“You sure you’re okay to drive?” Cooper asked.He assumed I’d been drinking, like everyone else around here, but I hadn’t. At least not since that first cup of punch last night. Though maybe I’d been acting a little buzzed. My body had been on high alert ever since Jake and his entourage had sped off into the night. It was even tenser now that it was time to say good night to Cooper. We hadn’t kissed again since the porch, but whenever he was near me he seemed to find excuses to touch me—a hand on the small of my back to steer me out of the way of staggering partyers, a brush of my arm as he reached behind me for a cup. Kissing him had been . . . odd. I’d never kissed anyone I barely knew before. I’d been so self-conscious from the moment our lips touched—trying to figure out where my hands, my knees, and my tongue should go—that I hadn’t really registered how it felt. But I was willing to try again.“I’m fine,” I told him.“Best. Party. Ever.” Annie said, hooking her arm around my neck from behind. She rested her chin on my shoulder, which was hard for her to do considering she was a foot shorter than me. She kind of got on her toes, tilted her head back, and bent me forward to do it.“She, however, is not,” I laughed.“Whoo hoo!” Annie shouted, throwing her arms up and releasing her joy toward the bay. We were standing just outside the side door of the small house, on what was once probably a pretty patio, but was now a kind of sunken, overgrown rock garden. All over the yard, the party stragglers hung on by a thread, trying to extend the night into dawn. A couple of guys played beer pong on a dilapidated Ping-Pong tabletop balanced atop a precarious pile of laundry baskets, fish crates, and beer cases. A girl in a cowboy hat leaned back on an inflatable chair, braiding the hair of the chick sprawled across her lap. Closer to the makeshift bar, half a dozen bikini top/miniskirt-wearing chicas danced and occasionally cheered, while a pair of dudes too drunk to rouse themselves looked on and nodded appreciatively.“Have I mentioned I like her?” Cooper asked, pointing.I laughed. “She’s a keeper. Don’t worry. I’m gonna drive her car back.”“Okay.” He didn’t look worried. “So . . .” He took a step toward me. His hand ran up and down my bare arm. Goose bump city. “I’ll see you later?”“Yeah. Definitely.”He leaned down to kiss me, closed-mouthed but lingering; his soft lips offered the promise of more. Then he stepped back again.“Bye,” he said.“Bye.”He dropped his head forward as he loped back toward the house over the uneven paving stones of the patio. I bit my bottom lip, but felt like my grin would break off my face.That was not odd.“So, I guess we’re over Jake,” Annie said, standing stiller than she had in hours.I lifted my shoulders, even as a twist of guilt took me by surprise. “I tried to tell you.”“But you have to admit, it was pretty romantic,” Annie said. “Him running up the steps, slamming his hand into the wall . . .”Together we headed for the broken gate in the white fence that surrounded the property. Annie stepped over a pile of beer cans and kicked aside a half-inflated kiddie pool, nearly tripping herself. I put out a hand to steady her.“Yeah.” It was. It was really romantic. And also humiliating. And exciting. And confusing. And annoying. And all-consuming. All I’d thought about for the rest of the night was Jake . . . and whether or not Cooper wanted to kiss me again. How could I possibly be all-consumed by one guy and feeling tingly about another?As we made it to the gate, a very tall, very thin guy was coming through with a pastry bag. He had a short beard and shaggy black hair. The sun was just starting to come up over the far side of the house, lighting his face and making him squint. I gave him a glance and kept walking, but something in his eyes made me stop dead in my tracks.It was fear.And I knew him.I turned around.“Charlie!?”He ducked his chin and looked up at me, almost sheepish. “Whatsup, Al?”Annie raised one eyebrow as he turned around.“Charlie! Oh my God! What are you doing here?”I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Should I hug him? No. I’d never hugged him before, so why start now? But I was so surprised to see him. And he looked so very different. When he’d left Orchard Hill, he’d been clean-cut and athletic, bulky even. The guy standing in front of me now with his shorts hanging just south of his hip bones was lean, lanky, and possibly stoned. He swayed a bit on his feet and placed the pastry bag down on a weathered Adirondack chair just outside the gate, as if its weight was throwing off his equilibrium.“Don’t tell anyone, okay?” he said.“Don’t tell anyone what?” I asked.He sighed and took a couple of steps toward me. When he looked up, he narrowed one eye. “That you saw me?”Now Annie was intrigued. She stood right next to me and looked into his face like she was trying to place him. He shot her a kind of wary look and held his hand above his eyes to shield them from the brightening sun.“No. Of course not,” I said. “But . . . why? I mean, what are you doing here?” I asked again.“I live here.” He gestured lazily over his shoulder. “This is my place.”I narrowed my eyes. My brain, apparently, was tired after a full night of partying and drama. I’d met Howie, a slightly chubby, self-proclaimed hacker extraordinaire with Coke-bottle glasses. Which could mean only one thing. “You’re Chum?”His head bobbed. “Short for Chuck Moore.”“Shut up!” Annie had finally caught on. “You’re Charlie Moore? Shannen’s brother?”He reared his head back, showing us the underside of his chin. I shot Annie a just chill look.“I thought you were in Arizona,” I said.