Page 3

Chapter 3

Isa

“ Kidnap someone?” I gasped, heat swirling like Dante’s inferno on the back of my neck. “Grace, please stop joking around. I’ve already agreed to ‘take the day off’ with you. Just tell me what time we’re getting our nails done, or when we’re leaving for the movies.”

Because I could do that. I would do that. That was enough fun for me.

Before my best friend could explain, her phone began to play an old song, the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.” I suspected she was the only person our age who used music for her ring tone—it was such a millennial move—but I loved that about her. “James,” she reported. “It’s James.”

My heartbeat sped up. “James?” I whispered. “Why’s James calling?” It was late enough in the morning that James should’ve been in school by now.

Or “jail,” as he and I secretly called it.

“I don’t know,” Grace whispered back, as if her brother could hear us. “But I should probably answer.”

I swallowed while she waited for the final ring before tapping the screen to accept the call. “Hello?” she said with an appropriate dose of pain and suffering in her voice.

Grace was a generally good actress off the cuff. It was one of the things that made her such a wonderful student body president. She had the ability to be annoyed one second but charming the next.

I’m not like her, I’d thought when volunteering to be her campaign manager last year. I can’t just turn it on and sparkle.

No one would vote for Isabel Cruz, the girl with the resting “If You Say the Wrong Thing, I Will Judge You” face.

“Gracie!” James greeted us over the line, a cheerful chirp that was as much an act as his sister’s. Something in my stomach knotted, remembering James’s voice on the phone last night, but I still battled back an automatic giggle. He was good, always too good. “I’m here with Principal Unger….”

The laughter died in my throat.

Principal Unger.

Grace grabbed my hand.

“She wanted to see how her president was doing.”

“Oh, Principal Unger, hi,” Grace said carefully, squeezing my fingers so tightly that I squeaked in alarm. She let go and motioned for me to zip my lips after I whispered for her to pretend to throw up again, a convincing dry-heave. Right here, right now, anything to get off the phone. “I’d, um, rather not give you too many details if that’s okay,” she said instead. “There’s a bucket involved….”

It was fair to say I went berserk once she finally hung up with Principal Unger, who seemed more akin to a mad dictator than to a high school principal. “Oh my god, oh my god,” I kept saying, my ears buzzing as I paced the Barbour family’s kitchen, circling their island again and again. “I can’t believe we’re doing this. This is so irresponsible— beyond irresponsible. Oh my god, oh my god !”

“Hey, it’s going to be okay,” Grace said, though there was a rasp in her throat. She was rattled, too.

But not enough to grab our backpacks and hurry so we caught the last few minutes of homeroom.

“Relax,” she told me instead.

“Relax?” I exclaimed. “ Relax? G, Principal Unger just called you! What if she calls my parents next?” I began blinking at the possibility, so rapidly that I came close to seeing spots. It was one of my nervous tics. I never fainted, but from the quick and quiet steps Grace took toward me, she’d be ready to catch me if I did. (We never hesitated during the trust exercise in gym class.) James took a different approach during these moments; he simply pulled me into his arms, my body melting into his when he hugged me tight. “Principal Unger’s going to call them,” I blurted. “She’s going to call them, isn’tshe?”

“ No, she isn’t.” Grace shook her head. “Principal Unger isn’t in charge of tracking attendance. It’s a secretarial duty.”

Secretarial duty.

Suddenly, the black spots in the air dissipated.

“It was James who called me, Isa,” Grace emphasized, guiding me back to my barstool. Her voice had returned to its confident cadence. “So I’m sure he mentioned to Unger that I was sick, but because he’s James”—she made a wild but vague gesture with her hands—“she didn’t believe him.” She wrinkled her nose, trying to make me smile. “Rude, right?”

But I didn’t smile—or speak. All I did was nod, my stomach swishing.

You can’t do this, the angel on my right shoulder whispered. This isn’t you, Isabel.

(The angel sounded a lot like my mother.)

Then I felt a prodding on my left shoulder. Do it…, the devil coaxed. These days it sounded like James, but it used to be Grace in her mischievous childhood years—coaxing me to do things like paint James’s nails while he napped on the basement couch. Take a chance, Isa!

