Chapter Three

Nora's POV

"Hold on, cut the music for a sec! Cut it!"

Chloe climbed up onto a patio chair and waved her phone over her head at everybody.

It was prom night. Prom ended at eleven, and most of our grade had moved the party to the backyard of a guy on the football team. The fire pit was going strong, and the speakers were so loud the lawn practically shook.

I was still in the dark green dress I'd borrowed, curled up in a folding chair by the grill with a cup of sparkling water.

Someone turned the music down. Chloe cleared her throat.

"We're about to graduate, so let's go around and say where everybody's going in the fall. If anyone's ending up in the same state, you'll have someone to hang out with."

The whole yard came alive.

"Michigan!" "Texas A&M!" "I'm joining the Marines!"

One answer after another got shouted out from the crowd. People cheered, and some started throwing popcorn at each other.

I stayed quiet and kept turning my cup in my hands.

Once almost everyone had taken a turn, one of the football players cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled.

"Hey, we haven't heard from the trio yet!"

He wiggled his eyebrows at us. "Valedictorian, football captain, and cheer captain. You three must've swept Stanford, right?"

Whistles went up all around us.

Chloe ducked her head and smiled, pretending to be shy as she brushed her hair back.

Then she hopped down from the chair, walked over to Spencer, and laced her fingers through his.

"Spencer and I are definitely going to the same place."

"I'm not about to spend every day dating him through a phone screen."

The backyard went quiet for a beat. Then it blew up.

"Wait, what? Since when?"

"Spencer, you kept that on the down-low!"

People whistled, and a few started yelling for them to kiss. They'd never gone public at school before. Tonight was the first time.

In the middle of all the cheering, I could feel a few pitying looks land on me.

One girl said, half joking, "So does that mean Nora's gonna be their third wheel at Stanford?"

That seemed to be exactly what Chloe had been waiting for.

She turned and looked at me through the flickering light of the fire pit. Her lips curved into a pretty smile.

There was nothing warm about it.

"Nora doesn't have to be anybody's third wheel."

"She's going to the local community college in the fall."

The whole yard went dead silent, like someone had hit mute.

Music was still coming out of the speakers, but nobody said a word.

Everyone turned and stared at me like they couldn't believe what they'd just heard.

The top student in our grade, the valedictorian, going to community college?

That was even harder to wrap their heads around than Spencer and Chloe being together.

I opened my clutch, found my phone, and hit record.

Then I set my cup down and stood up.

"Chloe, what are you talking about?"

"When did I ever say I was going to community college?"

Chloe's eyes lit up even more.

She slapped a hand over her mouth and went wide-eyed. "Oh my God, was I not supposed to say that?"

Then she put on a guilty look and scrunched up her eyebrows.

"I'm sorry, Nora. I'm so, so sorry."

"Okay, so last week Spencer lost a bet to me, and for his punishment, I made him log into your account and change something. Like, anything."

"We were only messing around. How were we supposed to know..."

She let it trail off and left the rest for everyone to fill in on their own.

She'd turned four years of someone's life, maybe their whole future, into the penalty for losing a bet.

I turned to Spencer.

"Spencer, is that true?"

He shrank back a little under my stare, and his eyes drifted to the fire pit.

He rubbed the back of his neck and let out a long breath.

"Come on, Nora. I didn't think you'd be that careless."

He frowned, and he actually sounded like he was the one who'd been wronged.

"It was Decision Day. Who doesn't log in one last time before the deadline?"

"I figured you'd catch it in five minutes and just switch it back yourself."

I looked at the face I'd known my whole life.

Every word out of his mouth was him trying to dump the blame on me.

Suddenly it was almost funny. When someone's rotten all the way through, it turns out they don't even bother pretending.

My phone was still quietly recording inside my clutch.

I already had everything I needed.

"Okay," I said, nodding. "Loud and clear."

I grabbed my jacket off the back of the chair and headed for the side gate.

When I passed Chloe, I stopped for a second.

"Chloe, you remember the last thing I said to you in my backyard that day, right?"

Her smile froze on her face.

I didn't look at her again. I pushed open the wooden side gate and walked out into the night.