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“Maybe, maybe not. I’ll just say we had a talk and worked things out, if they do.”

Maya swims to the side of the pool and leans her backagainst it, kicking lazily as she speaks. “Okay, great. Also, I’ll be really nice to them. Let’s brainstorm some compliments.”

“Let’s not,” I say with pep. “As much as it pains me to discourage you from planning something out… if you want us to convince everyone to go along with this like it’s normal, you have to actnormally.Well, not normally, but the version of you I’ve come to know and tolerate as of last night.”

Maya pouts. “No way. All people want is for you to be nice to them.”

“… You’ve never experienced people despising you before now, have you?”

“No, why?”

A smile touches my lips at the sincere look on her face, and I fight to stay earnest. “Just… don’t try too hard. That stuff only works if people don’t already know how awful you can be if you put your mind to it.”

Reluctantly, she acquiesces. “I have a really good feeling about this, you know? Like, we might actually pull this off together.”

“Oh, we will,” I say darkly. “Jordy doesn’t know who he’s poked.”

At lunchtime, a couple of assistants bring over our meal. It’s prison food. I mean that in the literal sense: Kim tells us when she sees the packaging that the catering company is famously contracted by prisons and boarding schools (and—apparently—by reality shows who spent most of their budget on buying plane tickets to fly contestants three feet down the road). Every night they have us fill out an order form for the next day’s meals. Today’s lunch was a choice between spaghetti in a meatless tomato sauce, and grilled chicken sandwiches. I’ve figured out quite quickly that the vegetarian options aresafer here, because the catering company seems to have a bit of a love affair with gristly meat, which is terrible news for my gag reflex. When I was younger, my mom used to cook chicken thighs and T-bone steaks and insist I finish every bite, even though I was never able to stand the texture of chunks of fat. The squishing sensation between my teeth was enough to make me dry heave, but she’d insist I was just a picky eater and I needed to learn. When she left Dad and me, it was one of the only things I was happy about. No more chicken thighs!

No more Mom, either, if you insist on focusing on the negatives, but I feel it’s good to remember the bright side.

Maya sits at the dining table across from me, Perrie at her side. Most of us got the spaghetti, but she has a grilled chicken burger on her plate. Time to commence operation “what do you mean we’re enemies?”

“Maya,” I say before she can take a bite. “Prove a theory for me. Is that thigh or breast in the sandwich?”

She lifts the top bun, studies the contents, then replaces it. “Thigh. How come?”

“I was just wondering if I should regret the spaghetti.”

“Do you regret the spaghetti, Skye?”

“Not even a little bit. I’m feeling great about my life choice now. Thank you.”

Perrie, Kim, Lauren, and Francesca are staring at us with open mouths. No one’s taken a bite of their meal yet.

I eat a forkful of pasta and stare them all down until they collectively snap out of it and start on their own meals, save for Francesca, who seems too bewildered to react.

There’s a long silence. I rack my brain for a way to fill it, but suddenly, words fail. I should have prepared examples.

“How’s the pasta?” Maya asks the group.

Francesca double-takes at her plate as though she’s startled to see it there. Lauren and Kim stare at Maya like they’re convinced she’s about to flip the table.

Perrie purses her lips. “It’s good. Maybe a little bland? But I have high standards after my dad’s sauce.”

“Oh, cool,” Maya says, before shooting me a look of panic.

I clear my throat. “So. It’s wonderful that we’re all here still, huh? I didn’t expect Jordy to do that. We got so lucky.”

Francesca tilts her head to the side and leans forward to look down the table at me. “Did we?”

“Yes, I think so,” I say. It’s time to change the tactic a little. “And now that we’re all going to be here for at least another week, I was thinking it would be great to get to know each other. All of us.”

Kim and Francesca still haven’t touched their food.

Lauren starts twirling her fork in hers. “Sure, that sounds like a good plan.”

“Awesome,” Perrie says.