She looked down at the floor and shrugged. “He said he was sorry. For everything. Like, everything he’d said or done to make me feel bad. He said he still thought he had a right to be mad, but that he shouldn’t have been such a jerk about it.”

I leaned back against the cool cinderblock wall, trying to process this information. Jake had apologized. He had realized he was wrong. Finally. This was amazing. He had actually dropped the negativity. Which meant that maybe, just maybe, he was still the Jake I’d known and loved.

So why wasn’t I more relieved? More excited?

I glanced across the cafeteria to where Jake was sitting with the rest of the guys, and my heart felt sick. I knew why I wasn’t relieved. Because he hadn’t apologized to me. If he was back to his old self, and he knew I’d broken up with him because I missed who he’d been, then why hadn’t he come to me?

Because he was really done with me. He didn’t love me anymore. When I’d ended things with him, I guess I’d really ended things. For good.

“I mean, what am I supposed to do, hate him forever?” Chloe continued, following my gaze. “I was scared, so I told a lie and totally ruined his senior year. Then he was pissed and he mocked me out for a couple of months. Honestly? I don’t even know if we’re even.”

“Man,” Annie said.

“What?” Chloe snapped, expecting an insult, I’m sure.

“You are just way more enlightened than I thought,” Annie said.

Chloe and I both blinked. “Um, thank you?” she ventured.

I shook my head and started walking again, but my steps were slow. My heart felt like a cement ball inside my chest. I couldn’t think about the fact that Jake was ignoring my existence right now. If I did, I would cry right in the middle of our free period, which was so not cool. Instead, I decided to focus on Chloe.

“I just don’t know if I could do it,” I said. “Forgive someone after something like that.”

Not that anyone felt the need to give me a chance.

“Right,” Chloe said, sliding into a chair at the end of a table and pulling out her laptop. “And who was the first person around here to start talking to Shannen again?”

Annie laughed and dropped into a seat at the opposite end. “She got you there.”

“Who got who where?” Shannen asked, shrugging out of her denim jacket as she and Faith arrived.

“Long story,” Chloe and I said at the same time.

Shannen narrowed her eyes at us. “Okay. I’m getting us all doughnuts now. I’ll be back.”

“Just a banana for me!” Faith shouted. “Gotta fit into that prom dress.” She started pulling out her prom planning notes and catalogs, laying them out on the table.

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

“We’ve got to catch Chloe up on what we’ve got planned,” Faith replied.

Chloe sighed as she watched the materials pile up in front of her. “I’m just saying, Ally, if we can all forgive Shannen for what she did to us last year, then you can forgive Jake for what he did to me.”

“Omigod! Are we getting back together with Jake?” Faith squealed, clasping her pink pen between both hands.

“Shhhhh!” we all admonished her. I looked around quickly, but no one seemed to have noticed her outburst.

“No one is getting back together with anyone,” I whispered.

Annie cracked open a can of Pringles and popped one into her mouth with a smirk. She muttered something under her breath that sounded a lot like “Or so you think,” but she was too far away and her mouth was too full for me to be sure.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said with a shrug.

Then Faith dragged Chloe and me down into Springtime in Paris hell, and by the time the bell rang, Annie was long gone.

ally

On the morning of the wedding, I woke up facing the bay window at the back of the house. The sun was predictably shining, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I could only imagine the pure insanity that had taken over the first floor, but I couldn’t make myself move. I just lay there, gazing out that window, motionless, until my eyes started to sting.

My mother was getting married. Today. To someone who was not my father. My family was officially over.

And Jake wasn’t even going to be there.

I sat up straight the second I thought about him. Why couldn’t I stop thinking about him? He’d barely even blinked when I’d broken up with him, and that had been months ago now. He hadn’t bothered to tell me he had a change of heart and had apologized to Chloe. He hadn’t called me, hadn’t texted, had barely looked at me in the halls. And everyone was talking about the slutty sophomore he was apparently taking to the prom. So why did I care? Why could I not stop caring?

Sometimes I wished Chloe had never told me that Jake had finally said he was sorry. Maybe then I could still be so mad at him I wouldn’t care what he was doing. Or who he was doing it with.

I looked over at my laptop, the screen playing my slideshow screen saver. At least I’d finally finished my speech last night. Ironically, thanks to Jake and his advice.

“Ally? Are you up?” Quinn shouted from down the hall. “Our stylists are here!”

“I’ll be down in a few minutes!” I shouted back.

I took a deep breath and held it. This was not about Jake. This was not about my dad and our former life as a family. It was about my mom. And as heavy as my heart and head and limbs felt at that very moment, I was going to put on a happy—no, a jubilant, ecstatic, blissful face—and be the best maid of honor ever. I flung the covers off my legs and hit the showers.

As I lathered my hair and scrubbed my face, I recited my speech over and over again in my mind. It was short and sweet, per Jake’s tips, and I had it down—flawless—but even so, I felt panicked every time I thought about getting up there in front of the crowd. One more reason to wish Jake was going to be there.

I groaned and yanked on my hair extra hard as I rinsed it. Suddenly I remembered that song Quinn had spent half of last summer practicing, getting ready for this year’s musical auditions: “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair.” If only that were possible.

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in an actual salon chair set up in front of a huge mirror in the middle of the room that used to be Quinn’s mom’s gift-wrapping room. Quinn, at least, didn’t seem to care that my mother had taken over the space. She sat at a manicurist station behind me, wearing a short pink robe, her blond hair already styled into a classic bun. Some dude with a Mohawk worked on the nails of her left hand while she chatted on her cell phone in her right.

“So, you want it exactly like we did your other daughter’s?” my mom’s stylist, Marta, asked her.

My heart sort of stopped. My eyes met my mom’s in the mirror. Her hair was long and natural down her back and her makeup had yet to be applied, as Marta insisted that the bride should have the last turn in the chair. There were little frown lines around her mouth, and I could tell she was waiting for me to correct Marta about Quinn’s status.

“Whatever my mom wants,” I said with a smile.

I felt her sigh of relief on the back of my neck. “You can wear it down if you want to, Ally,” she said. “Or in a ponytail.” She looked at Marta. “She practically lives in ponytails.”

“No, it’s fine,” I told Marta. “Do it like Quinn’s. It’ll look better in pictures.”

My mom gave me a proud look and kneaded my shoulders. Then she grabbed a chocolate croissant off a tray of food near the door and handed it to me. We exchanged a smile, and as Marta began to tug and yank and curl I chomped into my breakfast.

“Hang on, Lindsey. I just got a text,” Quinn said.

As she turned her phone to look at it, it slipped from her palm and bounced along the carpet toward my feet. I couldn’t move to get it, since half my head of hair was clutched in Marta’s iron fist grip, but I looked down. The screen read: