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A s I watched my friend start a band—a pretty adult thing to do, something you don’t realize until you’re looking back on it—something began happening to me as well.

I don’t know that I ever thought about it consciously, but somewhere inside my brain and my heart, I knew that, in the end, the only person I could ever fully count on in life would be myself.

It’s a huge concept and if I’d analyzed it, I think it would have been way too much for me at the time.

Instead, though, it slowly overtook me and I changed.

It started when I saw Ava being particularly obnoxious in the quad one day.

Her cheerleading skirt rode high so that when she barely bent over, everyone could see the black panties the cheerleaders wore to cover their undersides for kicks and splits.

I was walking through the area to get to Chess Club, and she had created some type of drama with another cheerleader, no doubt to get attention.

To emphasize her point, she began a routine to “prove” her idea was better.

Then the other girl started playing a dance beat on her phone at full volume, handing it to another cheerleader who held it up over her head.

The other girl began doing her routine and the small crowd gathered around grew larger.

Once she finished, Ava began her own dance—to the same music.

It was then that I realized it was all a ruse.

For what ultimate purpose, I didn’t know, because I didn’t care to watch.

But that scene stayed with me all day. Watching Ava contrive a situation just to get attention turned my stomach—but thinking about it all afternoon actually helped me mature.

I first made the connection that I was still, over a year later, allowing Ava to control my emotions and thoughts—even when her actions had nothing to do with me.

How stupid was that? She was no longer in my life full-time, so why did I give her that power?

She would have loved knowing she still lived in my head.

But that wasn’t the fairest assessment. Deep down, I wanted to believe that maybe our friendship had been real on some level. Ava might not have been a good person but she wasn’t a villain and, truth be told, I’d been an easy victim, willing to be malleable and subservient to appease my friend.

That ugly notion made me understand that our relationship went two ways. Had I not been so impressionable, she wouldn’t have been able to manipulate me.

Those ideas were probably life changing for me, because I stopped thinking of Ava as an enemy at that point.

But that meant I had to work on me .

I forced myself to stop being the shy, quiet girl.

It was one of the hardest things I’d done up to that point, but I made myself start making eye contact with people as I walked down the hall instead of looking at the floor.

And, after a few days, something amazing happened.

I started smiling and saying hello, too.

I knew most of these people and now I was acknowledging it, refusing to hide behind a cloak of bashfulness anymore.

The first few Chess Club meetings without Zack (and usually Braden, too) made me sad.

I felt again like I’d lost a friend but, really, Zack was also growing and figuring out his place in the world.

If I wanted to be a part of his life (and, boy, did I), then I needed to find a way to make that happen.

Although I didn’t dislike the other guys in Chess Club, they weren’t close friends like Zack and Braden were.

I wasn’t seeing my friends for most lunch times, either, because they, along with Parker and Cyrus—now full-fledged members of Zack’s band—were spending those times planning and plotting.

But Zack couldn’t escape me entirely. We had U.S. History, English, Algebra II, and Chemistry together, so when he wasn’t skipping class (something he’d started doing, especially the ones in the afternoon), we were learning together.

Except something else was happening. I knew Zack had never been big on homework, but it was like he wasn’t even engaged or trying to understand concepts, even when class was easy.

So, one day in October in history class when we had a substitute who showed us a bunch of clips on YouTube having to do with the American Revolution, I took my chances.

We sat at the back of the class where we usually did, and I turned so I could whisper, hopefully without distracting other kids or getting in trouble. “Is everything okay, Zack?”

He flashed a look of confusion. “Yeah. Why?”

“I don’t know.” I wasn’t sure how to even broach the subject. I’d never had experience doing this before. “You seem…out of it sometimes.”

Zack tilted his head and, for the first time since I’d been his friend, I saw him differently.

He looked beautiful and tragic at the same time—like his soul was calling out to me for salvation but the masculine part of himself wanted me to believe he had it all under control.

As I took that in, he must have seen something in my eyes that gave it away, even in the semi-darkness of the classroom.

