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I SHIFT THE PILE OF BOOKS higher up on my hip to keep them in place as I knock on Sabrina’s door again. “Sabs! Come on! I know you’re in there!”

I don’t, actually, know that she’s in there, but I find that works on Salem pretty often, so it’s worth seeing if it’s genetic.

“Sabrina!” I’m lifting my hand to knock again when suddenly I hear someone calling my name and turn to face the voice. It’s Sabrina, making her way back from the bathroom, her face uncharacteristically scrubbed free of makeup.

“Has anyone ever told you that you are extremely loud?” she asks as she opens the door for us both.

“It’s come up a couple of times.”

“I’ll bet. What’s with the books?” she asks as she peers into the mirror on the inside of her door, examining her eyes closely to make sure she’s cleaned off every last bit of liner.

“ Well. ” I drop onto the floor and spread out the pile. “I thought about what you said, how you wanted to be in a GSA but there wasn’t enough interest, so I thought we could start our own! I found this website that recommends different books, like you can find romances by trope or every YA with a pansexual main character, and it’s all super gay. I picked out a bunch of them and figured you could pick one we should both read and then we can talk about it and stuff. And we can make way better choices than the official Book Club made last week.” I pick up a pretty purple one. “Look, I even found a witchy one that looks like it has tarot cards on it.”

Sabrina eyes the books suspiciously, then me suspiciously, before examining each one. “You thought I’d want to read a romance between a football player and a cheerleader?”

I shrug. “I mean. Lesbians.”

She nods and sets it aside. “You do make a good point.”

I wait while she goes through each one before finally settling on the one I thought looked the most depressing and right up her alley, but she declares she’s going to try them all, just in case. We agree we’ll take turns reading it over the next couple of weeks and discuss it afterward. “What refreshments would a GSA have for book-club discussion?” I ask. “I have to admit, I’m new to this.”

She shrugs. “Rainbow cookies? Tequila? I don’t know. We do not actually have to—”

“Yes, we do. We are going to do this right,” I say firmly. “Now, what’s the soundtrack for this meeting?”

“Janelle Monáe, Chappell Roan, and Billie Eilish,” Sabrina says decisively, moving to put the music on her laptop, and it’s gratifying to see her stoniness about this crack so quickly. Without even bringing snacks! She joins me on the floor and we open up the book, taking turns reading sections of it aloud to each other until the door opens and Sabrina tucks the cover flap into the pages to save our place.

“Hey, Evie.” I immediately tense up at the sound of Heather’s voice, concerned each time I see her that this time she’s found out about me and Lucas, but she sounds as friendly and bouncy as always, and I relax. “What are you guys doing? Something for the talent show?”

“Nope, working on that with Isabel McEvoy. Are you performing?”

“Kayla and I are gonna do a scene from Hamilton. ” She slides off her sneakers and hops onto her bed, curling her legs up underneath her butt. “We were just with Lucas and Jesse, performing for each other.”

Lucas? Performing? Ugh. Maybe I don’t want to attend after all. “What are they doing?” I ask casually.

“It’s amazing—they’ve completely and totally memorized stand-up routines. Lucas sounds exactly like John Mulaney when he does his.”

Feels like stretching the word “talent” to its limit, but sure. I listen as Heather goes on about how Lucas and Jesse are so funny, and my heart aches as I think how easily I could bring that crashing down if I say or do the wrong thing. It’d be so much easier if Lucas were completely out of my social circle, but even if I wanted to ditch the Nicest Girl in the World, she’d still be Sabrina’s roommate, and ditching Sabrina is not an option if I want to maintain my sanity in this place.

Still, I think about how much it hurt to find out Salem had kept Jenna a secret, and this is so much worse. If that felt like a betrayal, this is… I don’t know, but something uglier. And if Heather ever does find out, the domino effect of losing all my friends could be fast and furious.

Stop it. There’s no reason to think you’re gonna screw this up. You’re doing fine. Everything’s fine.

So why does it feel like a painful shift is inevitable?

One possible explanation arrives later that night, when I go to pee before bed. I am always more emotionally sensitive when I get my period, and with everything going on, I completely forgot to keep track of my cycle. Turns out even being regular can’t help you if your brain is a mess.

But it takes me two minutes of frantic searching to realize the bigger problem: I forgot to pack pads and tampons. It all comes back to me in a rush that of course Sierra and I were on the same cycle, and of course she finished them, promised to pick up more before I left, and never did. And now it’s been a month and I’m in an all-boys dorm after curfew, and I am so deeply screwed. Staining my sheets would be bad enough, but staining them and then having to use the washing machines at Rumson to clean them? Hell no.

