“Exactly,” Bri said, nodding, and Toby held her hand back for a fist bump without taking her eyes off the mirror. I shook my head, but I could feel myself smile. It was the B&T show, as Palmer and I had dubbed it. Bri and Toby had been best friends since preschool, and were such a unit people routinely mixed them up, even though they couldn’t have looked less alike.
Sabrina Choudhury and Tobyhanna Mlynarczyk had come up to me my first day of third grade at Stanwich Elementary, where I was sitting alone at recess, trying to understand the weird game that was being played with a big rubber ball. They hadn’t played anything like that at Canfield Prep, where I’d transferred from after a poll showed that people—and the teachers’ union—didn’t like my dad sending his daughter to a private school. I was feeling like I’d landed in a foreign country, when suddenly there were two girls sitting on my bench, one on either side of me. They had been Bri-and-Toby even then, talking over each other, trying to get me to settle an argument about which member of the boy band of the moment was the cutest one. Apparently, I’d picked the right answer—Wade, the one neither of them thought was the cute one—because from that moment on they’d been my friends. Palmer and I became friends when I’d moved down the street from her when I was twelve, and when ninth grade started, she’d talked her parents into letting her switch from Stanwich Country Day to the public high school. When Palmer met Toby and Bri, they all got along right away, and from then on it was like we’d become the unit we were always meant to be.
“I appreciate it,” I said, grabbing Bri’s outstretched hand and pulling myself up from the floor and onto the seat next to her. I brushed some dirt off my jeans, very glad I hadn’t worn anything white tonight. “But I’m telling you, I’m fine.”
“We don’t believe you,” Toby said, looking at me through the mirror as she started doing her lips.
“Can I borrow that?” I asked, and Toby nodded and handed her lipstick to me. “Look,” I said, leaning over Toby to get a sliver of mirror. “It has nothing to do with me. It’s my dad’s thing. He’s going to sort it out.”
“But what if he doesn’t?” Palmer asked, her voice gentle.
“Then he’ll take one of the private-sector jobs he’s always being offered,” I said as I concentrated on getting the line of my lips even. “Or he’ll lecture for a while, or go back to being a lawyer, and then he’ll run again.” My dad not being in politics was nearly impossible to picture—it was intrinsic to who he was. “But nothing’s changed for me. I’m still going to my program, and when I get back, things will be settled.” I capped the lipstick and handed it back to Toby. “We ready to go?”
“Okay, Type A,” Toby said as she zipped up her makeup bag. I rolled my eyes at her in the mirror before Toby flipped the visor back up. “What?” she asked, shooting me a grin. “It’s from your name. That’s all.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, raising an eyebrow at her, but not disputing that it was true. So what if I liked to be in control of things? Someone had to be, after all. We piled out of the van, and I looked around, reorienting myself.
“Whose house is this again?” Toby asked. She straightened the skirt she’d changed into on the drive—I had heard the debate about what to wear, but she’d ignored my shouted-through-the-blanket opinions, even though I knew exactly what clothes she was talking about without being able to see them.
“Kevin Castillo’s,” I said immediately. It was the first question I’d asked when Palmer had started telling me the plan. I’d been to parties at his house before, which always made me feel a little better. In a new house, I was always looking for exits and escape routes, in case they became suddenly necessary.
“Which means it’s going to be good,” Palmer said, raising an eyebrow at me. “Remember the party he had in March?”
“Vaguely,” I said, starting to smile, recalling an hours-long quarters game and all of us ending up at the diner at four a.m., ordering plates of fries and laughing too loud.
“Where’s the house?” Bri asked, and I pointed down the street.
“That way,” I said.