Brielle grabs my arm again, pulling me away.

"Whatever, Sara, like she's even a problem," she says. "Dylan doesn't want any of that."

And then Coach Jenks walks in and blows her whistle, and everyone scrambles to finish getting dressed for badminton. Except Emma, of course. She sneaks out with her bag and no one sees her for the rest of the day.

And I finally get some peace. If you don't count the part where everyone else goes into the gym and I go into the last locker room bathroom stall and burst out crying for five solid minutes. My whole body shakes and snot runs down my face and even in the middle of it I know I'm going to have a hell of a time redoing my makeup, but when it's over I do-I put myself back together and go to the gym.

But except for that part, the rest of the day is fine.

August.

"AND THIS OTHER guy? Henry? Not Henry Cable but Henry Lehman?"

"Um . . . yeah?"

"He got a home run! Off of Owen!"

"Wait, which one is Owen?"

"Owen Beehner! My best friend!"

I hold up my hands defensively. I've been trying to follow Alex's baseball camp stories, but sheesh, the kid must've met fifty new friends, and his stories are both endless and endlessly complicated. His eleventh birthday is in two weeks and when he's not describing some ridiculously intricate game they played, he's trying to convince my mom that all fifty boys should be invited to the party she's throwing him at the batting cages.

In fact, just as I'm apologizing for forgetting best-friend Owen, Alex whips his head around and starts to ask about the party again. "Owen lives in Lincoln, Mom! That's only an hour away!"

"I know, I know," she says. I don't think she's heard a word he's said all morning-it's dangerously close to eight, so I know she's just desperate to get to work. I've poured the cereal for Alex and Tommy, who isn't nearly as chatty. In fact, I've had a hard time even meeting his eye. I guess regular camp wasn't as awesome as baseball camp. Canoeing and archery clearly don't match the magic that is Owen Beehner's curveball.

"So can we invite him? Can we? Can we?"

Mom doesn't even answer him this time. She looks at me and asks wearily, "You have them until Maggie gets here, right?"

I nod. Maggie's the babysitter, the one who watches the boys when they're not in camp. It should be me; I've been on duty for most of the other summers since the divorce. But this time I have school. And Natalie. And Teresa. Every time Mom says Maggie's name she looks kind of angry, and I know she's thinking that it's just another thing we can't afford.

I think Mom believes that I didn't do anything wrong in this whole Emma thing. Or not wrong enough for criminal prosecution, anyway. But costing us money we don't have, messing up my college admissions, not being around for the boys? Wrong enough.

Yet another reason I just can't feel that bad about Emma. If she'd just sucked it up-or, whatever, gotten help, taken her meds, done anything else besides what she did-everything would be normal now. And anyway, if what we all did was so horrible, why didn't we get sued when Emma was still alive?

Tommy picks up his bowl and drops it into the kitchen sink with a clatter, then runs back upstairs to his room without a word. Alex and I raise our eyebrows at each other, but Mom's already gone, so she misses the whole thing. I hear the garage door rolling up and, with a sigh, I grab my own bowl, washing it along with my brother's. Alex starts talking about another baseball game, a professional one, I think. I try to pretend I'm listening while I gather up my summer school books and stuff them into my bag.

The day turns out to be one of those pointless-at-every-turn ones. Carmichael hasn't shown up for classes, which isn't a surprise (though I'm a little surprised that I seem to care whether or not he's here). I get to Natalie's office for our appointment at three but she's not there, some emergency or something, her assistant won't tell me anything more than that the appointment's cancelled and they're sorry they didn't call me. So I have forty-five minutes to kill before my appointment with Therapist Teresa. I could go to Starbucks and spend my last five dollars on some coffee. Or I could do something really stupid.

I pick stupid.

The aisles at the Albertsons supermarket are so cold that goose pimples spring up on my arms the second I walk through the door. At the entrance there are mountains of flower displays. There aren't any holidays coming up, so all the balloons are variations on either HAPPY BIRTHDAY or CONGRATULATIONS. Past that is the produce, regular and organic. Or if you turn left, like I'm doing now, you get to the cash registers.

I just make eye contact with him for a second-he looks up as I'm walking by the express register at the end, where he's checking out an old woman with what look like lemons. I don't glance over long enough to see more than a flash of yellow and that he's seen me, he's looking back at me. There's a nod.

I keep walking, all the way down to register fifteen, the ATMs, and the start of the bakery section. I turn again, right this time, down the coldest aisle of all, the one with the ice cream and frozen pizza. At the fish I turn left. There's a little hallway that leads to a door. The EMERGENCY ONLY sign is just a sign-there's no alarm. I push through and find myself at the back corner of the building, near some Dumpsters but not so close that you can smell them. A few milk crates sit around, cigarette butts fanned out on the ground beneath them. I'm alone. I find a spot along the concrete-brick wall and lean back and wait.