It’s fine. I’m just gonna stay awake all night. Or sleep in the shower. Sure, that makes sense. God, how I wish I had a tub.

Ugh, and Lockwood is so close. I bet it’s filled with tampons and pads—nothing but period protection as far as the eye can see! But of course, it’s locked at this hour, and so is Rumson, and am I seriously considering jumping out the window and running to Sabrina’s so I can yell up for her to toss me down a tampon?

I think forlornly of the rope ladder, curled up and safely hidden in the confines of Matt and Salem’s room. I could ask them to send it down, but I do not want to explain why, and ugh it doesn’t matter because I have to change my underwear and go back to the bathroom anyway before I turn my pajamas into a crime scene.

I grab my phone and tap out a quick text to Sabrina, just in case she can somehow sneak out and save me, and am relieved when she immediately responds with a thumbs-up. I have no idea what she has planned, but I’m not wasting time having her answer my text questions when I need her here ASAP, so I just wad up some tissues and wait. Finally, I hear a tapping on the glass, but it doesn’t sound like a pebble, more like—

“Aah!” I jump twenty feet in the air (I’m pretty sure) at the sight of Salem Grayson, standing on the rope ladder, a fist poised right by the window he’d rapped on. “No,” I mutter. “No, she did not.”

I push up the window, and am absolutely horrified when Salem unfurls his fist to reveal a couple of tampons and an overnight pad. “You’re welcome,” he says dryly when I just stare at his open palm, but gratitude has taken about a thousand back seats to wishing I could simply die, thoroughly and immediately.

“Is this what having one of those dreams where you go to school naked feels like? It must be. Oh my God.”

He rolls his eyes. “Are you gonna take ’em, or should I just save it all for the next time I get a nosebleed?”

I snatch everything from his hand and immediately chuck it to the side, as if out of sight will put it out of his mind that he went on this recon mission. “I cannot believe she sent you for this.”

“It’s really not a big deal, Skeevy. She knew I had the ladder, and I did guess you were PMS’ing earlier, so I’m feeling pretty vindicated right now.”

“Oh, shut up before I knock you off that rope and onto your ass.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“I might.” But I’m lying, because he just climbed out of his room after hours and brought me tampons and now he’s here in front of my window, clinging to a rope ladder, looking surprisingly manly with his biceps glowing in the moonlight. Ever since I found out about Salem and Jenna, I’ve been wondering how exactly he landed her, and right now, for half a second, I get it.

“That’s the cramps talking,” he says with a grin, and once again, I wanna die. “G’night, Skeevy.”

“G’night, Salem. And thanks for… this.”

“I’d say ‘anytime,’ but I wouldn’t mean it.” And then he shimmies up the rope and is gone.

I don’t even have the energy to yell at Sabrina right now, especially since I’d still have nothing without her, so I drag myself back to the bathroom and thank past me for at least remembering to pack painkillers. As I put myself to bed, wincing against the pain of cramps while I wait for the meds to kick in, I can’t help thinking about the fact that Salem Grayson— Salem fucking Grayson —came to my menstrual rescue.

I am never gonna live this down.

And I have to get the hell out of this dorm.

No one in the housing office displays any semblance of caring for my newest petition to move to a girls’ dorm, with the argument that I’m the only girl on campus without easy access to menstrual products—the girls’ dorms have machines, plus everyone knows you can go to the dorm heads for them.

Even if Mr. Hoffman were the type to keep them on hand for transmasc Rumson residents and visiting girls—which he is absolutely not—I wouldn’t ask him for water if I were dying of thirst.

They do, at least, compromise by giving me a bag of about a thousand tampons from Lockwood, and in my desperation, I accept. I really don’t have any more time to fight, because we have Book Club tonight, and I’m still slogging through the pretentious nightmare that got voted our first pick.

It’s a good excuse to avoid the Beast for lunch, anyway, and every other social activity. At Book Club, I sit with Sabrina, and we squeeze each other’s hands every time someone talks about which scene made them cry or just, like, really made them want to live their lives to the fullest. On the way out, I tell her I need to avoid everyone possible, and she runs into the Beast and returns with takeout, which we eat picnic-style in my room. Afterward, we do our homework in the nice kind of silence, the one where you’re not acknowledging each other’s presence but you feel it like a hug all the same.

“This feels so much like hanging out with Claire,” I say without thinking, and immediately wish I could take it back. It does, though—we were always doing things side by side, not really together. I would play online poker or give myself terrible pedicures while she beaded bracelets or made little charms out of clay to look like penguins or watermelon slices. It always felt nice, like we were close enough to do that, without it ever striking me as weird how much time we spent in silence or not wanting to do the same thing.

