“Dude, that is so not right,” David Drake said, laughing through a mouthful of a Nathan’s hamburger. Marshall Marino was dipping his onion rings into his Häagen Dazs coffee icecream shake and popping them, dripping wet, into his mouth. Disgusting. But oddly intriguing.“You have no idea what you’re missing, man,” Marshall replied, slurping some shake off his chin.Annie leaned her elbows on the table, shoving back her zillion rubber bracelets as if she was pushing up long sleeves. For the past few days she’d been experimenting with dark eye shadow, so when she narrowed her eyes at Marshall, they almost disappeared. “Are you, perhaps . . . pregnant?”David and I laughed as Marshall flung an onion ring at her. I sat back in my chair and sighed. This was what summer was all about. Hanging out in a frigidly air-conditioned mall, eating junk food with my friends. Not sitting in Gray’s shore house listening to Quinn sing show tunes, watching Gray and my mom make out, wondering what new torture the Cresties were devising for me two houses down.“What’s your deal, Sigh-ey McGhee?” Annie asked.“What?” I blinked and sat up straight.“You just sighed, like, four times in a row,” David pointed out.Marshall confirmed with a nod of his head as he sucked half his shake down through the straw.“I was just thinking . . . maybe if I stay with my dad, I could get a second job here,” I said, leaning my elbows on the table. “I could just spend all my time out of the house, working, and kind of . . . power through the summer. Then, I not only wouldn’t have to live with my Mom, Gray, and the cheerleader, I’d also barely have to deal with my dad and all the awkwardness.”Annie rolled her eyes as she sipped her soda. “That sounds like fun.”I rolled my eyes back and stole an onion ring from Marshall. “Well, I’d hang with you guys, too.”“I’m for that plan, then,” Marshall said, giving me a joking wink.“Your mom hasn’t said anything to you about it yet?” David asked, his feet bouncing under the table.I shook my head. “She said she got the message and we’d talk about it later. So now I’m both dreading and looking forward to later. Whenever that ends up being.”I had tried, as promised, to talk my mom into calling my dad and hearing him out—I had even hinted at his grand master plan—but my mother had basically shut me down. She’d said she would call my dad when she was good and ready. When I’d asked when that might be, she’d turned up the volume on the television so loud my eardrums hurt.“Ally, all I’m hearing here is that you want to avoid all the conflicts in your life,” Annie said, placing her soda on the table and lacing her fingers over her stomach.“Oh, boy. Here we go.” David crumpled a napkin. “This happens every summer. She’s been watching Dr. Phil again.”“Shut it, Drake,” Annie snapped, her eyes disappearing again. Then she looked at me, her expression eerily neutral. “What you need to ask yourself is (a) what do you really want? and (b) what do you need to do to get it?”My smile faltered a bit. Because what I wanted was for my parents to get back together. And I wasn’t going to get it if they were apart all summer, no matter what kind of plans my dad had up his sleeve.“Can we go now?” I said, looking at the guys.“Most definitely.” Marshall rose from his chair, shooting Annie a disturbed look. She was still eyeing me carefully, as if waiting for me to bare my inner soul.“You stop watching Dr. Phil,” I admonished. “Cuz you’re freaking me out right now.”Annie shook her head as she got up, sliding her tray from the table. “All I know is, if you don’t talk to them soon, you’re gonna bottle it all up till you pop. And when you pop, it’s not gonna be pretty.”“Everyone always says that, but it’s so not true,” David said as he shoved his tray into the garbage. He’d cut his hair so short for the summer you could see his scalp, and it shone under the fluorescent lights. “I say, clam the hell up, put on a happy face, and get through the next year. Then you’ll go away to college and you’ll never have to see these people again.”“So . . . the approach your sister took,” Annie said, sipping her soda while simultaneously emptying her tray.David lifted his shoulders. “Yeah.”“The sister you never see and totally resent.”He blushed, but lifted his shoulders again. “Well, yeah.”“Sure. Good plan,” Annie said, facetiously.She dropped the tray atop the can with a clatter and turned, her plaid skirt flouncing behind her.“I like David’s plan,” I said. “It lacks confrontation. And I, personally, am anticonfrontation.”“Speaking of confrontation . . . ,” David said under his breath.We all spotted her at the same moment. Faith Kirkpatrick. Her blond hair was back in a tight ponytail, and she wore a floral minidress that left zero to the imagination with a trendy little vest tossed over it. Her wedge sandals were so tall it was a miracle she hadn’t bumped her head on the banner advertising the Books-A-Million summer reading sale. Dangling from one hand were her car keys, on a Coach leather key chain, even though she had a purse and all those shopping bags. As soon as she saw us, she stopped and almost tripped. Where the hell were Chloe and Shannen? I’d hardly ever seen Faith without them all year. They were like her permanent accessories.“Hey, Ally,” she said. Then she squinted briefly at my friends. “Guys.”For a moment I felt off balance. Like I’d slipped through a wormhole into an alternate reality. It was the first time she’d greeted me without an insult since I’d been back.