Three seconds later, I’d whipped out my phone, fumbled to find the number in my contacts, and before I could inhale for good luck, there was a click. “Hello,” a familiar voice said (too brightly in my opinion). “This is Sophia Flamporis at Council Rock North—”

I kept it neat and tidy.

I kept it clipped.

And somehow, I kept it kind.

I kept it like Mamá.

“Good morning, Sophia,” I said. “This is Pilar Cruz speaking. I’m calling to let you know that my daughter Isabel will not be in school today.” I didn’t give Mrs.Flamporis a breath to respond. “We have a family emergency. I would prefer not to go into specifics.”

“Oh my,” the school secretary said. “I’m so sorry to hear that, Mrs.Cruz. I hope everything is okay. I will be sure to input Isa’s absence in our system….”

Isa’s absence.

It nearly knocked the wind out of me. Gone was my perfect attendance record. Future Isa would have to brainstorm a reason for why I wasn’t receiving an award at the end of the year. My parents would wonder.

And then ask, because even if I insisted it must’ve been a “clerical error,” they would counter-insist on rectifying it.

I got into Brown, I wanted to say. Brown accepted me!

Brown is not Harvard or Princeton, I could imagine Mamá saying.

Because she’d already said it, a few weeks ago. All I’d wanted to do, for once in my life, was skip an extra credit assignment for AP English. I already had an A in the class, and Grace had planned an impromptu spa night at her house. But when I’d asked my parents, they had shut me down.

“You’ll get off a waitlist, hija mía,” Papá said later. “Someone will pick Harvard over Princeton, and Princeton over Harvard.” He nodded, his belief in me shining in his eyes. “You’re a top candidate and will end up at the top school. Valedictorian will only sweeten the pot, too.”

I’d smiled before going up to my room to bail on Grace and her hot stone massage kit so I could start that essay. But as my fingers mindlessly flew over my keyboard, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Harvard wasn’t going to happen.

And that maybe I didn’t want it to.

I refocused on Mrs.Flamporis and my fake family emergency. “Thank you. My husband and I appreciate your well-wishes,” I told the secretary. “Isabel, too.” I paused. Mrs. Flamporis was chatty. “Yes, thanks again. Have a niceday.”

After ending the call, I slid my phone across the island and released a breath so deep that it sounded like I’d been suppressing it for ages. It’d been a few months, at least.

“Okay, first,” Grace said, “that impression of your mom was eerily good. I didn’t know you could do that!”

“I didn’t either,” I replied, tightening my ponytail. “I really just hoped for the best.”

“Excuse me, but did Isa Cruz actually wing something?” Grace applauded me, and I couldn’t help but smile.

“Why, thank you, G.” I did a curtsy to make her laugh. “It was best to call in now. They start notifying parents after roll call in homeroom.”

Grace snapped her fingers. Immediate action, it signified. I was known for taking immediate action in any situation.

Except for one.

My heart twinged. Today, I thought. Today I’ll tell her.

I’d been telling myself that since December. And now it had to be today…or else I was going to lose him. “I’m really sorry, Izzy,” he’d said less than twelve hours ago. I’d been curled up under my covers, phone pressed to my ear. “But I’m not happy in this love-you-in-the-dark place anymore. I’ve tried, but it’s been six months.”

Tears welled in my eyes. “Are you breaking things off by quoting Adele?” I whispered.

“It’s an amazing song,” he offered after a moment, then exhaled over the line. “No, I’m not breaking it off with you.” He paused. “But I don’t know what else to do. Please tell her tomorrow…or it has to be over.”

“It’s barely begun,” I countered. “We’re just hanging out.”

“Exactly,” he replied. “We’re just hanging out, and it’s killingme.”

Then he’d told me good night and ended the call.

“Why the family emergency, though?” Grace asked, pulling me out of my head. “They probably think your grandmotherdied.”

“Because I thought it would sound suspicious if I were sick, too,” I said.

Grace smiled. “Isa, there are almost a thousand kids in our school. I bet a million others are sick today.”

I smiled back. “Double-check that math, G.” I laughed before adding, “Plus, they aren’t us. ”

“Isa-and-Grace,” she translated, eyes shining.

