“Why do you think I don’t know how that feels?” Wyatt asked.
Because she’dwatchedhim. “You seem pretty confident,” she said.
“So do you.”
She rolled her eyes. “No, I don’t.”
“You don’t get to decide how youseem,” he said. “You seem like someone who doesn’t waste time on unserious people.”
Julia didn’t want to talk about herself. “I can tell thatyou’reconfident—I just saw you with all your friends.”
“But you saw usarguing.”
“I saw you before that,” she said. “And even when you were fighting with them, you didn’t seem that worried about what they thought of you.”
He grinned. “You saw me before that? Were you watching me?”
“No.” She couldn’t help but smile. “You were ahead of me in line.”
Wyatt took another bite of Twizzler. “I don’t worry about what my friends think, but ...” He lowered his eyebrows. “I worry that none of it is real.”
She lowered her eyebrows, too. (All of Wyatt Hardy’s expressions were communicable.) “What do you mean?”
“Imean... I spent the whole summer in Michigan, and none of my friends have asked me why.”
“Nobody?”
He shook his head. “Not really. They were all too busy with their own things. We don’t really get together much over the summer. There’s still the group chat, but ...”
“Nobody said, ‘What are you doing in Michigan?’”
“No, they did.” He chewed some more. “I guess they didn’t ask any follow-up questions. And they didn’t notice I was depressed.”
“You were depressed?” She couldn’t imagine Wyatt Hardy depressed.
“I was down.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“They’re my best friends! Shouldn’t they be able to tell when I’m down?”
Julia looked at his handsome, open face and his easygoing shoulders. “I have a feeling you’re pretty good at hiding it.”
Wyatt looked out toward the cars. “Maybe I want friends who know me well enough that they see past that—who care enough to look closer.”
He held the Twizzlers package out to her again. She took one.
“It sounds like you’re testing them,” she said.
“I’m nottestingthem ... I just feel like this summerwasa test. Incidentally. And they all failed. Or—worse, they all got C’s. They all caredjustenough.”
“So maybe it’s not real,” she said.
He looked in her eyes. “Yeah. Maybe we’re not actually friends. Maybe we’re just passing time with each other in the same space.”
“In the back of Coty’s truck.”
“Yes.” Wyatt sounded relieved. “Exactly.”
