“Have you ever been inside this one?”Jenny and I paused in the middle of the beach that night as she pointed up at the darkened Appleby house. My feet were buried in the cold sand and the wind whipped around us like it was trying to kill something. The reeds at the top of the beach were flattened against the dunes, and the clouds overhead moved so fast against the cobalt blue sky, it was making me dizzy. My face already stung from spending hours in my room alone, thinking about the look on my dad’s face that afternoon, and crying my eyes out. Now I was so tense my arms were permanently wrapped around myself. My mother still wouldn’t talk to me, and when I’d come down for dinner, Gray had given me a look that could have killed a charging elephant, then dropped a folder of takeout menus on the counter and walked out with Quinn for destinations unknown. I was officially persona non grata in the world of my pseudo-family. All I felt like doing was curling up in a ball and dying, but the last place I wanted to be was inside that house. Thankfully, Cooper had called to tell me he and his friends were going to be partying a little ways up the beach. So here I was.“Cuz I looooove this one,” Jenny added.I blinked, returning to the now. What was with the Lane family’s jones for Chloe’s house?“Yeah, actually. One of my friends lives there.”It seemed easier than saying former friends and then explaining the whole sordid idiocy.“Really? Does she keep any clothes in there?” Jenny asked, taking a couple of steps toward the deck. “I bet she has awesome clothes.”“All right, all right. Let’s go before you get yourself into trouble,” I joked, putting a hand on her shoulder.Jenny shot me a wide-eyed, innocent look. “What? I was just asking.”We started up the beach together and she shook her head, glancing back over her shoulder. “How do you have a house like that and not even use it?”I took a deep breath and looked out at the ocean, not about to explain why Chloe hadn’t come down. There were whitecaps on the water as far as the eye could see, and the surf was so loud we had to raise our voices to be heard. Thinking about Chloe made me feel sad all over again. I’d recently seen her get devastated, just like my dad had been devastated that afternoon. And both were sorta kinda my fault.“Come on, let’s go back to the fire. It’s freaking freezing out here.”There was a whoop and a shout down the beach, and I saw Charlie’s shadow loping toward the others, which gave me more of an excuse to get back there.“Chum’s here,” I said.“Oh! I love Chum! He always brings beef jerky!” Jenny gave a little jump, tugged her red-and-white-striped hood over her braids, and jogged ahead of me. Her heels kicked up so much sand, I had to slow down and shield my eyes.“Hey, Ally,” Charlie said, lifting his chin.My shoulders felt heavy as I said “hi.” Because I suddenly remembered that there was something I had to tell him. Something I figured he’d want to know. God. Could this day get any more depressing?“Can I talk to you for a sec?” I asked.Cooper looked back and forth at the two of us with a suspicious, possibly jealous, expression. I managed to feel flattered for a second, before the weight of what I was about to do flattened it like a two-hundred-pound dumbbell to the pinky toe.“Sure. What’s up?” Charlie asked.He walked over to me, hands in the pockets of his blue sweatshirt, head bowed. I moved a few steps away from the fire and he followed.“Uh oh. This seems serious,” he joked, and laughed. But when he looked at my face, he stopped smiling. “What is it? Did something happen to my mom? Did he—”“No. Your mom’s fine,” I said quietly. The fire crackled and sparked behind us, the wind blasting our faces with smoke. “She’s . . . here.”Charlie actually looked over his shoulder.“No, not here here, but down the shore. She’s staying with us. And so is Shannen,” I said.“Shit. You didn’t tell them, did you?” he asked.“No, but . . . here’s the thing. . . . My mom says your parents are getting a divorce,” I said.Charlie’s head popped up. His eyebrows, too. He looked, suddenly, like the Charlie I used to know. All happy and alive inside.“She’s leaving him? Shut the eff up.” He smiled and nodded a few times as he looked at our feet. “Go, Mom.”Okay. So maybe this wasn’t a bad piece of news. All of a sudden, I sensed a disturbance in the force. Everything went quiet, except for the crackling of the fire and the whistling of the wind and the crashing of the surf. Before I could even look over at Cooper for an explanation, she was there.“Hey! What’re we drinking?” Shannen asked, slapping her hands together.Charlie ducked behind me. As much as a lanky giant can duck behind a girl like myself. He grabbed my elbows from behind and pressed his head into the small of my back.