Maybe three minutes later, not even long enough for the chill of the store to fade from my arms, Dylan is there, pushing the door open and striding over to me. We don't say anything. I know he's taken his ten-minute break, I know we aren't going to talk. He presses me closer to the wall, so close I can feel the clip on his name tag digging into my chest a little, like a pinch, and we kiss, and the frozen-food-aisle chill melts from my limbs.

It hangs on in my heart, though. I kiss and kiss him, and he holds me, and it feels good. But it doesn't sink in.

"Okay. We have a solid argument that the antidepressants Miss Putnam was taking have been linked to other suicides. We have the doctor who can testify to that. But what's still killing us is the stalking charge. We just don't have a good plan for that."

"Yeah, I'm not sure about the online stuff, I still have more research to do there. But for the rest-Miss Putnam lived down the street from Mr. Chang, right? So an argument could be made-"

"I thought of that. But Miss Wharton here and Mr. Chang weren't really that close. Isn't that right?"

Natalie and the hot law student intern turn to me, eyebrows raised. I shrug in answer to Natalie's question. No, "Mr. Chang" and I weren't that close. I always thought Tyler Chang was kind of a tool, even before Emma's parents filed charges against him, even before we found out what happened that last weekend. He was always partying with Emma like it was no big deal, because he could; she was convenient, too-they were three houses away from each other. He'd hang out with her and post it all online like it was something to be proud of, even while he made fun of her behind her back with the rest of us.

Of course, now things are really bad for Tyler. He's actually in the most trouble of all of us. But that is completely not my problem.

"We've established that Sara's boyfriend was very close to Mr. Chang," Natalie's saying now, "which I think gives us plenty of access to that neighborhood for other reasons. If Miss Putnam saw Miss Wharton or Miss Greggs in either the white Honda or the silver . . ." Natalie shuffles through some papers, searching for the word.

"Mercedes," I supply. Natalie looks up and flashes me the briefest of smiles, then turns back to Hot Intern. Who has a real name, too. David.

"Mercedes," Natalie repeats. "If the girls were spotted, they certainly had cause to be on that block. And it's not a big city, after all. Several Elmwood students live in that area."

"But it was Emma's mom who saw us," I can't help but point out. "I mean, that time we-you're talking about the Valentine's Day thing, right?"

Natalie and David look back at me, surprised that I'm actually being helpful. Or maybe not helpful, I don't know-I'm not even sure why I'm here today, since so far they've just been talking to each other. I came in half an hour ago and all I've done is drink another Diet Dr Pepper and try to stay out of the way of the piles and piles and piles of papers everywhere. Natalie's office is huge, with a couch and chairs and a table and everything, but there's not even a place to sit anymore-I'm leaning against the wall, trying to not knock over the plant next to me or the diploma hanging behind my head.

"Yes, that's what we're talking about," she says, crossing to the other side of the table to find another stack of papers. She riffles through them before pulling one out, squinting at it, and saying, "February tenth?"

I shrug again, but then I nod, too. I know just what they mean, and they know I know. And I'm bored, and I just don't see the point of standing here like an idiot anymore. Maybe if I just talk to them, they'll finally tell me what I'm supposed to do about all this.

I've done one other thing since getting to Natalie's office-I've found out that we're definitely going to trial. Natalie said she'd be discussing "our options" with my mom, who of course isn't here, but that for now they're expecting a trial date to be set in the next few days.

The guys, including Dylan, have all deferred their real colleges for a year; Dylan and Tyler are going to community college in the meantime, I heard. All of our lives are on hold. Or I don't know, I guess all of our lives might be over. Mine feels like it already is-just when I think it's over, it's more over. My mom is sleepwalking through all of this and my brothers are home with the babysitter and my best friend isn't allowed to call me and my boyfriend isn't my boyfriend. I spend my days with delinquents and lawyers, and I'm so. Freaking. Tired. Everyone thinks I'm a terrible person, and I guess they're right. I mean, everyone spends every day talking, in detail, about what an awful person I was, and it's too late to change anything, or anyone's mind. Or anyone's life.

And any way you spin it, February tenth wasn't my best day. Or February fourteenth, or basically any other day that week. Month. Year.

Plus all that stuff is already on the record, thanks to Emma's mom. I mean, thanks to both of Emma's parents, I have a record.

Natalie's squinting at the paper again. She has reading glasses on top of her head, but I guess she's forgotten about them. Before I can make another helpful observation, she says, "You're right, Mrs. Putnam did see you. She said you and Miss Greggs placed a large heart-shaped sign in the Putnams' front yard. And this was . . ." More page flipping. ". . .a school tradition?"

