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Kappy waves a bottle of vodka in front of me. “I’m designated driver tonight so I can hold your hair back while you puke.”

I shake my head, filling a cup with Sprite instead. She takes the Sprite and pours herself some too.

With drinks in hand, we walk out to the pool. There are times when I hate how innocent I am, how uptight. This is one of them. I want to be one of these girls here, dancing in a half shirt with a face full of makeup, bending my spine and swaying my hips in a way that defies nature. But I’m ramrod straight and stiff, an impossibly rigid object placed among them by accident.

“You okay?” Kappy asks.

I nod, because what else can I say? There’s nothing more uncool than admitting you’re not okay and that you wish you hadn’t come.

I take a small sip of my drink as we walk around. Kappy somehow seems to know everyone and appears to be liked by most. And everyone we talk to is actually nice to me too. I guess it’s not as if I’ve tried to be friends with anyone either.

By the time we reach the end of the pool, my shoulders have settled. I still don’t fit in here, and the fact that this is nothing like the party I told my parents I was attending remains a massive problem, but it gives me hope for this year after all.

“See?” Kappy asks with triumph in her voice. “No one’s gotten in a fist fight yet.”

I laugh and she wraps an arm around my shoulders. “We’re going to be best friends,” she announces. “I’ve decided.”

And those words unwind me just a tiny bit more. I don’t need everyone in this town to like me. Just a few people, and I think I’ve found that. She moves to a group of guys, one of them the oft-mentioned Alex Torres, passing Ford on the way—no matter how much my gaze wants to wander toward him, I won’t allow it.

“Alex, Rogers, and Theodore—this is Gracie,” she says, squeezing me again. “My little Gracie. And you’d better be fucking nice to her.”

They look a little surprised, but not unpleasantly so. More like the headmaster’s daughter parties?

“The headmaster’s daughter parties?” asks Theodore with a big smile, and I laugh.

“I knew that’s what you were thinking!” I cry.

They laugh. With me, not at me. It’s a heady kind of moment, the sort where the world is made of sweet things and soft landings, and you yourself are so weightless you might just levitate into the air.

“Hey, how are you holding up?” Alex asks, leaning in. “I heard what Mac did.”

I’d almost forgotten about it. I shrug. “He did me a favor,” I say, though it still doesn’t feel like it. “I finally got rid of those glasses.”

He bumps his cups to mine and drinks.

“You’ve got awesome eyes, by the way,” he says. “They’re like the most unreal blue. If you hadn’t been wearing glasses when I first saw you, I’d have assumed you had colored contacts.”

I fight a pleased smile and take another drink.

“Leave her alone, Torres,” says Theodore. “She’s out of your league.”

“I know that,” says Alex. “I’m just trying to make inroads before she knows that.”

I want to pinch myself to see if this is all really happening. It’s just like something Ann and I would watch on the Christian Love channel—the movies where a regular nobody gets a makeover and dates a prince, or where a beautiful girl goes out with the hottest boy in school only to find out that her childhood best friend has loved her quietly all along.

For the first time in my life, it’s as if I’m living in one of those movies.

The group is talking about college again. Alex just flew to Chicago last weekend to see Northwestern and heads to Ann Arbor in a few weeks to see Michigan.

“What about you, Grace?” Theo asks, and I’m saved from an answer by a hulking presence that inserts itself between me and Kappy. The heavy arm of an absolute stranger lands around my shoulders. I stiffen, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“What’s up, Tim?” asks Alex. “You’ve had a good season so far.”

“Hell yeah!” Tim replies. He looks back in Ford’s direction. “We got Mr. Ford James as QB. Of course we’re having a good fucking season!”

I look back as well. Ford—who’s moved a lot closer to where we are—rolls his eyes.

Tim looks down at me, his arm still around my shoulders. I don’t know how to remove it without looking like a prude, but I very much wish I did.