“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”“What?” Shannen said as the locals just stared. She lifted her chin in my direction. “I’m with her.”You are so not with me, I thought. And would have said were it not for the fact that her brother’s long-ass toenails were cutting into my heels. Only Shannen would feel like it was okay to crash a party with my friends mere weeks after completely destroying me. She really did live in her own little world where everyone else revolved around her.“Chum? What the hell are you doing back there?” Dex asked.“Fuuuuuuck,” Charlie said to the ground. Then, ever so slowly, he released me and stood up. Shannen’s face fell so fast it made a dent in the sand at her feet. “Hey, Shan.”“Charlie!?”It was like that scene in Grease in the parking lot when Danny and Sandy first see each other after their summer of love and Rizzo’s the only one who knows what the heck is going on. I was Rizzo. Shannen threw herself at Charlie and they hugged. He picked her up off the ground and her legs kicked up.“What the hell are you doing here?” Shannen demanded as her feet hit the sand again.“Slumming, you know,” Charlie lifted his shoulders.“Hey! Watch it,” Cooper joked, but he sounded serious.“Come on,” Shannen said, shoving his arm so hard he turned sideways. “I thought you were in Arizona.”“Yeah, that’s kind of a long story,” Charlie said, hanging his head. What was with all this head hanging? Back in the day this kid wore his chin higher than anyone I knew. “Don’t be mad at Ally, though. I made her promise not to tell you.”Shannen’s eyes flashed as she looked up at me. “You knew?”I bit down so hard on my tongue my taste buds filled with blood. Don’t kill her. Do not kill her. There are too many witnesses.“Yes,” I said slowly, loudly. “I knew where your brother was and I didn’t tell you.” I spoke like she was a tourist in from Greece who knew zero English. Very slowly. Very succinctly. Determined to get my point across.Shannen sort of flinched. She tucked her hair behind her ear, which was something she always used to do when she didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t seen her do it once since I’d been back in Orchard Hill.“Let’s go somewhere,” she said to Charlie.“Like where?” he said.“I don’t know. Anywhere. We need to talk,” she said. “There’s a lot going on.”Charlie glanced at me, but didn’t say that he already knew. Instead he nodded, lifted a hand at the crowd, and trudged off with Shannen by his side. From behind, it was amazing how much they looked like each other. Same long legs, same dark hair, same hunched shoulders. They’d always been the perfect pair. The brother and sister who made only children like me wish for a sibling. He shouldn’t have been exiled, and she shouldn’t have turned into a bitch.“Damn,” Jenny said, stepping up next to me.“What?” I asked. In the sullen mood I found myself in, I expected her to say something deep and meaningful. Something that would make sense of all this contradictory crap spinning in my head.“He took the jerky with him.”I scoffed a laugh. For some people, it was all just about the jerky. Must have been nice when life was so simple. Over her shoulder, a light flickered to life a little ways off in the distance. The deck light at Gray’s house. My heart skipped a tense beat as my mom walked out to the railing and leaned into it. The wind tugged her hair back from her face as she scanned the beach, and I realized with a surge of hope that she was looking for me. Of course she was looking for me. I hadn’t told anyone where I was going. Maybe she was ready to talk about this afternoon. And for the first time all summer, I was more than ready to listen.I took one step toward the house, and then Gray came out behind my mom and slipped his arms around her waist. She turned to face him and he held her in his arms and the two of them started kissing like they were auditioning for some awful, middle-aged porn movie.So, she wasn’t looking for me at all. Apparently she didn’t give a crap where I was, who I was with, or what I was doing. Maybe Cooper had been right all along. Maybe all I was to my mother was the person keeping her from the people she really wanted to be with.Suddenly I felt very small. And stupid and angry and naïve.“Hey, Crestie Girl. Want a beer?”I looked up at Cooper. He held a can of something with the word “Lite” splashed across it. Ice dripped from the can and hit my feet, sending shivers up and down my legs.“Sure,” I said, taking it from him. “Why not?”And while Gray slid his hands under my mom’s T-shirt in the distance, I chugged a beer for the very first time.