In reality, it probably fell somewhere in the middle, but the silent times only got more frequent the closer Craig and I got, because she made it clear from the get-go she wasn’t interested in hearing about him, and I, admittedly, was way too interested in talking about him. Everything seemed interesting and special with him, and when he did nice things like bring me a soda at lunch without my having to ask for it, or brought over any handouts I missed when I was home sick, I was dying to talk about it with someone who understood how good that all felt. And that wasn’t Claire.

Instead, I hung out more and more in Craig’s basement, not just to watch him play games with his friends but to talk to the other girlfriends and hangers-on, to glow about this special thing or that, none of which were actually that special in retrospect. (God, imagining Craig bringing me a tampon is too impossible to even contemplate.) And of course, as soon as Craig ditched me for Sierra, those girls ditched me too; Alex Gaboury was the only one who even said she was sorry to hear about it.

So maybe… I was not the best friend either. I mean, not “hiding from my BFF that her boyfriend and sister are hooking up” level of bad, but, you know, not great.

“Have you spoken to her at all?” Sabrina asks, breaking into my thoughts. She’s gotten the gist of the story over the past few weeks.

“Nope.”

“Really?” Sabrina twirls her pen between her fingers at impressive speed. “I would’ve thought she’d have reached out by now. Seems like a pretty obvious thing to apologize for.”

“The fight we had about it was… not great,” I admit. “I yelled at her for being a traitor and she told me it was my fault for being so clueless, and it devolved from there. And I didn’t exactly give her the biggest window to apologize before blocking her number and social media.” It’s also possible that I said some unkind things to her about being maybe a little boring or jealous or both that I didn’t feel like apologizing for, either.

“Do you miss her?”

“Does it make me a jerk that I don’t, really?” I don’t make eye contact for that, concentrating my gaze on the cover of my Spanish notebook instead. “I think we drifted a long time ago but were both sort of afraid to see what else was out there.” I take a deep breath, then admit to Sabrina what I haven’t said to anyone else. (And who else would I say it to, anyway?) “I looked at her pictures the other day, and she looked so freaking happy. She’s a different person, doing different things, and the only thing that really changed in her life between then and now is that I left. So maybe I was holding her back. Maybe I was the boring loser.”

The words somehow sound even worse coming out of my mouth now than they did then.

“Or maybe you gave her the push she needed,” Sabrina suggests with a shrug. “I mean, yeah, maybe you were a dick about it—”

“I was definitely a dick about it.”

“Okay, but I’m your friend, not hers, so whatever. Point is, maybe this was the best thing for both of you and that’s all there is to it. You’re here for a fresh start, right? So you’re getting yours, and she’s getting hers.”

I’m still stuck on “I’m your friend, not hers,” and how I needed to hear it so badly that I can feel tears pricking my eyes and I have to excuse myself to go to the bathroom so I can breathe my way out of crying in front of Sabrina. But then I think of not just Claire and Craig and Sierra but how I’ll probably lose Salem to his girlfriend, and Heather will eventually turn on me, and I turn on the sink to allow myself one little self-pitying round of sniffles.

And then I stop. Because I’ve made friends. And I have to hold on to them, no matter what it takes.

But maybe that also means letting go a little, too. And so even though I know it’s only symbolic, that I won’t be reaching out and neither will she, as soon as I exit the bathroom, I make a beeline for my phone and unblock Claire while Sabrina watches approvingly over my shoulder.

I don’t know that I feel any lighter. I don’t know if she’ll even notice, considering I haven’t posted anything since emptying out my account to purge my entire Greentree life. But it feels like acknowledging that I’m a little less afraid of something than I was when I got here, and I’ll take any little hint of badass I can get.

Friday afternoon it’s time to put the focus back on Salem and his self-improvement, so I drag him along with me to community service, and Matt finds the idea so amusing he tags along for the ride. In fact, the van taking us to Pinebrook Forest to do cleanup is completely full—so full that Matt just has to squeeze in with Priya, and Ashleigh just has to sit on Landon’s lap.

I take my time picking my seat in the van, waiting to see if Salem and Jenna will find some clever way to end up together, but when she slides in next to Izzy and Salem loudly informs me that you can’t get pregnant just from sharing a seat with a boy, I bump my ass in next to his. Hard.

Despite the fact that they don’t interact once the entire ride, I can’t stop looking for signs of the thing between Salem and Jenna. How are they playing it this cool in each other’s presences? How in control of your own emotions must you have to be in order to sit in a van with someone you’re regularly seeing naked and not even acknowledge their existence?

This is the attitude I dream about having. I should be taking notes.

