

“Let me see,” Mom says, switching her wine glass to her other hand and reaching over to take the sketchbook. A piece of paper slips out and falls to the floor. If I weren’t so anxious, I’d laugh at the idea of explaining the story behind Quack Efron and his suit to everyone. “They’re all of you.”

“They’re not all of me,” I reply, pulling my knees to my chest and holding onto the “H” on my necklace, hoping she won’t notice it matches the “H” Henry uses to sign his work. “A lot of them are of Joy, and some flowers.”

Will’s dad clears his throat, obviously uncomfortable. “Maybe we should head back to our hotel and let you three catch up.”

They leave impressively fast, but unfortunately, my parents stay behind. Mom continues flipping carefully through each page, and I can’t read what’s going on in her head. Finally, she places the sketchbook on the coffee table beside her and turns to my stepdad. “I think we should head to bed too, Paul.”

Mom stops in front of me on her way out of the room, bending to kiss the top of my head. “Night, honey.”

Paul is close behind her, and he ru es the spot my mom just kissed like he’s done ever since he inherited me as his kid. “Love you, Hallebear.”

Hearing them leave the room, Joy wakes up from her nap. I wish she could talk, because she’d tell them how much better Henry is than Will.