"Jake!"

The word exploded from my mouth before I fully registered that he was actually there. He held his right hand in his left. Both were shaking.

"Ow! Son of a bitch!"

He whirled away, flinging his hand out, cursing under his breath. Then Hammond came jogging up the steps.

"Dude! Did you really just punch the wall?"

For me. Jake Graydon had just punched a wall for me. I felt this euphoric rush and then Cooper stood up next to me, and suddenly Faith was there also, wrinkling her nose at the house and cringing away from the rotted porch railing. And the rush crashed spectacularly.

What the hell were they all doing here?

"You're bleeding!" Faith exclaimed with another nose wrinkle.

Blood ran in a trickle from Jake's knuckle and splattered the floorboards between his feet. Jake just stared at me. At my lips. Which still tasted like Cooper's ChapStick. Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, I felt like a cheating slut. But Jake was not my boyfriend. He was not.

He was just the guy who'd punched a wall over me.

"You should really get some ice for that, man," Cooper said.

"Who the fuck are you?" Jake spat.

Cooper tilted his head quizzically. Like he had just been faced with some exotic and heretofore unidentified breed of asshole. "I'm the guy who was invited here. Who the fuck are you?"

Jake took a menacing step forward, so Cooper did the same. Hammond's hand instantly shot out, pressing against Cooper's chest. This was going nowhere good, and it was going there fast.

"Back off, loser," Hammond spat.

"These are them, aren't they?" Cooper said with a laugh.

"Them, who?" Jake said, his eyes darting to me.

"The Cresties." Cooper did air quotes. He was cackling now.

"What the fuck do you know about it?" Hammond asked, shifting so his entire forearm was against Cooper's chest now. Cooper jostled back, then shoved himself forward. Their feet scuffled against the floor. My heart throbbed behind my eyes.

"Guys!" I shouted, putting my hands up. They froze. "We're not going to do this."

"Do what?" all three of them said in unison.

Like they didn't know.

"Ally, why don't you just come back with us?" Faith said plaintively. "We could all hang out! Maybe we could go to Cafe Bacci and-"

"Just stop, all right?" I blurted. "I don't want to hang out with you. Not any of you! Take the hint already."

Faith's face sort of crumpled and Cooper laughed. But I couldn't stand there and try to make her feel better. I'd finally told her the actual truth. I took Jake's wrist and pulled him down the steps. It was just drizzling now, and the water cooled my adrenaline-flushed face.

"What are you doing here?" I asked through my teeth.

"I came down to . . . I don't know . . . to talk to you," he said, looking past me with venom in his eyes, I can only assume at Cooper. "And then I find you . . ." He gritted his teeth and shook his head. "What the hell is up, Ally? Are you, like, with that guy?"

"I don't know . . . maybe," I said.

His jaw dropped and he took a step back. "Are you kidding me?"

"Me? What about you? I haven't heard two words from you since I left. . . . No wait, since Shannen's party . . . and then you come down here . . . what? Expecting me to, like, fall at your feet or something?" I demanded.

"What did you want me to do? You basically told me at Shannen's that you never wanted to talk to me again. And then . . . when I tried to, like, explain it to you . . . you told me you didn't give a shit about me," he rambled. "God! Why am I even here?"

"You never tried to explain anything!" I shouted back. "You just wanted to act like none of it ever happened."

This look crossed his face. Like, yes, that's what I wanted. Like, what would be so bad about that? He didn't get it. He was never going to get it.

"I don't get you," he said.

"Fine. Then maybe you should just go."

"Yeah. Maybe I should."

Neither one of us moved. He looked past me again and his eyes clouded over.

"I . . . I thought . . ."

My heart welled pathetically inside my chest. It was still waiting. Waiting for him to say the right thing. The one thing that would make it all better. But at that point, I had a feeling there was nothing he could say that would do that. Then his mouth snapped shut.

"You should come with us," he said. "Your mother's worried about you."

The exact wrong thing.

I snorted a laugh. "Oh, really? Is my dad worried too? Are my parents your best friends now? Why don't you get them both on conference call and maybe the three of you can figure out where I'm supposed to be for the rest of the summer at all times. When you've got a plan, gimme a call. I'll be right here."

Then I turned my back on him, stomped up the steps, and grabbed Cooper's hand. Annie stood in the doorway and I nearly leveled her as I barreled by. I slammed the door so hard, a shower of paint shards fluttered to the floor of the living room.

"Wow," Annie said.

I was shaking from head to toe as I breathed in. "That's one word for it."

"You sure you're okay to drive?" Cooper asked.

He assumed I'd been drinking, like everyone else around here, but I hadn't. At least not since that first cup of punch last night. Though maybe I'd been acting a little buzzed. My body had been on high alert ever since Jake and his entourage had sped off into the night. It was even tenser now that it was time to say good night to Cooper. We hadn't kissed again since the porch, but whenever he was near me he seemed to find excuses to touch me-a hand on the small of my back to steer me out of the way of staggering partyers, a brush of my arm as he reached behind me for a cup. Kissing him had been . . . odd. I'd never kissed anyone I barely knew before. I'd been so self-conscious from the moment our lips touched-trying to figure out where my hands, my knees, and my tongue should go-that I hadn't really registered how it felt. But I was willing to try again.

"I'm fine," I told him.

"Best. Party. Ever." Annie said, hooking her arm around my neck from behind. She rested her chin on my shoulder, which was hard for her to do considering she was a foot shorter than me. She kind of got on her toes, tilted her head back, and bent me forward to do it.