"Yeah," I say. "For the Valentine's dance. I mean, usually a couple weeks before the dance. The guys were supposed to ask the girls by doing something big, you know, like wearing a tux to school or putting a sign up on the Douglas Street overpass or whatever. And then sometimes they'd make another sign or something that week."

"But this sign wasn't from a boy, it was from you and Miss Greggs?" Natalie turns her squinty stare toward me.

"Allegedly," I say.

David laughs suddenly, like a bark, and Natalie cracks another very quick smile, but she's looking back at her papers. "Allegedly . . . ," she murmurs, flipping another page in her hands. "And the sign did not say something nice."

"No," I admit. Finally, David grabs a box from the chair next to his and moves it to the floor, pointing at the seat. I take it, sinking down a little bit. "We just . . . It was Brielle's idea, you know. Seriously, Emma was hooking up with everyone. We just wanted her to stay away from Dylan. It was a joke."

Natalie looks up again, and this time she really does seem surprised.

"I mean. Not, like, funny, just . . ." I trail off. Maybe I should've kept my mouth shut.

"Okay," Natalie says, and she finally sits down at the table too, though she has to shove another box aside to be able to see me and David. "But this sign was still pretty bad, and it was on her property-not at school. We're lucky that only Mrs. Putnam can testify to it, and that Emma apparently destroyed it. The stuff online and at school will be harder to deny, since we have more witnesses to that. And you were reprimanded."

"Sort of," I mutter.

"And there was another incident at Miss Putnam's home-" David starts saying.

Natalie holds up a hand, stopping him. "Let's just deal with Valentine's Day first."

When Natalie found out about the Valentine's Day stuff, back at our first meeting in May, I thought she was going to turn and walk out of the room, not take my case at all. She's really composed most of the time, and all these weeks later I know how unusual that reaction was, when we were just going over the major points of the lawsuits Emma's family filed against me, Brielle, Tyler, Jacob, and Dylan. Natalie's face had gone several shades paler when we got to the number of roses Brielle and I had sent to Emma.

"Fifty?" she'd said, like she was sure she hadn't heard me right.

Next to me, my mom had gone really quiet and still. Before that part she'd been sitting beside me on the couch in our living room, her hand on my back, very alert. But as I looked at my new lawyer's dropped jaw I realized my mom wasn't touching me anymore. She had moved a little farther down on the couch. Putting about a million miles of cushions between us.

"It was just . . ." At the time I'd tried to explain. It was a lot, okay? But it's not like we beat her up in the school parking lot or something.

And now, Therapist Teresa is making me talk about it too. It's fresh in my mind, since I just got here from Natalie's office, where we'd gone through everything about Valentine's week.

Something about Teresa's room brings back that pit in my stomach I'd had during the whole thing. I tell her how I'd been sort of excited about the flowers until I'd seen Emma's locker, and then I'd gotten dizzy.

"You felt good at first?"

"Well, yeah," I say. "It was funny. It was just so many roses, you know? It looked ridiculous."

"You wanted Emma to look ridiculous?"

"She'd been making me look stupid," I point out.

"How so?"

"With Dylan." God, Teresa can be stubborn.

"Mmm," she says.

"But we didn't do the thing to her locker," I say. "They freaked out about the sign, because Mrs. Putnam allegedly saw us in their yard or whatever, and they started blaming us for everything."

Emma's mom hadn't called the cops about the sign; she'd called the school. Natalie thought that could work to our advantage, because if you saw some kids in your yard and thought they were vandalizing or stalking, why would you wait until the next day and call the school?

But of course, calling our school that week was the worst possible timing for me and Brielle. By Wednesday, you really couldn't ignore that someone was hassling Emma. The sign, the locker, the roses-Emma was only too happy to help the principal decide who was responsible for her shitty Valentine's Day.

Teresa gives me a look. "And you say you're definitely going to trial?"

I nod.

I shift on the couch, pulling my sweater around me.

"You must be worried," she says.

"Who, me? Nah," I say.

Teresa's serious look turns into a smile. "You can be very charming when you want to be," she says, and I think it's supposed to be a compliment. "But this must all be incredibly stressful, despite your jokes."

"Well, I guess some people just deal with stress better than others," I snap. Teresa stops smiling and I look down at my hands, my face suddenly hot. After a long pause, I hear her writing something on her notepad. It probably says Shows no remorse. Is terrible person. No one would disagree with that. Not even me.

February.

