I fell asleep eventually, and woke up early the next morning to the terrifying sight of Grandma’s face near mine. “There’s someone moving around in Jacob’s room!” she hissed in my ear, and I sat up with my heart pounding before I remembered that I knew who was in there.
I explained the bare minimum—that Aaron had come over and we’d talked until it had gotten so late that he’d just stayed over.
“I don’t know if your mother would approve of boys sleeping over on school nights,” Grandma said.
“Which part is the problem?” I asked. “The boy part or the school-night part?”
“You tell me,” she said with a broad wink.
“Aaron and I are just friends. Really.” There were few things I could say with as much sincerity and certainty.
“Well, at least you put him in a different room.” She winked conspiratorially. “I don’t think I have to tell your mother about this.” Then she went downstairs to scramble some eggs before Aaron and I left for school.
I never ate much in the morning—I just wasn’t all that hungry—but for her sake I forced down a couple of forkfuls before I pleaded lack of time and raced out the door. Aaron didn’t even pretend to eat anything, just told Grandma he was sorry but he couldn’t face any food right then. He looked pretty exhausted, and I doubted he had slept much, if at all. He promised to let me know what his plans were later that day, and then we took off in our separate cars to go to our separate schools.
I ran into Ben on the way to my car at the end of the day. We were talking about whether we should cap the amount people could spend on gifts for the holiday donations, when Arianna appeared and pounced on us.
“You look so cute!” she said to me, shaking my arm in a friendly way. “I love love that outfit! You have to take me shopping—I’m such a clothing loser.”
“You always look good,” I said.
“That was so much fun the other day,” she said. “Going to your house. It’s such a great house. Ben was just saying we should wrap the donated gifts there.”
“It’s a good location for everyone,” Ben explained.
“Let’s just meet here at school,” I said. “Keep it easy.”
“But then we can’t do it on a weekend,” Arianna said. “And weekdays are so busy. Oh, there’s Lulu! She still has my bio notes—be right back.” She darted off across the parking lot.
I turned to Ben and lowered my voice. “Look, I don’t want to sound mean or anything, but Arianna kind of snooped around my house, taking photos and looking at stuff, and I’d rather she didn’t come over again. It’s fine for just the two of us to meet there, but not if she’s coming. Okay?”
Ben’s jaw tightened. He said icily, “Yeah, okay, whatever. We can just do everything at school from now on.” He took a step away and turned his back on me.
Ugh. I was hoping he would agree that Arianna had been pushy and inappropriate, but I guess he felt some kind of loyalty to her since he’d brought her onto the committee in the first place. Now I wished I hadn’t said anything. I tried to backpedal. “It’s not a big deal or anything.” I forced a smile even though he wasn’t even looking at me. “I mean, maybe she just got lost in the house.” Yeah, so lost she confused upstairs and downstairs. Happens all the time. “But actually it probably is easiest to just meet at school anyway.”
“Whatever.”
Arianna pranced back to us. “They’re in her locker. She’s going to get them. So . . . what did I miss?”
“Nothing.” Ben bit off the word like he was going to chew it for a while. “Good-bye, Ellie.”
I scurried to my car, relieved to get away and annoyed at myself for confiding in him. I glanced back at them as I got in my car. Their heads were together and they were both looking in my direction. This was Not Good.
I felt unnerved enough to call Riley from the car and tell her the whole story. I needed someone to reassure me that I hadn’t done anything wrong. But as soon as I said, “So I said something to Ben about how she’d snooped around—” she cut me off and said, laughing, “Oh, shit, Ellie, why did you do that? You know they’re going out, right?”
I almost crashed the car. “What? Are you serious? Of course I didn’t know. Neither of them ever said. No one told me!”
“It’s been all over her Instagram recently—tons of photos of the two of them together, kissing and stuff. It’s only been official for like a week, but she’d been working on him for a while.”
“Crap,” I said. “No wonder he took her side.”
“Don’t worry. She’s desperate to be friends with you. She’ll probably let it go.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Someone who’s desperate to be friends with me won’t mind at all that I said I never wanted her in my house again.”
Riley laughed like I’d said something funny.
twenty-eight
The second I got home from school, Grandma was on top of me, asking me to tell her all about my day, pushing some pockmarked quinoa cookies on me—“no eggs, no gluten, no sugar, just a bit of agave!”—and asking me what we should do for fun. I said I needed to get some homework done before I did anything else. She told me I was a good girl and let me escape to my room, where I had every intention of keeping my word and doing homework . . . as soon as I had talked to Heather and flushed the cookies down the toilet.
“I just found out that three other kids from my school applied early to Elton,” Heather moaned the second we could see each other’s faces on our laptop screens. “And they’re all smarter than me.”
“Don’t let it worry you. It’ll be fine. Plus I have something really important to tell you.”
“Something good?”
“Not really. But it’s intense. You have to promise not to tell anyone else.”
“What is it?”
“Seriously. No one can know. This isn’t one of those Tell everyone you tell not to tell anyone else kinds of situations. This is a You will never be my friend again if you tell anyone deal.”
“I promise,” she said. “Seriously. No one hears anything from me. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m more worried about you.”
Her eyes grew big. “Why? What?”
I took a deep breath and ripped off the Band-Aid quickly. “Aaron Marquand is having an affair with his stepmother. His father found out last night.”
Her mouth dropped open. She snapped it shut. “Are you serious? Oh my God!”
“Crazy, right? I had no idea. I mean, obviously or I would have told you.”
“Wow,” she said. “You hear about these things but you don’t think they happen in real life.”
“I guess they do.” I studied her face, relieved to see that she looked more bemused than upset. “So you’re okay? I was nervous about telling you.”
“Why? Am I that big a prude?”
“No. I just meant . . . you know. Because you liked him and I kind of encouraged you. I swear I had no idea about this.”
She blinked. “What are you talking about? When did I ever say I liked Aaron? He’s cute and nice and all but I’ve never thought about him all that much. He’s a little manic for me.”
“You don’t have to feel embarrassed about it. You had no way of knowing.”
“I’m not embarrassed,” she said, almost irritably. “I just never said I liked him.”
“Yes, you did! In my kitchen! We were talking about Aaron like a week ago and you asked me whether I liked him and when I said I didn’t, you said you did but you were worried he was too sophisticated for you. Remember? And I said—” I stopped. “Why are you laughing?”
“Because you totally misunderstood me!” She was almost helpless with giggles. “That’s so funny. We had that whole conversation and we were talking about completely different people. I meant George. Did you seriously think I meant Aaron?”