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I took a breath to quell the disappointment in my chest. This was not about Bedroom Boy. This was about seeing my lifelong best friends for the first time in a year and a half. I reached for the door, but my nerves took hold and atrophied my arm. I couldn’t do this. Wait, yes I could. I had to. If I didn’t see them now, I’d see them at school tomorrow. And then our encounter might happen in front of my mom. Which would just make it that much more intense. Besides, if I stood out here one second longer, someone was going to notice me, and then I’d have to go in but I’d already be mortified because they’d have seen me hesitating. This was a total nightmare. I held my breath, pushed open the door, and stepped inside.
“Ally?”
The voice came from behind. I whirled around to find Hammond Ross standing there all Long Beach Island tan in a colorful Billabong T-shirt and destroyed cargo shorts. He was just as blond as ever, but taller, broader, less doofy-boy and more hot-guy. Also, he didn’t look unhappy to see me. Which kind of made sense, but also kind of didn’t.
“Hammond. Hey.”
His eyes flicked past me toward Chloe and the rest of them. Checking to see if they’d noticed him talking to me. My nervousness mounted.
“What’re you doing here?” he asked, wrapping me up in a brief hug.
So I guess they hadn’t noticed us yet.
“I—”
“Wait.” He pulled back, looking suddenly nervous. “You’re not go
“Oh. My. God. She’s. Here.”
I would have recognized Faith’s voice even if it hadn’t been louder than every other one in the room. I moved from Hammond and the wide-open foyer into the even wider-open living room, where all my former friends had turned around to face me. Bedroom Boy somehow lost his hanger-on as he stepped away from the wall. He hovered a bit behind the rest of them, pushing his hands sheepishly into the pockets of his chino shorts. Even though he’d just been hooking up with some drunken frosh and obviously didn’t care one iota about me, my heart was not unaffected at the sight of him standing there with his hair all coiffed, a royal blue Polo shirt hugging his muscles just so. But it was more distracted by the fact that I was here. I was home. With my friends.
“Hey, guys,” I said, lifting a hand awkwardly.
Hammond closed the door behind me and went directly to Chloe’s side. So I guessed they were still together. There was a prolonged moment of silence as the periphery people moved discreetly away, staying close enough of course to keep an eye on the impending drama. I tried not to ponder what it meant that my friends hadn’t all rushed forward to hug me. Instead, I took them in. Chloe Appleby in her white sundress and coral sweater, her light brown hair pulled back in an eyelet band. Her posture was as perfect as ever, her discerning green eyes assessing me as if I were the new girl in town rather than the girl she’d known since na
“You have got to be kidding me,” Faith said. “What are you doing here, Norm? Because I know no one invited you.”
Norm. That was the nickname we Cresties had for the kids from the other, “normal” side of town. Which I guess was me now, technically. It wasn’t pretty, but there it was. My eyes automatically flicked to Bedroom Boy. He flushed and looked away. Perfect. I loved a guy with no spine.
“I just wanted to see you guys,” I told her.
My brain struggled to reconcile this bitchy socialite with the cherubic Ha
“How are you?”
“Oh, please,” Faith said. “Like you care?”
“Faith,” Chloe scolded. That was Chloe. Always making sure that no situation grew too awkward or unpleasant. I had news for her. I was already feeling plenty awkward.
“No! No way!” Faith said, incredulous. “You know the only reason she’s here is because she wants us to take pity on her. She thinks she can be, like, rich by association or something.”
My skin stung as if I’d just endured a full-body slap. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
“Like we’re really going to be your friend again after your dad stole from our families?” Faith said, turning on me again with narrowed eyes.
“Stole?” I repeated, baffled. “He didn’t steal anything. Is that what you guys think? He—”
“Oh, please! So that’s why my parents can’t retire and Sha
I swallowed hard. I knew my family had been hit hard by my dad’s mistake, but no one had ever told me exactly what it had meant for everyone else. Trust funds, retirements, and homes just gone? I had no idea.
Okay, Ally. Deep breath. You didn’t do this to them. Your dad did. They can’t really take it out on you.
“And don’t even get me started on what you did to Chloe,” Faith added before I could speak.
Gravity reversed itself. I looked at Chloe. She couldn’t know, could she? Faith didn’t mean—
“All right. That’s enough,” Sha
Faith was dumbfounded. “Sha
“Faith, please,” Chloe implored. “I don’t want to make a scene.”
“Too late,” someone in the crowd muttered, earning a round of uncomfortable laughter.
“It’s okay,” Sha
Sha
“You need to go,” she said. “Now.”
My heart couldn’t take this. “Sha
“Faith’s right. Take a look around. You don’t belong here.”
Her dark eyes flicked over my Old Navy shorts and well-worn shoes in distaste. I felt sick. My friends were really going to reject me because of what my dad did? Because I wasn’t wearing the latest label? I looked around, desperate for someone to tell me this was a joke—to take my side. Chloe looked sad, almost sorry, before she trained her eyes on the floor. Bedroom Boy, meanwhile, stared right back at me, his jaw clenched with something unspoken, his blue eyes almost pleading. For what? For me to go? Or for me to never have come?
Right then, the back door slid open, letting in shouts and squeals and splashes from the backyard. In tromped the Stein twins in their almost matching Hawaiian-print bathing suits, dripping pool water all over the pristine wood floors. They had identical red welts forming on their foreheads. Not that either of them seemed to care.
“Yo! Where’s the chips and dips?” Trevor shouted.
Todd stopped in his tracks. “Dude. Who died?” Then he saw me and his eyes lit up. “Ally Ryan!” He loped over and gave me a huge, wet bear hug, his soaked brown hair dripping all over my shoulders. “You’re lookin’ smokin’ as ever! Where you been, girl?”
Trevor came over and hugged me too, turning me into the filling inside an Idiot Twin sandwich. The force of their hugs brought tears to my eyes. I’d missed them. All of them. Even the Idiot Twins. But clearly, only these two doofs had missed me.