“We’re gonna be in the van for another twenty minutes,” Jenna observes. “Maybe we should play something fun to pass the time.” Her gaze flickers over to me, but before I can decipher it, she’s moved on. “I haven’t played a good game of Truth or Dare in forever. ”

My immediate reaction is to roll my eyes—these games are always really boring when you don’t actually have secrets. But then I remember that not only do I have a secret, but it’s one I have an extremely vested interest in keeping from someone in this van.

And I may be a great bluffer, but I am a horrific liar.

I dig my nails into the underside of Salem’s thigh, and when he turns to me to snap, I widen my eyes in pleading. He furrows his brow, as if he doesn’t understand what I’m asking, but then gives a dramatic shudder and says, “If I’m so much as in the same room as Truth or Dare, I start to taste truly bad tequila and smell burnt cotton. And before you ask, Never Have I Ever both tastes and smells like the worst weed I have ever had.”

As everyone laughs and changes the subject to talking about bad party memories and substance experiences, I could kiss Salem in gratitude. Well, give him a hearty handshake is more like it. But as soon as I catch his attention, I mouth a Thank you, and receive a brief smile in return.

The ride is over before we know it, and we pile out and receive our instructions, complete with reflector vests that make us look like convicts doing trash pickup on the side of the road. Which is to say, I feel a little badass and I don’t hate it.

What I do hate is how much garbage people leave among the trees. I pick up water bottles, soda cans, single socks, empty bags of chips, gum wrappers, and deflated beach balls, but I am absolutely not prepared for the next piece of trash I see. I glance at the volunteer next to me, who happens to be Matt. “Matthew, please tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

He follows my eyeline and bursts into laughter. “I swear, dormie, that’s not mine. I’m, like, ninety-five percent sure.”

“Why does Skeevy look like she’s about to puke?” Salem asks, walking over from where I can only assume he’s been hiding out with Jenna; I haven’t seen him in at least fifteen minutes. “What’d you do, Matt?”

“ I did not do anything,” he says, pointing at the used condom. “Perhaps that’s from one of your woodsy adventures?”

Okay, I know we’re all kidding here, but the idea of that being Salem’s is about a thousand times worse than the thought of it being Matt’s. Salem just laughs and tells Matt to shut up, and while it’s nice to finally see some camaraderie between them, I also feel the need to edge over to some more… feminine energy.

I glance around until I spot Isabel’s gleaming hair and trudge over to where she, Jenna, and Priya have discarded their trash pickers and are standing around talking, laughing, and hollering after Ashleigh to pull her pants on and come back. Okay, so, maybe this isn’t the ideal spot either. But before I can track down Kayla and Heather as my plan C, I hear Jenna call out, “Hey! Evie! C’mere!”

Reluctantly, I do.

“I was sad we didn’t get to play earlier,” she says with a smirk. “I was really hoping to get to know you better.”

Oh, this doesn’t seem good. “I’m really not very interesting,” I assure her.

“I don’t believe that for a second, Rumson Girl.” Her ice-blue eyes narrow, and I catch a flash of silver in her hand that I’m pretty sure is a flask. This is the weirdest community service ever. “Truth or dare?”

“Jen.” Izzy puts a hand on her arm, but Jenna shakes it off, and I know I have no choice but to answer. I just… have no idea what the right answer is. But at least, unlike in the van, Heather isn’t in my immediate vicinity, so that’s something.

The other thing is that we all know exactly what she’s going to ask, and I have a perfectly safe answer. “Truth.”

“Have you hooked up with any Rumson boys?”

“Nope,” I reply, popping the p , because I don’t actually know where Lucas lives, but it isn’t my dorm. And then, because I can’t leave well enough alone, I add, “How about you?”

Her smirk is razor sharp. “It’s not your turn, Rumson Girl. But you already know that.”

I meet her gaze evenly. “I already know a lot of things.”

Isabel sucks in a breath, and I silently curse my inability to keep my mouth shut.

But then again, isn’t the whole point of this pact with Salem to learn to stand up for myself, to trust my instincts and not to back down? Maybe this is growth, rather than my just being stupid.

Yeah, I’ll go ahead and look at it that way.

Jenna’s smile takes on a cruel slant, and I wait for the next bullet to shoot from her mouth, but she’s already moved on, wrapping an arm around Priya’s shoulders. “How about you, Pri? Truth or dare?”

It’s tempting to speak up and remind her that it’s my turn, but I don’t think there are any answers here that I actually want. So I wait to see how Priya responds instead, but she just laughs. “As if I have any secrets you don’t know.”

“I swear,” Jenna says with a quick, cutting look at me, “none of you are any fun anymore. Take the dare, then.”