“Yes,” I said. Isa and Grace, best friends forever.

Unless I finally tell her and it smashes everything to pieces, I thought, and as if she could read my mind, the brightness in her blue eyes dimmed.

“Okay, yeah, true.” Grace nodded. “You and me both being sick could smell suspicious.”

I wrinkled my nose at her use of smell, then poured myself a glass of orange juice. It was Tropicana, not Mrs.Barbour’s freshly squeezed elixir. In fact, her beloved industrial juicer was nowhere to be seen. Strange. The Barbour kitchen had always been clean but cluttered. Now, save for Grace’s pancake-making mess, the counters were bare. Juicer? Gone. Air fryer? Gone. KitchenAid mixer? Artfully rearranged in the far corner, looking like a prop. The Barbours loved cooking—Mrs.Barbour even let us take over the kitchen as kids—but it no longer looked like it. Their Nespresso machine was the only true holdout, and it was rarely used. “So, reluctantly circling back…,” I said. “What is this ‘kidnapping’ thing you mentioned?”

Grace grinned.

“You’ve set it all up?” I continued, trying to be casual and keep my flicker of excitement in my heart. “With James?”

In response, Grace burst into laughter. “James?” Her eyes were wide. “We’re not kidnapping James !”

“Then who are we…,” I began, but then it dawned on me. I felt my face pale, all color draining down to my neck. “No.” I shook my head. “It can’t be him.”

“It needs to be him, Isa,” she said gently. “We miss him.”

I crossed my arms over my chest in protest. “We had game night with him a week ago.”

“It’s not the same. You know it’s not the same.”

“Mmm,” I said noncommittally, glancing back to where Mrs.Barbour’s juicer should’ve been. The house went silent; we were locked in a stalemate. And in the quiet, I knew both of us were replaying the same story.

The friendship of Grace Barbour, Everett Adler, and me. How we used to be three. James was there too, but he had more friends than fingers and toes, while Grace, Everett, and I shared that feeling. That unspoken feeling where we knew we only needed one another to be happy. All through elementary school, they were my heart and soul.

Middle school was when things shifted, when crushes replaced cooties. One day in eighth grade, I’d pulled Grace into the bathroom between classes and took her hands in mine. “Everett,” I whispered, and I knew she knew what I meant. “I like him,” I whispered. “I like Everett, G.”

You can guess what happened next, because I was wired to take immediate action. On the last day of school, I marched straight up to Everett and kissed him. He went red in the face—I mean, that’s Everett—but then he took my hand and didn’t let go. Isa-and-Everett. My heart wouldn’t stop pounding, so happy to be “Isa-and-Everett.”

Everyone thought we were perfect together. Our friends, our parents, and especially Grace. He totally loves you!!! she sometimes texted me during our late-night exchanges.

Or so we thought. Our end-of-year freshman formal had also been our first anniversary, and all I wanted was for him to dance with me. But he kept shaking his head, kept stalling, then told me no. Everett had never said no to me. Beyond confused, I’d yanked James onto the floor for a slow song so I wouldn’t cry. Even then, all he did was make me laugh.

At the end of the night, Everett broke up with me in the school parking lot. “You’re so special, Isa,” he’d said, not having the guts to make eye contact. The pavement had his full and undivided attention. “But I don’t, uh, love you…”

I stared daggers into him as he spoke, but I could barely look at him after that night.

I cut ties with him almost entirely, and Grace, who’d volunteered to egg his house, had snipped hers as well. “Team Isa, forever and always,” she’d said, and while I wished there weren’t sides, deep down I was so grateful that she’d chosen mine.

Although I suspected the choice hadn’t been so simple for her. “It’s part of the charade,” she assured me whenever I noticed her talking or laughing with Everett for a moment too long. “I’m pretending, like we agreed.”

In school it was easy to be lost to each other in a sea of students, but family gatherings were the true challenge. We had to put on a show.

“Please,” she said now, the first one to speak. Her voice plucked a chord in my chest. “Please, let’s go get him. For old times’ sake, remember?”

Old times’ sake.

