Mr. Ferguson (aka Mr. Froggy) walked into class with a pile of white paper under his arm. My blood pressure instantly skyrocketed. This always happened at the sight of tests. I was never nervous until I saw with my own eyes that it was actually going to happen.He put the pile down on his desk and the rotating fan in the corner blew them toward the door. A girl in the front row jumped up to help pick them up. He thanked her, then clutched them as he looked at the five rows full of students.“Thees test comprises tweentee multiple choice queeestions eend one eeessay,” he told us. I cracked a smile, but didn’t laugh. I was getting used to the accent. Also, I felt like I was going to pee my pants. He started to hand out the papers. “Theee multiple choice eees deesigned to eeeelucidate your understanding of theee mateeeriell. Thee eeesay will reeequire some . . . original thought.”He placed a test down on my desk, the final test in the final row. “Goot luck.”As he walked away, I looked at Chloe. “Goot luck,” she whispered.I tried to smile—it didn’t work—and I looked at the page.I knew the first answer. And the second. I also knew the third. My heart started to pound for a new and unfamiliar reason. I knew the answers. I didn’t even have to think about it. I just knew. I grinned. I went through the multiple choice in ten minutes. Then I turned the page over to make sure I wasn’t missing something. I wasn’t. All that was left was the essay.I looked around. Waited for the punch line. This was like a reverse nightmare. A couple of rows over, a girl chewed on her nails. I could see she’d only answered three questions.Don’t be a dick, I told myself. Check it over. There must be something wrong.I went back and read the questions again, slowly, like my SAT tutor was always telling me. But all my answers were right. I was sure of it.Chloe shot me a concerned look. I guess she read all my fidgeting as a bad sign, but it wasn’t. I lifted my shoulders and glanced at the clock. I had forty minutes to write the essay. Usually I had to scribble out answers in huge handwriting with the clock ticking away the last five minutes of class, mocking me with every click.This. Was. Awesome.

Daily Field Journal of Annie Johnston Friday, July 23Position: Corner of Orchard Avenue and Walnut Street.Cover: None. I’m on my bike. Ready to go.Observations:(Note: I’m stationed here waiting for Subject Chloe Appleby and Subject Jake Graydon to return from the thrice-weekly jaunt to wherever the hell they’re jaunting. They have to drive by here to get to the crest, and when they do, I’ll follow them to wherever they go next. I owe it to Ally to find out what’s going on. And to my future literary career.)2:45 p.m.: Eureka! The white convertible approaches. I lean over the handlebars, ready to follow.2:46 p.m.: Subject Chloe Appleby stops the car right in front of me, parallel parks like a pro (Note: Of course. Is there NOTHING she’s bad at?), and checks her hair in the rearview. I fall off my bike trying to get away before they notice me. Knee officially skinned.2:48 p.m.: Subject Chloe and Subject Jake Graydon walk to the corner. I scoot my back against the wall around the corner from them, clutching my knee to my chest.Jake: . . . no idea it was going to be that easy.Chloe: It wasn’t THAT easy.Jake: Not the essay, but the multiple choice, psssh, come on.Chloe: Okay! Stop rubbing it in, genius! Have you started the next book yet?Jake: No. But I’m starting it tonight. I bet I got at least a B on that test! My mom will die if I get a B.Chloe: Maybe she’ll unground you!2:49 p.m.: Traffic lets up and they jog across the street and into Scoops. I stare, baffled. (Query: Studying? They’ve been STUDYING?)

