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“It’s going wonderfully. Lacey apologized for getting in over her head, and I graciously explained that it could happen to anyone.” Sarah wrapped her arm around me and announced, “The air is clear.”

I wasn’t getting that from the look on Lacey’s face, or the possessive way Sarah was clinging to me to imply me backing up her side of things right now, so I said the only safe thing I could think of: “Great!”

“Now, about you and Danny,” Sarah began, and Lacey’s eyes narrowed. “I just wish if you needed love life advice that you would ask me, first.”

“We’re not a thing,” Lacey said, sudden as a snakebite, allowing no further conversation.

Sarah stepped back from me and I could tell she knew she was in the wrong somehow. It was a deeply uncomfortable place for her to be—she didn’t have as much practice as Lacey and I had at it. “It’s just—I just—I miss this. I miss us,” she said, looking between us for confirmation that we missed her, too.

“I do too,” I said. Because back when it was the three of us against the world, it’d seemed like we’d had better odds, honestly.

Lacey looked up at me and half-shrugged. “Me three,” she said flatly.

“Well—good!” Sarah clapped her hands in delight. “Then we need to plan a time to hang out. This weekend? But not Friday—or, Saturday—uh—Sunday?”

“Sure,” Lacey said, with the same monotone.

“See you then,” I said, excited enough for the both of us so that Sarah could go.

“We’ll figure something out. I can’t wait!” She beamed at the both of us, then departed fabulously stage right.Exeunt.

I grit my teeth. “What’d I miss?”

“She started off by telling me I should ‘Practice drinking at home, like everybody else does.’” Lacey mimicked, with air-quotes. “‘Till you know where your limits are.’”

“Oh God. That’s terrible advice.”

“I know.” Lacey slumped back against the wall behind her.

“But,” I said, inhaling to dive in. “She means well. She’s just trying to be your friend still.”

“I know that, too. It’s just—all of this.” Lacey held both hands up, indicating the current wreckage of her life.

“Yeah. It’s hard.” Maybe even insurmountable, if nothing gave soon.

I watched her stare off into middle distance as I sat down. “Like—why would he do something like that?” she asked, mostly to herself.

Stuff her locker with those pictures before school this morning? We both knew the answer. It was the same reason he’d raped her.

Because he could.

“You just—” I said and saw her eyes widen alarmingly. Without finishing my sentence I turned around—and saw Bruce, the fourth or fifth teammate down on the team’s totem pole, depending on who you asked, holding imaginary hips and miming sex with them. While looking directly at Lacey.

“Come here. Now,” I demanded, and pulled her off the bench to sit beside me. Hooray, we were safer, now that we were both staring at the wall.

“What am I going to do? When will it stop?”

“Prom. For sure.” Every other prom someone had done something utterly dumb—one year someone’s hair caught on fire smoking joints in the bathroom, another year there was a drunken brawl on the dance floor—and every year there were multiple DUIs. Was it wrong of me that I was hoping that this year there’d be a fatality? Nothing would distract the school andget the gossip train to move along like a sudden death. We’d be wallowing in tears and flowers for weeks. I’d even be willing to nominate the victims.

“Is it going to keep being like this until then, though? Every day?”

“I don’t know.”

She picked the crust off of her hamburger bun. “I just keep beating myself up. I shouldn’t have gone. I shouldn’t have gotten drunk. I shouldn’t have been alone with him.”

“Andheshouldn’t have done what he did.”

“I know, I know. It's just—Jessie, my whole life I’ve been dancing the dance, you know? Trying to get everything right. And then this one little time I missed a step, and now everything’s fucked.”