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I kept walking. The library door was heavy, and my still-sore legs didn’t help as I struggled for a moment to open it.

“I don’t think it’s working,” one of the guys said.

“Lift weights tonight!” Theo called. “It will help flush out the lactic acid.”

I shoved my way out into the hall in a mix of anger and embarrassment.

Once I found my friends, the first thing I said was “He’s goingto tell everyone, and Jensen will find out and ruin our revenge plans.”

Half a sandwich was sitting in front of Deja, and I picked it up and took a bite, then sat down next to her.

“Who is going to do what now?” Maxwell said.

I summarized what happened in the library.

“And how is that going to ruin everything?” Lee asked.

“Don’t you think people are going to wonder why he’s telling me to work out? Realize he’s probably training me to kick?”

“Probably,” Deja agreed. “He’s an idiot.”

“Nobody will think twice about it. He’s an athlete,” Max said. “He was just trying to be funny.”

“Well, it wasn’t funny,” I groaned, burying my head in my hands.

“You also have trust issues,” Max observed, and I groaned again.

Deja said, “He doesn’t deserve your trust.”

Lee put his hand on my arm. “Your real trust issues are because you got screwed over not that long ago by someone you trusted with your whole heart. You’re skeptical of anyone who’s coming in the wake of that. It’s totally understandable.”

“Yes! I have a right to be screwed up,” I said, and smiled gratefully his way.

“What secret project were you doing in the library anyway?” Deja asked.

“I was looking for a picture of Cheryl Millcreek that I can feed into the internet. The lady who borrowed my grandma’s surfboard. If I find her, maybe she’ll remember what happened to it.” I didn’tknow why it was suddenly so important for me to find this surfboard. Maybe because it was a missing piece of my grandma’s past that might bring her some joy. And making her happy was very important to me. It was the one spot of sunshine in my life right now. I needed that.

Chapter

sixteen

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” THEvoice of my grandma pulled my head away from my laptop in surprise.

“Not much,” I answered, closing my computer.

I couldn’t tell her what I was really doing—a deep internet search for Cheryl. At least not until I had some solid leads. I didn’t want to get her hopes up. And so far, my leads were anything but solid. I’d taken the picture of Cheryl I’d found in the yearbook the day before and reverse image searched it. It brought me to the Facebook page of a woman around my mom’s age named Alice who had labeled the picture asmom in high school.Her last name was not Millcreek; it was Slater. I sent a DM that I knew would go to her “other” box and probably never get seen, telling her I thought her mom knew my grandma and that I’d love to ask her a few questions. I’d pressed enter, then stared at the chat screen like she was going to answer me back immediately.

So yes, Grandma scared me with her question. “What areyoudoing?” I asked.

“I am trying to decide what to wear for my date with your grandpa tomorrow.”

Unless she was referring to his ghost, which I was 99percent sure she wasn’t, I knew grandma was having a bad memory day. Bad memory days were hard because if we tried to correct her, she would get confused and upset. Sometimes even angry. Usually, it was best to just go along with her.

“I’ll help you find something in a minute. Can we have a chat first?” Because if her mind was in the past, maybe it was a good time to get her words out, to talk about it. I held out the headphones for her.

She sat down next to me. “You’ll have to take me to my house before the date so he knows where to pick me up.”

Even if I did take her to her house, which I couldn’t because other people lived there, she wouldn’t recognize it. After the fire, it had to be torn down and rebuilt. It was a completely different house.