Saturday afternoon, I was lying out on the beach in front of Faith’s house with Shannen, Faith, Quinn, and Quinn’s friend Lindsey, thinking that if Cooper could see me now, he’d probably break up with me for my complete hypocrisy. But when Faith had called that morning and included Quinn in the invite, Quinn had actually fallen on her knees begging me to say yes, obsessed as she was with the elder Cresties. I’d been so stunned by the sight of her down on the floor, and still affected by my residual guilt over the whole “my mom’s dead, you idiot” thing, I hadn’t realized I’d agreed until I hung up the phone.But whatever. I’d been feeling a lot better ever since I’d heard my mom and dad talking. A lot less tense and pissed at the world. Might as well let others benefit from my new attitude.I was just starting to doze to the sound of the waves when Faith’s phone rang. She reached down from her striped beach chair, fished it out of her Kate Spade beach bag—exactly like Quinn’s, but with green trim instead of pink—and checked the display. Her rattan sun hat was so huge it cast enough of a shadow for her to actually see the screen in all this blazing sunlight.“It’s my mom.” She rolled her eyes and got up, inching away from us as she talked.“What’s that about?” I asked as we all watched Faith gesture with her free hand, scaring off a seagull that had gamely wandered close to our little camp.“Her mom’s being a beyotch about the guest list for the end-of-summer party,” Shannen said with a yawn, turning her face to lie on her left cheek. She’d been splayed on her stomach for the last half hour, the straps of her black bathing suit pulled down her shoulders to avoid tan lines. There were deep creases pressed into her cheek from her eye to her ear. “Apparently they’re scaling back this year.”Quinn and Lindsey exchanged a startled look, probably worried they wouldn’t be invited. The Kirkpatricks’ end-of-summer parties were legendary in Crestie circles. Everyone who was anyone was there, so if you weren’t invited, well, ergo you were no one.“Ugh!” Faith tossed her phone at her bag and plopped back into her beach chair.“What happened?” Shannen asked.“She’s holding me to fifty guests. Fifty!” Faith took out a brush and yanked it through her damp hair. “I’m going to have to cut Tori and all the other seniors.”“Who cares? They’re out of here anyway,” Shannen said, sounding bored.Faith’s jaw sort of dropped, but then she paused, brush still in hair, and considered. “Right. They are out of here. . . .”“I think it’s far more important that you invite the people who are sticking around,” Lindsey piped up, looking up from her Star magazine. She wore a light pink bikini that showed off her dark skin and how she was way too endowed for a soon-to-be sophomore. In the past half hour I’d spied men of all ages doing double takes on her as they walked by. “You know, the underclassmen who are going to go see all your plays . . .”“And who are going to vote for school officers,” Quinn added, catching on.“Huh. I never thought of it that way,” Faith said, staring across the ocean. “They’re not seniors anymore. We are.”“So screw ’em,” Shannen said.Faith smirked and sat back in her chair. “Yeah. Screw ’em.”Lindsey and Quinn surreptitiously high-fived. Crises averted.“When is the end-of-summer party, anyway?” I asked, pushing myself up onto my elbows. The surf was surprisingly close to our little camp. In the time that I’d been lying on my back, the tide had started coming in.“August seventh,” Quinn said, before Faith could answer.Faith shot her a perturbed look, and Quinn’s already-pink face darkened. “I already have it in my iPhone.”“August seventh. Not exactly the end of summer,” Shannen said with a yawn.“It’s the guys. They all have to get home for their ‘soccer mini-camp’ that week,” Faith said with air quotes. “If we want an acceptable guy to girl ratio, it has to be that weekend.”August seventh was the next weekend Annie was coming down. Normally I wouldn’t even consider attending the Kirkpatricks’ all-Crestie bash, but Annie would kill to go. The hook ups alone would have her burning up the keyboard on her laptop. And I’d already forced her to miss the July Fourth party. But Faith detested Annie. And now, with the smaller guest list . . . But still, I had to ask. I mean, Annie’s head would explode if I didn’t at least try.“Faith?” I said.“Yeah?”“I was kind of hoping to bring a guest,” I said casually.