Priya grabs the flask from her hand and takes a swig. “Fine. Dare.”

Jenna grins. “Go to every guy here and ask him how big his dick is.”

“But you already know so many of the answers,” Priya says sweetly, and I can’t help snorting a laugh. Thankfully, Isabel barks one even louder, and Jenna misses mine entirely. “Are you having me do your research so you can figure out your next victim? Is the current one not satisfying?”

I expect a scathing response from Jenna, but instead, Priya receives a languid smile I’d love to twist off Jenna’s face. “The current one is deeply, deeply satisfying. Some might say enormously so.”

Isabel rolls her eyes. “Jenna would say enormously so. I have, in fact, heard her do so on way too many occasions.”

Okay, cool, I am definitely out. Even picking up a used condom beats listening to a discussion of Salem’s anatomical gifts. I scan the ground for another piece of trash, and promptly find a gum wrapper I’m 90 percent sure is Jenna’s.

I stab it with the point of my picker and move on, the girls’ laughter ringing in my ears.

I take the same van seat on the way back, but when a body slides in next to mine, it’s Isabel’s, not Salem’s. “You can go take my seat,” she tells him dismissively, as if she’s calling the shots here and not literally sending him to fool around with his girlfriend in the back.

So much for community service helping him learn how to do “good.”

“You okay?” she asks me in a low voice once the ride starts. “Jenna can be a little… Jenna.”

“She really can,” I confirm. “But it’s fine.” It’s not fine. “Anyway, we got the forest clean, and that’s the point, right?”

Her lips twitch in a smile. “Right.”

She pivots to chat with Priya for the rest of the ride while I pull out my earbuds and settle in with Blackpink. After a few minutes, Isabel nudges me to ask what I’m listening to, and I hand her one of the buds. We listen in silence the rest of the way home.

As soon as we get off the van, though, I leave Isabel and the others in my dust, not caring how glaringly obvious it is that I don’t want to be near Jenna another minute. I’m most of the way back to Rumson when I feel a hand at my elbow.

“Where are you running?” Salem asks. “We’re literally walking to the same building.”

“Are we? I thought you might have plans at Hillman House.” Okay, my tone sounds way colder than he deserves, but in fairness, his girlfriend is way colder than I deserve.

Doesn’t matter; he’s barely listening anyway, engrossed in his phone. I can only assume he’s exchanging filthy texts with Jenna, which makes me want to pry it from his hands and toss it back into the woods we just came from.

“Brent and Jason are up for a quick game if you are,” he says, slipping it back in his pocket. “Pretty sure they think you were having beginner’s luck that first time.”

“How do you know I wasn’t?”

He shoots me a knowing look. “Come up in ten. And bring snacks.”

“Who says I have snacks?” I mutter as I head toward my room while he dashes up the stairs.

“You have snacks,” he calls back down.

He’s right, I do, but I don’t want the human trash receptacle that is Jason Hammond devouring my precious Skittles stash, so when I take a quick shower and throw on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt, I grab a couple of bags of chips I lifted from the Beast instead.

The other guys aren’t there when I arrive, but Salem and Matt are, and Matt gives me a big bear hug when I enter, nearly smushing the chip bags. “What was that for?” I ask when I can finally breathe again.

He cracks a grin. “Izzy said you might need it after the woods.”

“What happened in the woods?” Salem asks.

I take a seat next to him at the table and pick up the deck of cards in front of him, shuffling idly. “Well, I learned you have a big dick, so congrats on that.”

Matt throws back his head and laughs as Salem mutters, “Jesus Christ, Evie.”

“What?” I ask innocently. “You should be proud. Jenna was definitely proud.”

“Please can we not talk about my dick?”

“If I had to hear about your dick, I think you should have to hear about your dick.”

“Do you want to talk about my dick?”

Fair question. “No, I really do not.”

“That’s what I thought. Now pass the chips.”

I rip open the bag, help myself to a nice, greasy handful, and hand it over.

“You know,” he says as he digs through it until he finds a perfect whole chip, “it’s kind of like I called your bluff right there. I feel like this can only mean good things for the game ahead.”

“Sure, that plus my beginner’s luck being over,” I say with a flutter of my lashes.

“Oh, you know what?” he says with a grin that definitely means trouble. “I forgot—Matt and I came up with the perfect next task for your Bad Girl list. Community service got me inspired.”

“Let me guess.” I grab back the bag and take another chip. “You want me to burn down the forest?”

“Of course not,” Salem says with a snort. He glances up at Matt, who comes over and drops a box on the table in front of me. “We want you to refill the condom stash.”