"That's him, Mom. We're going to follow him to the thing. I gotta go."

For good measure I stood on my toes and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

"Fine! Have fun! But just so you know, Ally Ryan, you will be spending some time with your family this summer!"

I raced across the living room and out the door, gulping back a surge of bile at her insinuation that Gray and Quinn were my family. Little did she know that I would be spending some time with my family this summer. My real family. Starting next Saturday afternoon.

"So are you, like, in love with my brother?" Jenny shouted into my ear.

"What? No!" I replied.

I sucked half the punch from my cup. If there was alcohol in it, I couldn't taste it, so I had decided to pretend that there wasn't any. After the last few days and that "family time" comment from my mom, I deserved to let loose a little. Suddenly, a cheer went up from across the yard. Someone had built an elaborate catapult worthy of a physics fair blue ribbon, and half the party's attendees had spent most of the evening flinging various items at the wall of the abandoned house next door. From the looks of things, this catapult had been in use for months-the dilapidated structure on the other side of the fence was peppered with holes, cracks, and stains of various hues and sizes-and as Jenny and I looked on, Cooper and Dex were helping some other guys load it up with a huge, dimpled watermelon.

"Really?" Jenny was incredulous as she smacked my arm with the back of her hand, spilling half her beer over the rim of her cup and not noticing. Both of us wore hoodies with the hoods up to ward off the misty drizzle, and she pushed hers back slightly, as if to better see me. Her blue eyes were wide. "Everyone's in love with him."

I glanced over at Cooper, who was stepping back to yank the release on the catapult. There were quite a few girls eyeing him over their drinks. I wondered if he knew they were all in love with him.

Probably.

He let her rip. The watermelon surged through the air and exploded against the white-shingled wall of the house. Everyone within ten feet of the catapult was pelted with watermelon bits. The resulting cheer was the loudest yet.

"This is the coolest party ever!" Annie cried, bouncing over to us with an old crab-trap crate full of potential catapult items gathered from the vicinity. Inside I saw a lawn gnome, a rusty spade, and an actual crab, which I hoped was already dead.

"Agreed," I said. And the best part about it? No Cresties to be found.

Annie's expression drooped a little. "What's wrong? Are you upset that Cooper's not talking to you?"

"Annie!" I said through my teeth. Jenny snorted a laugh and held her hand to her nose.

"No. No, no, no." She dropped the crate of launchables at her feet and took hold of my arm. "You made me come here and miss a perfectly good Crestie party. I could be taking notes right now . . . watching Faith upchuck her meager lunch all over the Rosses' state-of-the-art automatic toilet bowl. I did not miss that so you could come here and not talk to him."

Cooper was slapping hands with Stoner, his biceps flexing under the sleeve of his clingy black T-shirt.

"He totally likes you," Jenny said, toying with her braid.

"He does?" I asked.

"Um, yeah!" She sucked down some more of her beer. "He mentions you at least three times a day. With my brother, that's like he may as well have bought a ring."

At that moment, Cooper looked over at me. He said something to Stoner, then walked across the overgrown grass, dodging revelers as he came.

"What're you, avoiding me?" he said with a smirk.

I blinked. "What? No! I-"

He took my hand and tugged me toward him. My knees bumped his and I blushed. Then he turned both my hands so that my palms were facing out, and matched his palms to mine for a second before lacing our fingers together. He had this way of throwing me off balance and then suddenly grounding me that made me feel like his own personal Ping-Pong ball.

"Wanna go somewhere?" he asked.

"Where?" The word was a squeak.

He looked over his shoulder, tilted his head, and pulled me away from my friends.

"Don't worry about me!" Annie shouted after us. "I'll just be here flinging gnomes!"