I sighed. Our “old times” included Everett, so wasn’t it fair that he join us? Yes, the breakup had been ugly, but we’d been friends long before we dated. Couldn’t we find our way back there?

Honestly, I didn’t know.

But for Grace, I would try.

“Okay,” I said, feeling some warmth return to my face. “Let’s do it.”

There was one gaping hole in the plan to abscond with Everett Adler, which, no offense to Grace, she probably hadn’t thought of in the first place. We’ll get Everett was where her idea had most likely started and ended. Everett will come withus.

(Grace usually spearheaded the fantastical ideas while I grounded them in reality. Teamwork made the dream work.)

“You do know a parent needs to go inside, right?” I asked while washing our breakfast dishes. The dishwasher was full, and I hated leaving dirty dishes in the sink. “Unless Mrs.Adler is in on this, one of us needs to go into the office and sign him out before he can leave the building. He’s not James.”

James, who was the reason our school had instituted this rule in the first place. According to Grace, he used to leave campus all the time of his own accord, sweet-talking the secretary and claiming Mrs.Barbour was in the parking lot. “See that Mercedes out there?” Grace had once imitated. “That’s my mother. She’s stuck on a conference call, but she’s here to take me to the doctor’s…. I have a note….”

It was embarrassing how many times he’d managed it before Principal Unger and the administration caught on and created an old-school parental sign-out log. James had also since lost the spare Subaru key fob—which had been his third replacement—so he was no longer going anywhere.

“Or are we going to sneak him out the choir room’s back door?” I asked, drying the final dish. “Because if he’s marked present in homeroom but then doesn’t show up for several classes, they’ll call his mom.”

Grace grinned. “Believe it or not, Isa, I do have an aboveboard plan.”

I gave her a look. “Nothing about today is aboveboard, G.”

She shook her head and gestured for me to follow her; we left the back-to-pristine kitchen and climbed the stairs—I noticed not a single one of their framed family photos hung on the wall anymore, only a fresh coat of off-white paint—and walked down the hall to her bedroom. I averted my eyes from the forensics scene on the carpet, instead moving to make her bed while she changed out of her bathrobe and into some actual clothes. “How do I look?” she asked once I’d arranged the final throw pillow, and I turned to see her strike a pose in a signature Grace Barbour ensemble: casual white V-neck T-shirt with a tangle of gold necklaces and a pair of shorts she’d “upcycled” using other clothing. One leg was forest green while the other was navy-and-white vertical stripes. The insides of the pockets were denim, and the waist and belt loops were faded Nantucket red from an old J.Crew skirt of mine. The shorts weren’t my style, but wow, were they spectacular.

After Grace did her best runway walk across her room, I said, “If you don’t apply to Project Runway, Grace, I’m filling out the application myself.”

Grace shook her head, her golden-brown curls piled high in a messy bun. “I’m clueless about styling!”

“I will enlighten you!” I told her, exasperated but mostly amused. We had this argument every time Grace showed off one of her new designs.

“Nina Garcia scares me!”

“But your crush Brandon Maxwell will say, ‘Girl, where have you been all my life?’?”

We giggled and moved into her bathroom for makeup. I swatted her hand away from the eyeliner; it was impossible for my best friend to do makeup without it involving a cat-eye. Understated but classic was my specialty.

Grace stuck her tongue out at me in the mirror, and once we’d narrated a goofy “Get Ready with Me” routine, she said: “Follow me!”

Tension squeezed my shoulders when we walked into James’s bedroom. It was chaotic but cozy. Grace didn’t hesitate before pulling down the trapdoor that led up to the small attic her brother had claimed as his own. She spewed out her abduction strategy as she scrambled up the metal ladder.

I swallowed hard. I might’ve had grit, but Grace had guts.

And I endlessly admired her for it.

While she grabbed what she needed from James’s garret, I studied his vinyl shelf even though I knew it by heart. I was in the middle of alphabetizing his collection when Grace landed back on the bedroom floor with her arms more than full. She wasn’t even wearing the furry green costume yet, but it had already swallowed her up.

“Isa…,” she said slowly—tentatively. “We have a complication.”

The back of my neck prickled. A complication.

“The car,” Grace said carefully. “We need a different car.”