"She, however, is not," I laughed.

"Whoo hoo!" Annie shouted, throwing her arms up and releasing her joy toward the bay. We were standing just outside the side door of the small house, on what was once probably a pretty patio, but was now a kind of sunken, overgrown rock garden. All over the yard, the party stragglers hung on by a thread, trying to extend the night into dawn. A couple of guys played beer pong on a dilapidated Ping-Pong tabletop balanced atop a precarious pile of laundry baskets, fish crates, and beer cases. A girl in a cowboy hat leaned back on an inflatable chair, braiding the hair of the chick sprawled across her lap. Closer to the makeshift bar, half a dozen bikini top/miniskirt-wearing chicas danced and occasionally cheered, while a pair of dudes too drunk to rouse themselves looked on and nodded appreciatively.

"Have I mentioned I like her?" Cooper asked, pointing.

I laughed. "She's a keeper. Don't worry. I'm gonna drive her car back."

"Okay." He didn't look worried. "So . . ." He took a step toward me. His hand ran up and down my bare arm. Goose bump city. "I'll see you later?"

"Yeah. Definitely."

He leaned down to kiss me, closed-mouthed but lingering; his soft lips offered the promise of more. Then he stepped back again.

"Bye," he said.

"Bye."

He dropped his head forward as he loped back toward the house over the uneven paving stones of the patio. I bit my bottom lip, but felt like my grin would break off my face.

That was not odd.

"So, I guess we're over Jake," Annie said, standing stiller than she had in hours.

I lifted my shoulders, even as a twist of guilt took me by surprise. "I tried to tell you."

"But you have to admit, it was pretty romantic," Annie said. "Him running up the steps, slamming his hand into the wall . . ."

Together we headed for the broken gate in the white fence that surrounded the property. Annie stepped over a pile of beer cans and kicked aside a half-inflated kiddie pool, nearly tripping herself. I put out a hand to steady her.

"Yeah." It was. It was really romantic. And also humiliating. And exciting. And confusing. And annoying. And all-consuming. All I'd thought about for the rest of the night was Jake . . . and whether or not Cooper wanted to kiss me again. How could I possibly be all-consumed by one guy and feeling tingly about another?

As we made it to the gate, a very tall, very thin guy was coming through with a pastry bag. He had a short beard and shaggy black hair. The sun was just starting to come up over the far side of the house, lighting his face and making him squint. I gave him a glance and kept walking, but something in his eyes made me stop dead in my tracks.

It was fear.

And I knew him.

I turned around.

"Charlie!?"

He ducked his chin and looked up at me, almost sheepish. "Whatsup, Al?"

Annie raised one eyebrow as he turned around.

"Charlie! Oh my God! What are you doing here?"

I didn't know what to do with my hands. Should I hug him? No. I'd never hugged him before, so why start now? But I was so surprised to see him. And he looked so very different. When he'd left Orchard Hill, he'd been clean-cut and athletic, bulky even. The guy standing in front of me now with his shorts hanging just south of his hip bones was lean, lanky, and possibly stoned. He swayed a bit on his feet and placed the pastry bag down on a weathered Adirondack chair just outside the gate, as if its weight was throwing off his equilibrium.

"Don't tell anyone, okay?" he said.

"Don't tell anyone what?" I asked.

He sighed and took a couple of steps toward me. When he looked up, he narrowed one eye. "That you saw me?"

Now Annie was intrigued. She stood right next to me and looked into his face like she was trying to place him. He shot her a kind of wary look and held his hand above his eyes to shield them from the brightening sun.

"No. Of course not," I said. "But . . . why? I mean, what are you doing here?" I asked again.

"I live here." He gestured lazily over his shoulder. "This is my place."

I narrowed my eyes. My brain, apparently, was tired after a full night of partying and drama. I'd met Howie, a slightly chubby, self-proclaimed hacker extraordinaire with Coke-bottle glasses. Which could mean only one thing. "You're Chum?"

His head bobbed. "Short for Chuck Moore."

"Shut up!" Annie had finally caught on. "You're Charlie Moore? Shannen's brother?"

He reared his head back, showing us the underside of his chin. I shot Annie a just chill look.

"I thought you were in Arizona," I said.

"She told you that, huh?" He sat down sideways on the edge of the Adirondack chair and ran his hand over his hair. "I was . . . for a while. But it just wasn't my scene. I moved back here last year and got a job with a security company. You know . . . one of those places all our parents hire to check on the houses during the year?"

I nodded. My parents used to employ one of those. I'd never forget that one December night they'd called at two a.m. to tell my dad an alarm had gone off at the shore house. He was out the door in ten minutes and called us two and a half hours later to tell us a wood plank had shattered a window in a windstorm. He'd fired the company the next day for not actually checking the house before calling him.

"So you're not in school?" I asked. The very idea of Charlie Moore-uber-popular, three-varsity-letter-athlete, everyone-wants-me-as-a-prom-date Charlie Moore-not being in school simply made no sense.

"I'm taking classes at Monmouth," he said.

"Oh. Cool."

He should've been at Yale, debating politics in some elite study group. He should have been at Michigan scoring winning goals in Big Ten soccer games. He should have been at UCLA, surfing and making all the girls swoon.

"Anyway, you can't tell Shannen you saw me, okay?" He stood up again and ran his hands down the backside of his plaid shorts. "She thinks I'm this big thing at Arizona State."

"I promise, I won't say anything," I told him. "We're not currently speaking, so it shouldn't be too difficult."