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“—and you skipped band on Monday. Now tell me, when has that ever happened?”

“Heath, I’m under a lot of pressure right now.”

Which is true. But he knows me, knows that I love exactly that. So the excuse won’t fly far. “And . . . ,” I add, before he can mount an argument, “I’ve been thinking maybe we could use some time apart.”

His face falls like the puppy that gets left behind at the pound.

It’s an old trick I’ve used on myself a few times. If I can’t decide between two things, I imagine depriving myself of one—and let my stomach tell me what the answer is. Heath has been irritated with me, yeah. But he’d rather be angry at his girlfriend than not have one. Now he’s the one who’s gone pale, the one who looks like he’s about to go to the floor, right down there where his belly just bottomed out. I twirl a bit of carrot in the bottom of my salad bowl, letting him process the fact that it’s more interesting than his emotional distress right now.

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” he says, his voice dropped yet another octave in an attempt to secure a cone of silence around what he’s realizing might be a breakup conversation.

“No,” I agree, with a nonchalant shrug, “it doesn’t have to be like anything. Do you want to be with me or not? Make a list, pros and cons, whatever you feel is appropriate. Then get back to me.”

I get up to toss my trash as the bell rings, feeling lighter than I have in years in comparison to the black hole opening up behind me. What used to be—and maybe still is—someone I’m supposed to care about.

“Dude, that was totally badass,” Brooke says from the backseat of my car.

“I know,” I say, still flying a little from the high of quasi-dumping Heath. The plodding nature of our relationship, like a calendar planner that goes five years into the future, had always felt like safety. With safety comes comfort, but also mind-numbing consistency. I feel the newness of my life right now, down to a tingling in my fingertips as I drive. My sister said it wouldn’t be easy, but that had been.

“Fun, too,” I say aloud.

“That’s a bit much,” Lilly says, glancing up from her phone as she sits in the passenger seat. “You don’t have to be mean about it.”

“I’m not trying to be mean,” I shoot back.

“Yeah, it comes natural,” Brooke agrees.

“Not quite what I was saying.” I give her a dark look in the rearview mirror as I pull in to Lilly’s driveway. “Make it quick,” I tell her as she hops out to grab her spats. “Even I won’t be able to talk Hunter out of busting our butts if we miss pregame.”

Lilly doesn’t have to pretend to shiver. Punishment in band means lining the practice field before early rehearsal, a cruel job involving flashlights and heavy layers in the dark morning hours of the late-autumn Midwest.

“So?” Brooke prompts me once Lilly disappears inside her house.

“So what?”

“Don’t give me the doe eyes, Stone. You suddenly ditch the one guy you’ve let up your shirt and don’t think I’m going to ask you about it? Spill, and don’t try to tell me you’re just on the rag, because you and I have been synced since sixth grade and I’m sporting whities tonight.”

“TMI.”

I turn in my seat, but Brooke just stares back at me. She once stared down a tuba player for a straight hour on a long bus ride, so I might have to concede this one.

“Fine,” I give. “What do you want to know?”

“What’s the deal with you and Harver?”

“No deal,” I half lie. As far as I know there is nothing going on between Isaac and me. That’s all my sister.

“I call bullshit. I’m not saying you guys have, like, long philosophical conversations about nature versus nurture. You probably don’t even talk, but there might as well be a highway of fire drawn between the two of you for all the hot looks that go back and forth.”

“Nice. So you think Isaac and I are friends with benefits?”

“Friends? Don’t know. Benefits . . . well, I’m just going to say that your complexion has never been better. Like, you know, blood flow has increased to certain parts of the body. Maybe you grew a heart.”

“Maybe I did,” I snipe back, alarmed at how close she is to the truth.

“Whatever. I was just curious.”

“Curious about what?” I drop my voice as I see Lilly shut the front door behind her, waving her spats triumphantly.