Cooper and I laughed as he walked me around the side of the house, helping me carefully step over a fallen section of the rotting picket fence, which had been lain flat by weather or time or some less-natural disaster. At the front of the house was a short wooden deck with a crooked railing. On the deck was an untrustworthy porch swing, with some gray-haired dude splayed across it, snoring. Cooper roused him, and the guy loped off into the night, toward the bay, where dozens of people were partying on a rickety dock, a cloud of smoke muting the twinkle lights strung above their heads.

The porch swing creaked loudly as we sat, but didn't crash to the ground like I expected. Cooper settled into the corner and put his arm out, like he expected me to cuddle into his side. I thought of Jake suddenly, and sat down on the opposite end.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. What was the matter with me? It wasn't like I'd be cheating or something. Jake and I had never even officially been together and we definitely weren't now. I wished I had taken Cooper up on the unspoken invitation, but it was too late. He cleared his throat and sat up.

"You hate this party, don't you?" he blurted.

My face scrunched. "What? No. I'm having fun." I turned my knees toward his. "Why would I hate this party?"

"I don't know. Because-" There was a huge crash, followed by a gasp, then a screaming cheer. We locked eyes for a second, then laughed. "Maybe it's not . . . sophisticated enough for you."

My insides went all squirmy. "Why? What do you mean?" He gave me this look. Like duh. And now I was offended. "Wait, you think because I'm a Crestie this isn't my type of party? Because I am not a Crestie, okay? I just currently live with one."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Cooper held up a hand, shaking his head at the same time. "Back up. Beep, beep, beep." He motioned like he was guiding a reversing truck into a parking space. "What's a Crestie?"

My face burned bright enough to replace the busted porch light. Overhead, the sky suddenly opened up again and the world filled with muffled screams and shouts and pounding feet as everyone crowded inside. The raindrops pinged and plinked off of the various discarded items-tapped kegs, an old tin fishing boat, a coiled garden hose-in the dirt patch that was the front yard.

"Right. Um, forget I said anything."

Cooper laughed. "No, no. There's no forgetting anything now." He inched closer to me and rested one arm on the back of the swing. "What's a Crestie?"

I blew out a sigh and rolled my eyes. "All right. Back home there's this crest and all the rich kids live on it. At some point, like, a million years ago, the kids on the other side of town nicknamed them the Cresties and they've been called that for so long that it's, like, who they are now. Sometimes they even use it to refer to themselves. Sarcastically of course. But I think they secretly like it."

Cooper gaped. "That might be the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

"I know. And I live it," I said. "So what does that make me?"

Cooper narrowed his eyes. One of the gutters on the porch overflowed, suddenly sprouting a gushing waterfall behind our heads. Little splatters peppered my arms. "So wait. I'm confused. You are a Crestie, or you're not a Crestie?"

I could have told him the whole story. How I used to be one, what had happened with my dad, why I was no longer one, how my mom was dating one. But suddenly, it all seemed too exhausting. And too silly to waste time explaining. I was here, with him. And the Cresties didn't matter. They didn't matter so much, he didn't even know who they were.

Suddenly, I'd never felt so free.

"I'm not," I said, sliding a little bit closer to him. Our knees touched, and when I laid my own arm along the back of the swing, our fingers touched too. "And you know what? I don't want to talk about them anymore. I'm just a normal girl who's loving this party. I swear."

Cooper looked into my eyes. His hand shifted and suddenly it was holding on to mine. "You are not what I expected."

Who ever is? I thought. Jake wasn't. My mom wasn't. My dad wasn't. Even Shannen, Hammond, Faith, and Chloe weren't exactly what they appeared.

"I'll take that as a compliment," I said.

"You should."

And then he grazed my bottom lip with his thumb. And then he kissed me.

It took way longer to get to LBI than usual. People can't drive for shit in the rain. There were all these accidents and people were, like, doing twenty-five whenever they came to a frickin' puddle. But whatever; I was there now. At Hammond's. And from the look of it, everyone else was too. There were cars parked everywhere-in the driveway, in the street, in front of the neighbor's driveway-like everyone knew they were in for the night so it didn't matter if they blocked in everyone else. I took a deep breath and looked at myself in the mirror. My heart was pounding a mile a second.

