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I hesitated in the entryway.

“I’ll supervise,” Uncle Roy promised. “Only verygentleguitar playing tonight, all right, Crista? We aren’t in a rock band. If Ollie comes back to find another scratch on that thing he might lock you up and throw away the key.”

He pulled Crista into his lap and tickled her while she shrieked with laughter.

“Fine.” I smiled. “Supervised rocking out only. Deal. But if it’s scratched, you’ll have to take her place in the dungeons.”

“Duly noted.”

With that, I sprinted to my car, and practically broke the time and space barrier on the way to Will’s. Why was it that I managed to be late foreverything?

“What took you so long?” Will asked as he climbed into the passenger seat.

“Hey, count yourself lucky I’m here at all. Napier is a hell of a long way to go for a drive-in movie.”

“It’s worth it, I promise. Where are the others?”

“They all went in Matt’s car in the end. I totally missed out on the road trip.”

“Those motherfuckers.” Will grinned.

“But it kind of works out, because I have to talk to you about something,” I said. I put the car into Park and flipped around in my seat. Momdidsay to do this in private. And this was the only moment of privacy we’d be getting, so.

Will looked wary. “Oh no, what?”

There was no point dragging it out. “I got into the University of Southern California.”

“Oh,” Will said. He cleared his throat and gave me a forced-looking smile. “Wow, Ollie, amazing. That’s really great. When did you find out?”

“A couple of weeks ago.”

He drew his brows together. “What, and you just kept it a secret this whole time?”

“Well, I wanted to wait and see, first.”

“For what?”

“If I got into NC State.”

He waited, shrugging to tell me to go on.

“And I did,” I finished.

“… And which one are you going to pick?”

“What would happen if I picked USC?”

He swallowed, looking hurt. He’d gotten into the nursing program at the University of North Carolina not long ago. An amazing school, but it couldn’t have been any farther away from California. “Well, we’ll figure it out. It’s far away, but it’s not impossible. We can keep an eye outfor cheap flights and do weekend visits whenever we can. I’ll come up and stay for breaks, if you’re happy to let me crash with you—obviously, you can stay at mine whenever you want, but LA is more exciting than Chapel Hill, so—”

“So you wouldn’t want to break up?” I asked.

“What?No.” Will’s eyes went wide, and he reeled back a little. “Do you?”

“No, not at all. Plus, it wouldn’t be necessary, because I’m going to NC State.”

“What?Wait, seriously? You’re not joking?”

“Not joking. I just wanted to make sure that was still what you wanted.”