He forgets to close the bathroom door.

I down the rest of my coffee and meet my eyes in the mirror. This is it. The day I’ve been training for all winter. In ten hours I’ll skate in front of a panel of judges for a chance at a fifty-thousand-dollar scholarship. Every one of my nerves stands at attention, my whole body buzzing with equal parts excitement and dread.

In ten hours, I’ll finally prove myself.

I’ll nail it.

I’ll win.

I’ll—

“Hurry up, Hudson!” Bug shouts from his bedroom down the hall. “Mom’s waiting for us.”

“Fifteen minutes!” I call back. I look in the mirror again, one last time before everything changes.

“Hudson, are all the blinds dusted?” Mom asks, zipping around the Hurley’s kitchen like some kind of cracked-out, nightmare hummingbird.

“Yep,” I say.

“Even the ones in the kitchen?” she asks.

“Did them myself. Twice.”

“And the tabletops? Did you check for gum and—”

“Bug’s on gum detail.” I push open the doors to the dining room and point to the booths by the window, where my brother diligently scrapes specimens from table underbellies into a small bucket.

“What about the walk-in cooler?” Mom asks. “Did you chuck any expired food and make sure everything on the shelves is alphabetized and—”

“Ma, he’s not the health inspector, and he’s not coming for two more days. You’ve been at this all week—calm down.”

“Go.” Mom points to the walk-in without further explanation, and thirty seconds later I’m knee-deep in dairy, organizing milk products for the third time this week.

“Holy meltdown.” Dani ducks into the cooler five minutes later, pulling the door shut behind her. She wraps a sweater around her shoulders and joins me at the shelves. “Girlfriend’s on my last nerve out there.”

“Tell me about it.”

“The dining room is so clean you could eat off the floor.” Dani picks through a few bricks of butter, separating the salted from the plain. “The guy’s gonna love us.”

“I wonder what he’s like,” I say, eager to keep our nonargument going. “Like, will he show up with a notebook and tape recorder, all official?”

Dani laughs. “Testing, testing, this is Bob Barker, reporting live from Hurley’s Homestyle Diner on—”

“Dude, no. Bob Barker is the guy from The Price Is Right.”

“When did the Price Is Right guy become a restaurant reviewer?”

“This year, I guess.” I laugh and check the time on my phone. Just under an hour until I make my escape.

“Soooo,” she says, stretching it out until it’s so long and loaded I already know what’s coming next.

“I haven’t spoken to either of them.”

“That bad, huh?”

I sniff a recently opened carton of heavy cream and set it back on the shelf, face out. “Josh thinks I conspired to get Will in front of hockey scouts and screw the rest of the team. It’s this whole mess with the coach—he’s Will’s godfather.”

Dani nods. “Frankie told me that part. But why are they mad at you? You obviously helped the whole team, not just Will.”

“There’s a lot more to it. I was hanging out with Will, but then Josh and I were supposed to … okay, it’s a crazy long story.”

She reaches for another stack of butter bricks, checking the dates. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I just thought …”

“Are you working brunch tomorrow? Maybe we can go to Sharon’s for a late lunch after and talk about stuff?”

“Lunch tomorrow would be awesome,” she says. “But I’m working a double tonight, so if you want to start filling me in on the basics …”

I check my phone again. “I can’t.”

“Why are you so antsy?”

“I have the … my competition starts in a little while.” I pick up a tub of sour cream and inspect the contents. “The scholarship thing.”

“That’s tonight? I totally forgot! Why didn’t you remind me?”

“We haven’t exactly been on speaking terms.”

“Hudson.” She leans against the metal shelving that holds all the eggs, hands on her hips. “I know things aren’t all lovey-dovey, but that doesn’t mean I’m ditching out on the biggest event of your life.”

“You aren’t ditching. It’s fine. You don’t—”

“What time does it start? I’ll call Marianne.” She digs the phone out of her apron pocket and flips it open, scrolling through the numbers. “Maybe she’ll switch with me so I can—”

“Dani, listen to me.” I reach across the small space of the cooler and close her phone. “It’s not you, okay? I know I haven’t been around much and I don’t even deserve your awesomeness, and I totally appreciate that you still want to be there for me. But this event … I just … I can’t really explain it.”

“Try,” she whispers, eyes shining.

“I need to go it alone.”

“Alone. Right.” She wipes fresh tears with her fingertips. “Guess you’ve made that pretty clear, haven’t you?”

“Dani, wait.” I grab her arm.

“Let go of me.” She pulls away and stomps out of the cooler. She tries to slam the door, but I catch it and follow her to the big dishwasher at the back of the kitchen.

“Please listen,” I whisper, keeping an eye out for Mom and Bug. “I’ve been so stressed about this, and the competition is so hard. That scholarship … it’s everything to me. You have no idea how—”

“No, you have no idea. I’ve been dealing with your multiple personality disorder for months. I kept telling myself, ‘Ease up, she’s having a hard time with her family.’ Then it was, ‘Cut her a break. She’s really busy with hockey and skating stuff.’ Then, ‘Wow, waitressing and baking and school and training—must be tough to balance it all.’” Dani shoves one of my mixing bowls into the dishwasher, followed by a cutting board and a few dinner plates.

“Dani—”

“I tried to convince myself that things would get better once you got the hang of serving, or after the Wolves won a few games, or once Christmas break started, or New Year’s, or blah blah blah. But it never happened. Know why? Because there’s always another reason, Hud, and there always will be. Always something to give you a bad day or put you in a funk. Life is hard—I get it. The thing is, best friends don’t use that stuff as an excuse to treat each other like garbage. Best friends don’t make you feel like the slush under your boots.”

Her eyes are wild and her words hit me like steak knives, but she’s right. I can’t argue a single point, and hearing the entire soundtrack of my horrible behavior set to the tune of her wounded, angry voice kicks me hard in the chest. I hate that I put that edge in her jaw, the angles in her stance, the stain on our formerly unblemished friendship.

“I totally hear you, Dani. I know I got caught up in my own thing this winter, and I’ve been a mess of a person, but this is my last chance. I need to be in the zone tonight. No distractions—not even well-meaning ones. If I don’t nail this thing, that’s it. I’m stuck in this hole for the rest of my life.”

Dani slams the dish rack into the machine. “Maybe if you weren’t so busy trying to bail on this ‘hole,’ you’d remember that some people call it home, and that you don’t have it all that bad. Maybe if you stopped trying so hard to escape, you’d see some of the good stuff, too.”

“For you, sure. You still have both of your parents. You know they’re going to help you, whatever you decide to do. Look around. Look at this place. This is my future. My whole life. Name one good thing—”

“One and two,” she says, counting on her fingers. “You have a mom and a little brother who adore you. Three, Trick always has your back. Four, a warm bed. Five, all those friends you made on the hockey team—crushes or breakups or not, those guys adore you. Six, a decent job, when you show up. Seven—”

“What about you? Do I still have my best friend, or is that just a regional thing? Because it seems you liked me a whole lot better when you thought I’d be stuck in Watonka, working as a Hurley Girl for the rest of my life.”