“My mind’s on my future, Dani. That’s all. ”

“Well…I’m kind of worried about you.”

A tiny flash of anger flared in his eyes, but it faded so quickly, I questioned that I’d even seen it. “You don’t need to worry about me. I’m not a lost puppy.”

Taking a slow breath, I realized that, even if something was horribly, terribly wrong, he wasn’t going to admit it—not today, at any rate. “Okay.” I almost added that I cared about him but I was afraid to say it.

“Tell you what. Instead of taking the bus home after school, come to my house and I’ll show you what I’m working on.”

A thrill I’d never experienced before ran through my veins.

I didn’t think twice about how the hell I’d get home that night.

In fact, I would have considered walking the seven miles home just to spend time alone with Zack, the young man who was slowly consuming everything inside me. “Cool. Yeah, I’d love to.”

“I hear some talking at the back of the classroom,” came the substitute’s nasally voice. “You’re missing some important information here.”

Zack raised his eyebrows, and then his easy smile, the one I’d always adored, consumed every feature on his face. “Guess we better tune in.”

And then he winked at me. Smiling, I winked back, trying to convince myself that this was a normal exchange between two friends. Because my desperate heart wanted to believe something else entirely.

Zack’s ride was nothing to brag about. It was an old green Toyota Corolla that was pushing twenty years and over two hundred thousand miles. It was his mom’s old car, one they called Old Faithful , and it sat five uncomfortably.

I’d never been to Zack’s house, so I was excited. I sat between Braden and Cyrus in the back because I was “skinny,” so I could fit. Parker didn’t seem to weigh any more than I did and yet he’d yelled shotgun before any of us could even register it.

And even though Zack seemed to be a good driver, after a mile, Cyrus asked, “Are you even supposed to be driving with other kids in the car?”

“Do I look like I give a fuck, man? Besides, that’s only if I get caught.”

Braden shouted over the stereo almost straight into my ear, “Yeah, and his mom’s dating a cop, so he can get out of a ticket.”

“Not true. In fact, my mom threatened to beat my ass double if I get in trouble with the cops.”

I asked Cyrus, “Haven’t you guys been doing this for a while?”

“Yeah, but I’ve been riding my bike over to his house. Zack wanted to do this early so you could be there, so here I am.”

Zack pulled into the driveway of a two-story red-brick house with a porch that went around the front and one side. There was a little garage next to it, but he didn’t pull the car into it or even in front of it.

As we all made our way out of the car, I asked, “So what’s the name of the band?”

“I haven’t told you?” After we followed Zack to the front door, he inserted a key and pushed the door open, waving everyone in.

“First, I’ll tell you the names we had to pass on, because, of course, they’re already taken.

Our top two were Brave New World and Riot .

But we kicked around lots more ideas and finally settled on… are you ready?”

I was standing back while the guys went in, because I wanted to look at Zack. “That’s it? Are You Ready ?” I knew it wasn’t, but I wanted to tease him a little.

“No, but that’s not bad.” Waving me in, he followed me, closing the door to keep the air-conditioned air inside. “Once Upon a Riot.”

I was trying to absorb both Zack’s house and his words at the same time and found myself on overload. So I concentrated on the name first. “That’s pretty cool.”

“Yeah, it is.” I glanced around a little, walking through the small hallway that served as an entrance. There was a staircase that went upstairs, but all the guys had stayed on the main level. We walked through some open French doors at the end of the hallway into a dining room. “So this is it.”

The guys continued walking through another doorway into a tiny kitchen. Just as I squeezed in, Braden opened the fridge. “Anyone want a Coke or Dr. Pepper?”

Cyrus and Parker shook their heads, but I said, “Sure, I’ll take one if it’s okay.”

Zack said, “Of course, it’s okay. You’re my guest.”

That might have been true, but I’d never met his mom.

“Ready?”

Cyrus nodded, walking through a doorway on the other side. We all followed him down another hallway with wooden floors and two doors at the end. Cyrus turned to the right, opening the door. Light flooded the hallway as he turned the light on inside.