“Excuse me. I see that book I wanted to read,” Annie said, grabbing David and Marshall’s wrists. “You know, the one about the rich bitch who drops her best friend for no apparent reason and becomes a vapid airhead overnight? Let’s go.”Faith shot Annie a sarcastic smile as she dragged the guys away. Annie and Faith had a bit of a history. As in, they used to be best friends until Faith decided it was more important to impress Chloe and Shannen and she dumped Annie like last year’s It bag. And because of that three-year-old injustice, I was now without an entourage.But Faith hadn’t word-slain Annie, either. Which was also odd.“So. What’s up?” Faith asked casually. Like we were just two friends bumping into each other at the mall.“Seriously?” I said, raising my eyebrows. I glanced past her at the crowd of hungry kids and harried moms, wishing she’d move on before her friends caught up with her. I didn’t know whether I’d have to deal with Chloe or Shannen or both, but “none of the above” was the option that appealed. “You’ve been a bitch to me all year and you’re leading with ‘what’s up?’”“Ally, you know I had nothing to do with what Shannen did, right?” she said, sounding almost fed up. Like she was already over me accusing her, even though I’d yet to actually accuse her—of that anyway. “I mean, I was there when the thing was taped, but she never told me what she was going to do with it.”“But you knew it was nothing good,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.“Well. It’s Shannen,” she replied under her breath, looking warily around as if the potted plant next to us had ears.Translation: When Shannen decided to do something awful, there was no talking her out of it. Which wasn’t the greatest excuse, but it was one we’d all used at some point in our lives.Silence reigned. Faith twisted her ankle down and up, down and up, laying the side of her wedge sandal flat on the floor, then righting it again, over and over. She twisted her mouth into a sideways pucker. Her keys jangled as she scratched an itch above her eye.“I’m really sorry, okay?” she said finally. “I know I’ve been a bitch to you. I know. I just . . . I was so mad at you. When you left it was like there goes my best friend! And then you never even called. And Chloe and Shannen basically ignored me for, like, ever. I was a complete outcast for, like, weeks. Which, by the way, is not fun. And then everything happened with my parents and I just . . . I hated you for not being here.”She tilted her head and gnawed on her bottom lip.“None of that is my fault,” I said. Except the not calling part. Which I used to feel guilty for. Until she sank her fangs into my neck my first night back in Orchard Hill last summer.“I know! I know, okay?” she pleaded. “When I saw your face the night of Shannen’s party. When she . . . you know . . . showed the thing?”I narrowed my eyes. “Yeah . . . ?”“Well, when I saw your face I realized . . . this whole thing sucks for you, too.”I bit back a sarcastic laugh. The girl was a genius!“It’s just, I never really thought about it that way before.”I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised. Empathy had never been Faith’s strongest quality. She felt all her emotions to the ten-millionth degree, but rarely seemed to grasp the fact that other people had feelings too.Suddenly I felt very, very tired. I found the nearest empty table and sat down. Faith followed me.“So, do you hate me still?” she asked.I looked up at her. Her blond hair was perfectly backlit by a spotlight to form a halo. Hilarious.“I guess ‘hate’ is a strong word,” I said.The thing was, Faith always had been kind of a follower, and I knew in my heart of hearts that most of the torture I’d been put through the past year had been Shannen’s plotting—that Faith had just been along for the ride. Plus, at the moment, there was something weirdly vulnerable about her and it took the wind right out of my indignation.“Thanks.” She didn’t sit, but hovered alongside the table. Like she sensed she shouldn’t push it.“Don’t mention it.”She gave me a genuine, if tentative, smile, and I couldn’t help remembering the way Faith was before I’d left. Fun, imaginative, but most of all, needy. That was why I’d been so surprised when she was the first to bite my head off last year. Faith with a backbone had been a shock.“So you’re staying at the Nathansons’ this summer?” she asked.My stomach swooped with dread. “My mother is. I’m undecided.” Faith’s already Bambi-esque eyes widened. She finally sat across from me, dropping her bags and leaning forward. Her keys clanged against the table. “Oh, no! You have to come.”“Why?” I asked.“Because . . . it’s totally gonna suck this year,” Faith said. “Shannen and Chloe aren’t talking. Chloe and Hammond aren’t talking. Jake’s not even coming. Who am I supposed to hang out with?”Okay, I wasn’t even going to get into the hypocrisy of that question. Like I wanted to hang out with her? Like I was really going to swoop in and save her from a socially bereft summer? Maybe I didn’t hate her, but I wasn’t about to become her BFF. Really there was only one part of that ramble I was interested in addressing. The part that had made my breath catch.“Jake’s not going down?” I asked.“No,” she said with a pout. “His mother went all strict on him and grounded him for the entire summer. He’s staying in Orchard Hill.”Every inch of my skin tingled, and not from the overzealous air-conditioning vent behind my head. Jake was going to be here all summer. And the Cresties were not.Suddenly the idea of staying with my dad was a lot more appealing.