I GUESS IT'S weird, but we never get in trouble-for the Facebook thing or the locker room. No follow-up from Schoen, no phone call to our parents, nothing. I don't realize until a week later that that was Brielle's whole plan, to show Emma what happens when she tries to fight back. Emma couldn't get us in trouble for making the Facebook page, so she didn't even try after the locker room. Neither did anyone else. Coach Jenks didn't see it, and the other girls are acting like they didn't see it either. Of course, I happen to know that most of them hate Emma too. There were a lot of people friending Fat Beyotch before it was deleted.

I start making sure I meet Dylan between classes. I've had his schedule memorized all year, but now I'm not shy at all about being at each door, holding his hand as we walk to his locker. I get to my own classes later and later, but it's worth it for the jealous but defeated look Emma gives us when we walk by. And by the end of the week, I stop worrying about her so much. I have other things on my mind-the Valentine's dance, mostly, and whether Dylan is going to want to have sex again afterward. When he tells me he got a hotel room for an after-dance party and only a few other people are invited, I figure that means he does.

That's how he asks me to the dance, in fact. We're making out in his car, again, but he has to run to practice in ten minutes, so I know we can't take things very far. And then with five whole minutes to go he pulls back and says, "I got a room at the Hyatt. After the dance. Tell Brielle to bring somebody cool." He goes right back to kissing me and my mind spins out, thinking about the dress I'm planning to wear, and whether I can wear it to an after-party, or if I now have to worry about another outfit, and sexy underwear too, and what my mom's gonna say, and . . . and, you know, what the hell this all means.

Maybe it's stupid, but I hadn't really thought past the part where I slept with him the first time. Having sex almost seems scarier now, like I'm definitely going to get pregnant, or he's definitely going to stop liking me if we only do it, like, once a month. There hasn't been a good time or place to hook up since Brielle's party, but it has to happen eventually, right?

I have to pick up the boys from school, but as soon as Mom gets home I go over to Brielle's. Her parents are out at some fund-raiser thing, as usual. She always calls herself Poor Little Rich Girl-she has a tank top with that bedazzled on it-and everyone knows she's bragging. Once my mom said she felt sorry for Brie, that she seemed lonely. But she never seems lonely to me. Besides, I'm almost always here. Tonight we sit at the counter in her kitchen, putting maraschino cherries in our Diet Cokes.

"How often are you actually supposed to . . . do it?" I ask, stuffing three cherries in my mouth as soon as the words are out.

Brielle pushes a cherry off its stem, into the fizz of her soda. "Don't you want to all the time?" she asks. There's a teasing ring to her voice, like she's suddenly my much older, much wiser sister. "I mean, it's D-Licious! How can you keep your hands off him?"

I roll my eyes at the new nickname, but otherwise I'm not sure how to respond to this. I use a trick I've seen my mom use on my little brothers and turn it around, saying, "Did you want to all the time with Diver?"

That's the guy she slept with last summer. We never use his real name, for some reason. It's a cool one, too-Kiefer, like the actor-but Brielle came home from swim camp just calling him Diver. He was the diving coach at camp, going to the university on a diving scholarship, apparently. So it stuck as a nickname at camp and beyond, between us.

"Oh, totally," she says, but she's kind of just staring at her soda, not really looking at me. She never really talks much about Diver. Back when it happened, while she was still at camp, she'd used some of her online minutes to email me that she'd lost her V-card to this cool older guy. And since she's been home she's mentioned it casually, sounding very nonchalant and mature about it. I wasn't even sure if they'd done it more than once. Something about the way she's concentrating on pulling another cherry out of the jar, though, keeps me from asking her to go into more detail now.

I know she hooked up with Rob a lot last fall, but I'm pretty sure they never did it, did it. Now she's not really dating anyone. For a second I wonder why I don't know more about my BFF's love life. I used to know everything-when a boy would so much as brush his hand across hers in class, or like when Chris Simmons kissed her at that party in ninth grade, right before he asked Tiffany Martin to go out with him. When Rob first started flirting with her I was there-last semester we all took the Visual Art elective together-but now- "Dude, don't stress about it," she says. She pushes off her stool, twisting the cap onto the maraschino jar and putting it back in the fridge. I wasn't done with them, but Brielle's mom has weird rules about food, so I guess we ate all the ones we were allowed to already. "Dylan's a nice guy, he's into you. You're not gonna get pregnant."

"I'm not gonna have an AIDS baby?" I ask. It's this dumb joke we have, that the worst possible thing will happen to us if we're not careful. Usually the worst thing we can imagine is having a baby with some terrible disease.

"Oh, no, you totally will," she says, turning around and leaning on the fridge door. "But it'll be cured, and Dylan will play for the NFL, and he'll have to marry you forever because you had his magically cured AIDS baby."

"That sounds nice," I say, even though of course it sounds ridiculous.

"As long as you take me with you to all those NFL parties so I can marry Tom Brady, I promise to help with your sick baby," she says.