“Oh, don’t worry.” Faith waved a hand as she put her brush away. “You can totally bring your local boy toy.”I blinked. That thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. Going to a Crestie party was probably the last thing he’d ever want to do. “Actually, I was sort of thinking I’d bring Annie.”Faith’s lips flattened. “Um, no.”I sat up straight now, all the blood rushing to my face. “Faith—”“Ally, she’s a total freak! And this party is for us. The last party of the summer. The—”“Omigod, Faith, just let the girl come,” Shannen groaned, propping herself up on her forearms. “What’s the big deal?”We both looked at Shannen, stunned.“Didn’t you used to be friends with her or something?” Shannen asked, pulling her hair around to check it for split ends.Faith and I exchanged a surprised look over Shannen’s prone back. The very idea that Shannen (a) noticed anything about Faith’s life that didn’t directly pertain to her and (b) remembered it even after two years was kind of astonishing. “Yeah,” Faith said.“So let her come,” Shannen replied, flicking her hair back again and shrugging one shoulder. “It’s probably the last one you’re ever gonna have anyway. Might as well go out with a bang.”“The last one?” Quinn said. “Why?”Faith pursed her lips, like she’d just popped a lemon lollipop into her mouth. She looked down at her perfectly tan thigh and shooed a fly away. “My parents are getting divorced and they can’t decide who’s getting the house, so they might sell it.”“What?” I blurted.Faith sighed. She gave me a don’t go there look that made me feel, all over again, that her parents’ impending split was somehow my fault.“Don’t worry. I plan to talk them out of it,” Faith said. She lifted her sunglasses from atop her head and placed them over her eyes, then leaned back again. “All right. Your little friend may come. But bring Cooper, too. He’s hot.”“Gee, thanks,” I shot back, wondering why I’d ever even opened this can of worms. Annie so owed me one.“Isn’t it so weird?” Shannen said, smoothing out the sand in front of her towel with the palm of her hand. “I mean, did you ever think that all our parents would be getting divorced?”A hot stone burned to life in the center of my stomach.“I know. Especially yours, Ally,” Faith said, her face tilted casually toward the sky. Like she was discussing the weather and not my parents’ marriage. “I always thought they were the perfect couple.” She glanced sideways at Quinn. “No offense.”Quinn didn’t reply, nor did she look at me. She was, in fact, looking pointedly away at her iPhone, scrolling through iTunes endlessly.“Wait, what are you talking about? Did you hear something?” I asked, leaving my pride buried in the sand.Faith looked at Shannen, who looked at me. “No. Not exactly. We just assumed . . .”“Assumed what?” I asked, even though I knew.“Well, your dad came back and your mom still came down the shore to play house with Dr. Nathanson,” Shannen said. She glanced at Quinn. “No offense.”Quinn looked at Lindsey. Clearly she was starting to have second thoughts about the attractiveness of hanging out with her elders. “I think I’m gonna go in. Wanna come?”“Definitely,” Lindsey replied, dropping the mag.“Wait.”Quinn was dusting the sand off the bottom of her flowered bikini, and froze.“Have you heard something?” I asked.She turned and looked at me with an apologetic sort of smile as she backed away toward the water. “I really don’t want to be a part of this conversation.”But wait. No. My parents had been talking on the phone. She was laughing. She said she loved him. This couldn’t be right. My heart pounded so hard it was making it difficult to breathe.“Quinn. If you know something—”“Come on, Lindsey,” she said, grabbing her friend’s hand.The two of them ran into the surf, hair bouncing, sun gleaming off their skin, screeching happily like some Coppertone commercial as their calves hit the water. Shannen turned over and sat up. She rested her wrists across her knees.“It’s pretty clear they’re breaking up, Al,” she said. “For real.”The pitying look she gave me made me hate her more in that moment than I had at her party. Much more.“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I blurted, gathering my things. I yanked my denim shorts on over my bathing suit and stood up. “My parents are talking again. They’re going to get back together.”“Ally—”“I have to go,” I said.Neither one of them tried to stop me as I threw my towel over my shoulders and stormed off. They were wrong about this. They had to be. They just had to be.