LITMIR.BIZ

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Rachel’s room. No one else was awake. Someone snored softly.

      Livvy sat up groggily, peeling the damp sleeping bag from her skin. It smelled like stale beer—and there was the overturned plastic cup. Rachel must have set it down between them before she fell asleep. Livvy patted the floor; the spill hadn’t reached Rachel, only her. And soaked through the carpet. How were they going to clean it up before Rachel’s parents got back?

      Not to mention where Collin had vomited, over by the TV. They’d gotten most of it up then, holding their breath and laughing. It had seemed funny last night. Livvy knew that he wasn’t the only one: Paige had thrown up behind the fraternity before they’d walked home from the party.

      “Are you up?” It was Paige, whispering from her other side. They’d lined up on the floor, the three of them, just like they used to do in middle school when they fell asleep watching movies during sleepovers. “Let’s go upstairs.”

      “Rachel spilled beer on my sleeping bag.”

      “Eww. Leave it. Come on.”

      They tiptoed upstairs to Rachel’s bedroom, sneaking through the house as if Mr. and Mrs. Crane were sleeping upstairs. But they weren’t even home; they had taken Rachel’s sister to some out-of-town tournament, leaving Rachel home by herself. She was supposed to be on the school ski trip—they all were. Instead they’d walked the half mile to the edge of campus, to Collin’s brother’s fraternity, where the party was still in full swing hours later when they left.

      Paige flopped on Rachel’s bed. “Did you get it on you?”

      “Just on my shirt.” Livvy pulled the shirt over her head. She got clean clothes out of the overnight bag she’d stowed in Rachel’s room last night. Her pajamas, yellow flannel with snowflakes, were still folded neatly at the bottom of the bag. She felt guilty as she pulled on her clothes; she could smell the fabric softener her mom used.

      Paige yawned. “Did you end up talking to Sean?”

      Livvy didn’t look at Paige. Even hearing his name, even that hurt. “A little,” she said, like she didn’t care. “They weren’t there long.”

      “You looked so good last night. It must have killed him. Oh, my God, especially when that guy...remember?”

      Paige laughed, still riding the giddy thrill of their lie. She’d told everyone they were freshman from Ann Arbor, visiting for the weekend. No one questioned it, not for a second. People flowed in and out of the fraternity, tracking snow in on their shoes, leaving the door open, standing around the keg on the back porch like it was summer. No one seemed cold. Rachel was gorgeous and Paige was fearless and Collin made them laugh, and Livvy kept to the center of them all, where no one seemed to expect her to talk. Just to dance, as the night wore on and she drank more and Paige convinced her to get up on the coffee table, and she’d shut her eyes and felt the music go through her and then when she opened them, there was Sean, standing in the doorway watching her with an expression she couldn’t read.

      “Stay here. I’m going to go get us a couple Red Bulls,” Paige said, bounding off the bed.

      “Okay.” Livvy crawled under the covers. Maybe she and Paige could sleep here a little longer. She wasn’t supposed to be home until after lunch. With any luck, when she got home she would go straight to her room and her parents would leave her alone for once. At dinner if they asked her about the skiing she’d just lie—no big deal.

      Except the thing with her mom’s dad. Livvy squeezed her eyes shut and burrowed down deeper in Rachel’s bed. It was so weird, not to even know she had a grandfather, that he had been alive all this time. Then all of a sudden he was dead, and Mom was going up there with Aunt Tanya to get him cremated or something.

      At least her mom would be distracted and maybe she wouldn’t ask her a million questions about the ski trip. But still. It was her mom’s dad. Her mom and Aunt Tanya had been really poor growing up and their mother died when they were in high school and they had to go live with relatives, and her mom never talked about it except to constantly say how grateful they should all be for their blessings. So her dad must have been a real dick, not even taking care of them when their mom died, but still, not to ever even mention him?

      Paige came back with the drinks. She slid in next to Livvy, and they popped the tops and drank. “So, what did you say to Sean?”

      Livvy shrugged. “I told him I heard Allie has herpes. Then he told me I didn’t know what I was missing, and I told him to go fuck himself.”

      “You didn’t!” Paige cracked up. “You can do so much better, anyway. Did you give that guy your number last night?”

      “Are you kidding? My parents would kill me.”

      “So? They don’t know about last night, right? You got away with it once, you can do it again. We just have to be careful.”

      But as Paige chatted on about the night before, Livvy could only think of the way Sean had looked at her over his shoulder as he left. She knew her parents hated him, and even her friends thought he was a loser since he got suspended again, but none of them knew what it was like when he looked at you as though you were the answer to every question he ever had.

      Last fall, for a few months, Sean had made her his world. And even if Livvy pretended she hated him now, even if he was with that skank Allie, whose cousins supposedly were in a gang, even if he never thought about her anymore, she knew that being with him had changed her and she would never be the same.

      She hadn’t told Paige the truth about what really happened. Sean and Allie came up to the keg together, holding hands, not seeing Livvy standing there until they already got their drinks. Sean looked like someone slapped him, and Allie said something, and Livvy tried to get past them but Allie blocked her way.

      “I heard you have herpes,” she muttered so only Livvy could hear.

      And Livvy couldn’t think of anything to say back, because she was drunk and about to cry, and so she shoved Allie hard and the full cup of beer went all down her front, splashing up into her face and soaking her hair. As Sean dragged Allie off, she was yelling that Livvy would be sorry.

      Livvy was already sorry. But not about Allie.

      Chapter Three

      When they got back to Tanya’s apartment, Jen parked and turned off the car. “Let me help you take your stuff up.”

      Tanya had fallen asleep on the drive, and there was a crease on her face from where it was pressed against the hood of her coat. “What stuff?” she said irritably. “All’s I’ve got is just the one bag. Plus I need to pick up Jake from next door.”

      She already had her hand on the door handle, and Jen didn’t know how to tell her that she wasn’t ready to leave her, that she’d replayed that desperate little apartment over in her head the whole way back and her stomach felt like it had a giant hole in it. That there were things somebody needed to say and she didn’t know what they were or how to say them.

      “Have lunch next week?” she asked.

      Tanya was out of the car, and she ducked back down to peer in. “We never have lunch. There’s nothing around the office except that Arby’s.”

      She looked both perplexed and irritated. It was true that they never met for lunch—Jen wasn’t sure she could even find the building where Tanya worked.

      “Or just call me,” she settled for.

      Tanya got her bag and shut the door. Jen watched her walk to the stairs of her building, but drove away before Tanya reached the landing.

      * * *

      Jen managed to compose herself before she picked up Teddy from the Sterns’. Cricket Stern was one of her best friends, not to mention the mother of Teddy’s best friend, Mark, but even so Jen hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell her the real reason she’d gone out of town. Spa weekend with her sister, she’d claimed, a late birthday

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