“But it’s Chloe’s birthday, and she doesn’t want to talk about it. Just leave her alone.”

Shannen hesitated. She looked over her shoulder at the front of the room, where two hotel workers were rolling out a huge pink cake.

“Whatever. Since when are you all on Chloe’s side?” she groused.

This wasn’t about Chloe. It was about Ally. But I wasn’t going to tell her that. “Just relax, all right? It’s a party.”

“Everyone! Let’s gather around to sing happy birthday!” Mrs. Appleby called out, holding Chloe around the waist tightly as if trying to keep her upright.

We all moved to the front of the room, Lisa wrapping her arm around me. I held my breath while everyone else sang happy birthday, and I watched Faith and Shannen whisper in a way that could not be good. Not for Ally. Not for Chloe. Not for anyone.

ally

“Anyone want anything else?” my mother asked, placing her fork down on her empty plate.

“No, thank you. I’m stuffed,” Gray Nathanson said, leaning back in his chair with a satisfied smile.

“I’m fine, thanks.” Gray’s daughter, Quinn, folded her hands primly in her lap. She had straight blond hair, a smattering of freckles, and the most perfect posture I’d ever seen outside of Chloe’s. I suspected she wasn’t overly happy to be there, since she hadn’t cracked a smile all night and hadn’t said more than three words at a time, but she’d been very polite. “Everything was delicious.”

“Seriously, Ms. Ryan. I may never eat at home again,” David said.

And suddenly everyone was looking at me.

“Yeah. It was great,” I said halfheartedly.

Really I just wanted to get this dinner over with as quickly as humanly possible. It was the day after Thanksgiving, and Mom had decided to invite over her new boyfriend and his perfectly gorgeous daughter for dinner. Of course, she hadn’t felt the need to share this plan with me until four this afternoon. Until then I hadn’t known about either the dinner or the fact that she considered him her boyfriend. As soon as I heard the word come out of her mouth, I was on the phone with David begging him to join us. Which he had. Because he was the best boyfriend ever.

“Did you like your stuffed pepper, Ally?” Gray asked me.

My mother placed her hand on Gray’s arm, which was resting on the table, elbows off, of course. He looked down at her fingers and smiled. Ick. Did people their age really think that the rest of us wanted to be subjected to their PDA?

“Ally? Gray asked you a question,” my mother said.

“Oh, yeah,” I replied, pushing my fork into the grayish mush at the center of the hollowed-out green pepper on my plate—the one thing Gray had contributed to the meal and the only thing I hadn’t eaten. “It’s great.”

“You haven’t even tasted it,” Quinn said snidely.

Okay. So much for polite.

But, then, Quinn was fourteen, a freshman, and a Crestie. I was sure she’d been programmed to hate me by the behavior of, the gossip from, and the general vibe coming off my former friends—older, influential Cresties whom she no doubt worshipped. Also, I had to cut her some slack. She’d lost her mom to cancer a few years ago, while mine was alive and well and awesome.

“No, I did. I liked it,” I protested. I took a bite and almost gagged. Way too much garlic. Somehow I managed to swallow, then took a huge gulp of soda.

“She did. I saw her,” David chimed in. “Didn’t you guys hear all the yums and mmms?”

I shot him a silencing look. That was a little much.

“It’s okay,” Gray said, smiling at me. “They’re not for everyone.”

I swear I saw my reflection in those teeth. I forced myself to smile back, remembering that I wanted my mother to be happy and that this doctor man seemed to make her just that. Even if he did have floppy hair that was about twenty years too young for him and was wearing a trendy V-necked T-shirt that exposed his curly gray-and-black chest hair. I mean, really, what did the two of them have in common? Other than the crest, I mean. Was it possible that my mother was dating him solely because he lived up there? Because she thought it would help her get back in with her so-called friends?

I liked to think my mother was better than that, but reclaiming her old life—however much of it she could reclaim—was still so important to her, just like it had been to me when we’d first moved back here. I guess it was possible that she was unconsciously using this guy to get what she wanted. It would definitely explain her spending so much time with a person who was the polar opposite of my father. It was kind of depressing, actually. Back when my parents were together, I had always been so proud of her independence. She was the only Crestie mother who worked—she was the librarian at the middle school—and she was always doing her own thing. Able to go to parties without my dad when he had to work late and not be all self-conscious about it. Always telling my friends how fulfilling it was to have her own career, knowing their moms expected them to be ladies who lunched and spa-dayed, just like them. But now she was looking at Gray with an almost imperceptible desperation in her eyes. Like he was somehow going to save her. From what? I knew we weren’t rich anymore, but she had a new and awesome job, and we were doing okay. So, what did we need him for?

“So, Ally, I hear you’re a basketball superstar,” Gray said, sitting back in his chair and taking a sip of his white wine.

My heart skipped, and I glanced automatically at my mom. So, they’d been talking about me? She shrugged, like, what do you expect? I felt suddenly hot and glanced at the door.

“I used to play a bit myself,” Gray continued. “Could never get Quinn here interested in it, though.”

I felt like I was supposed to say something, but I couldn’t think of what.

“I like basketball,” Quinn said. “I cheer for basketball, don’t I?”

“That you do,” her father said, giving her a fond smile.

A cheerleader. Shocker.

“Were you on the team back in Baltimore, Ally?” Gray asked me.

“Yep,” I replied.

There was an odd, uncomfortable feeling rising up inside my chest, and it wasn’t from that one bite of stuffed pepper.

“They won the regional championship,” my mother put in proudly. “Ally scored twenty points.”

“Wow. I didn’t know that,” David said, his mouth still full of his second helping. “That’s awesome.”

“Absolutely awesome,” Gray added. He was trying too hard. Which made me like him even less. “We should shoot around sometime.”

My heart was pounding like I’d just run a five-minute mile. For some reason, the room was swimming. I really didn’t want to talk about this anymore. And I really didn’t want to shoot around with him.

“So, are you a forward?”

“Yep,” I said. I pushed back from the table. “Who wants dessert?”

“There’s apple pie in the fridge,” my mother said. “But we should clear the table first. . . .”

“I got it.” I stood up and gathered as many plates as I could, clanging them together noisily and dropping a fork on the floor, where it bounced under the table.

“I’ll help,” David offered.

Even though there was still food on his plate, he grabbed a few glasses and followed me over to the open kitchen area. I set the plates down with a crash and took a deep breath. David turned the water on in the sink full blast and whispered over it.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“M’fine.” I rinsed off a plate, my hands still shaking.

“No, you’re not. You’re step-freaked,” David said.

“Step-freaked?” I repeated.

“It’s the particular brand of freaked you get when encountering a potential stepdad,” he whispered, wiping off a dish with a purple sponge.

“Gray is not a potential stepdad,” I said through my teeth.

“Every dude they bring home is a potential stepdad. That’s why you get so step-freaked. Believe me, I know. My mom one time brought home this guy from Chadwick’s Pub with forearms wider than my head. I looked exactly like you do right now.”