“She told you that, huh?” He sat down sideways on the edge of the Adirondack chair and ran his hand over his hair. “I was . . . for a while. But it just wasn’t my scene. I moved back here last year and got a job with a security company. You know . . . one of those places all our parents hire to check on the houses during the year?”I nodded. My parents used to employ one of those. I’d never forget that one December night they’d called at two a.m. to tell my dad an alarm had gone off at the shore house. He was out the door in ten minutes and called us two and a half hours later to tell us a wood plank had shattered a window in a windstorm. He’d fired the company the next day for not actually checking the house before calling him.“So you’re not in school?” I asked. The very idea of Charlie Moore—über-popular, three-varsity-letter-athlete, everyone-wants-me-as-a-prom-date Charlie Moore—not being in school simply made no sense.“I’m taking classes at Monmouth,” he said.“Oh. Cool.”He should’ve been at Yale, debating politics in some elite study group. He should have been at Michigan scoring winning goals in Big Ten soccer games. He should have been at UCLA, surfing and making all the girls swoon.“Anyway, you can’t tell Shannen you saw me, okay?” He stood up again and ran his hands down the backside of his plaid shorts. “She thinks I’m this big thing at Arizona State.”“I promise, I won’t say anything,” I told him. “We’re not currently speaking, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.”“What?” He looked baffled. Like imagining me and Shannen not being friends was as hard to picture as him being a stoner at Monmouth State. “Why?”“It’s a loooong story,” Annie said. He eyed her warily. “For another time,” she added.“I don’t live on the crest anymore,” I said. “We’ve kind of . . . grown apart.”I wasn’t about to tell him his adorably mischievous little sister had grown into an evil troll.“Oh.” He nodded as if this made perfect sense as an explanation.“But I don’t get it,” I said. “Why come here of all places? All our friends spend their summers down here. Did you really think you could go without seeing them?”He lifted his shoulders. “Figured if I hung with the locals, I’d never bump into anyone. And I never did . . . till now.”We both smiled.“Well . . . I guess we should go,” I said, edging away. “I guess I’ll . . .”“See you around?” Charlie said. “Cool.”I nodded and Annie and I headed for her car. She grabbed my arm as she made her way over the uneven gravel.“Charlie Moore!” she squealed under her breath. “Do you realize what this means?”I realized exactly what it meant. It meant I had a secret to keep from Shannen. Just like the one she’d kept from me. And I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about that.Suddenly, my phone rang. I looked at Annie, confused. My mother had stopped calling around two a.m. when I texted her that I was fine and was going to crash at a friend’s with Annie. She’d texted back that we were going to have a “long talk today”—a promise that made my stomach clench every time I remembered it—and my phone hadn’t made a peep since. “What time is it?”She checked her watch. “Five fifteen.”I fumbled my phone from my pocket. The call was coming from Jump. What the hell was my father doing calling me at five a.m.? Had my mother called him to tattle on me? Was I in trouble? Seemed unlikely, since they weren’t speaking, but I couldn’t think of another reason. I decided to bite the bullet and answer it.“Hello?”“Ally, good morning,” my father said. He was frazzled. He always sounded formal when he was frazzled. “Sorry to call so early, but have you seen Jake?”I shook my head slightly, trying to make sense of my dad asking that question, via phone, at dawn. For some reason, I instantly knew I had to lie.“Um . . . no,” I replied. “Why?”He muttered something I didn’t understand. “He ditched in the middle of his shift last night; went on his break and just didn’t come back. It was mayhem here. Just mayhem. I don’t know what he was thinking.”I was stunned. Jake had bailed on my dad to come down here? I didn’t know whether to be pissed off or flattered.“I called his mother and she had no idea where he was. We thought he might have gone down there.”I pressed my lips together and stayed silent.“Well, if you see him, please tell him to call me,” my father said.“Sure, Dad,” I said.“Okay. Thanks, kiddo. Go back to sleep.”I closed my eyes as a seagull cawed overhead. “Okay. Bye, Dad.”“What was that?” Annie asked as I hung up.“That was just me lying to my dad to protect Jake,” I said matter-of-factly.Annie laughed. “This just gets better and better.”“Yeah,” I said sarcastically. “Can I ask you something?”She shrugged, and almost knocked herself over doing it. “A’course.”“The other day, when you said you had Crestie dirt, was it about Jake?” I asked.She blew out her lips. “No.”“I don’t believe you.”“Okay, yes.”She turned and clomped toward her car.“What was it? Annie!” I jogged after her. She yanked on the passenger side door, but it was locked. My heart hammered against my ribs. “Is he going out with someone? You have to tell me.”“It’s nothing,” Annie said. Then she looked at me, all defeated. “Can you please open my door?”I tossed the keys up and grabbed them in front of her face. “Only if you tell me.”She rolled her eyes hugely. “Okaaaay!” She gave me this hesitant sort of look. “He came into the store looking for you.”“He did?” I asked.“Yeah. He went up and down all the aisles and everything, then bought some mints and left them there.”I considered this. “Did he ask about me?”“No. But it was obvious why he was there.” She turned back toward the car and pulled on the handle with both hands. “Can we go now?” she whined.“In a minute.” I leaned back against the door and studied her face. She refused to make eye contact. “That’s it? That’s all you have to tell me?” I wheedled.She nodded. “Yup. That’s it.”“Swear?”“Swear.” Then she glanced at my newish sandals. “Can we go now before I barf on your feet?”I stuck my tongue between my teeth. “Ish. Fine.”But as I trudged across the uneven dirt to the driver’s side of the car, I didn’t entirely believe her. Something else had happened. I was kind of dying to know what, but I took comfort in the fact that she’d tell me at some point. Eventually my little gossip-hound best friend always cracked.