Ally was inside. I was going to see Ally.

Probably should've used that four hour drive to figure out what to say to her.

Shit. Whatever. Let's get this over with.

I got out of the car, pulled my hood over my head, and ran through the rain. When I shoved the sliding glass door open, a bunch of adults turned to look. Like I was some homeless guy crashing their party. They were all wearing linen pants and sandals and jewelry, and there was me in my coffee-stained shorts and crappy kicks.

"Dude! You made it!"

Hammond came outta nowhere and slapped my hand. He had a cup full of beer in his other hand and he was wearing a pink polo shirt. Where the hell does he get these clothes?

"Hey. Yeah." I glanced around the room. Ally's mom and Dr. Nathanson were over by the bar, and I saw Faith's mom and the Idiot Twins' parents, and Quinn and her friends, but no Ally.

"Jake!" Faith practically screamed. She wove through the crowd with her cup of punch over her head and air-kissed me. "What are you doing here?"

"Did your mom unground you?" Hammond asked. "Thank God. It's been boring as shit down here."

Faith slurped her drink and nodded. "So boring."

"Not exactly," I said. I moved a little farther into the house and scanned the room, like I was looking for somewhere to put my sweatshirt. There were a bunch of graduated seniors in the kitchen. I nodded at them. No Ally.

"If you're looking for the keg, it's out back," Hammond said. "Dad's cool with us drinking as long as everyone crashes here."

"No. I'm good."

"I know what he's looking for," Faith said in a teasing voice. She rocked up onto her toes, and scanned the room. "But you're not going to find her here."

I chose not to argue. I was too tense to play games. "Where is she?"

"Where's who?" Hammond said stupidly.

"Ally!" Faith squealed. Because the people in the cheap seats wanted to hear.

"Oh. Right. Yeah. She's not here," Hammond said, taking a slug of beer.

"Do you know where she is?"

Hammond sucked the foam off his lips. He didn't look at me. "Nope."

Something inside me flipped. "Yeah you do. Come on, dude, where is she?"

"You sound like her mother. She's been asking me every ten minutes if I know where this party is Ally went to." He chugged the rest of his beer, crushed the cup, and tossed it toward the kitchen, where it hit some girl in the leg. "Fuck her. She doesn't want to hang out with us, she doesn't have to."

He started across the room toward the stairs, but I grabbed his arm.

"Well, who's she hanging out with?" I asked.

Hammond took a deep breath and blew it out, like he was losing patience. "Some local dude. I don't know."

"What local dude?" Faith and I said at the same time.

"He said they were having a party at Chum and Howie's, whoever they are," Hammond said. "Some huge rager up by the lighthouse."

My teeth pressed together. Who was this local dude and why was he taking my girlfriend . . . ?

She's not your girlfriend. She is not your girlfriend.

"So let's go," Faith said.

My eyebrows popped up. Best. Idea. Ever. "Yeah. Let's go."

Hammond appeared interested. "But I don't even know where it is."

"There aren't that many houses by the lighthouse," Faith said, raising her palm.

"Yeah. So we'll drive around until we find it," I added.

Never before had Faith and I been on the same page. She grinned. Apparently she was enjoying it. I smiled back.

Hammond looked around. His parents were yucking it up over by the fireplace with some other coiffed adults.

"Shit. This party sucks anyway. Let's go."

It took fifteen minutes to drive to the lighthouse. Another fifteen to find the "rager." There were people dancing on the roof in the rain. From the look of the shack and its weather-beaten wallboards, I was shocked they were still alive. I slammed the door of Hammond's car and started toward the house, but I was still two steps from the door when I froze. All the blood in my body rushed to my head, and I suddenly saw myself driving my fist into the wall.

Because sitting-no, practically lying-on the porch swing, with her tongue down some blond surf dude's throat, was my not-girlfriend.