I resumed reorganizing James’s records. “What do you mean?”

“We can’t pull up to school in your Mini,” Grace said. “Anyone and everyone who looks out a window will recognize it.”

Okay, I thought, she is officially overthinking this.

And I say that as a chronic overthinker.

“G, I’m not the only one in town with a cream Mini Cooper,” I told her. “I’m not even the only person at school withone.”

“Totally true,” Grace said, “but you are the only one with your vanity plate.”

Damn you, James, I thought. He’d given me a custom license plate for my birthday last year. It said IM CRUZIN.

Grace was right; we couldn’t take my car. I opened my mouth, about to suggest her Subaru before remembering that James had taken it to school. “Uber,” I said a minute later. “We’ll Uber to school, then Uber back here.”

Grace raised an eyebrow. “Ubering? Seriously?”

I didn’t respond; it was a rhetorical question.

“It’s supposed to look professional, Isa,” Grace said. “We—”

“No!” I didn’t let her finish, already reading her mind. “I know what you’re thinking, Grace, and the answer is no. ”

“But the vibes are immaculate,” she said. “Flashy but classy.”

My heart started to hammer. “Exactly,” I said. “My parents will one hundred percent notice when it vanishes from the garage.”

“Hasn’t your dad been in DC this week?” Grace asked.

“Yes,” I admitted, “but he’s coming home tonight.” While Mamá worked in finance in New York, Papá was a partner at a Philadelphia law firm and also taught a couple courses at Georgetown Law School, his alma mater. This semester he’d picked up an extra class, so instead of commuting via Amtrak all the time, he occasionally spent the whole week there. I’d found him the perfect apartment on Zillow.

Grace continued to goad me. “And your mom’s in the office, right?”

I grumbled.

“See, it’s perfect! We’ll have it back before dinner.”

Mmm, I mused. Dinner.

“Dinner” to my friends was somewhere between six and six-thirty, whereas to me, it pushed nine o’clock. Well, eight if we timed a take-out order to Mamá’s arrival home. Every restaurant in town knew the Cruz family.

Getting my parents’ car back before dinner wouldn’t be an issue. In fact, we could probably stop for gas on the way home from wherever and still be fine.

Nevertheless, my dear friend Anxiety told me to tighten my ponytail again. “I’ll need to crack my parents’ passcode to shut off the alarm system and disable the cameras,” I said. “We have one aimed at the garage.”

“Okay.” Grace nodded.

I gave her my famous stone-faced stare. “And we cannot damage it,” I told her. “Not a scratch, not a bruise, not a dent, nothing. Promise?”

She held out her pinkie finger. “Promise.”

I left her hanging for a moment, remembering a comment Papá had made about him and Mamá memorizing the mileage. Either it was a point of pride for them, so few miles, or they didn’t trust me. He was kidding, I told myself as I locked pinkies with Grace and squeezed tightly. There’s no way they know how many miles are on that car.

At least, I really hoped not.

Because thirty minutes later, there was no going back. After correctly guessing my parents’ password and disabling our security system from my phone, Grace and I’d zipped over the river (the local creek) and through the woods (my long, winding, tree-lined driveway) and now stood in front of the garage. The one Papá had designed for our holy trinity of vintage cars. Its door rose to reveal two of the three: the 1956 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud and the adorable powder blue VW Beetle that my grandmother—who was very much still alive —had bequeathed to Mamá. She’d bought it after immigrating to the US from Buenos Aires in the seventies.

I didn’t want either car to leave the garage. “Grace,” I whispered, watching her walk over to admire the sleek Silver Cloud. “My parents know its mileage. I really don’t think…” I swallowed hard. “Even if we get it back on time, they’ll notice the gauge.”

Grace looked up and over at me with wide eyes. “Oh my god,” she said. “Isa, no—no, no, no.I would never even daydream about it.” She patted the Cloud’s hood affectionately, then pointed past the Beetle. “I thought we’d sneak up on school in that. ”

My shoulders sagged in relief. Our red Tesla was on the far side of the garage. Luis and Pilar Cruz loved it, but it wasn’t on a pedestal like their classic cars. It barely ever needed to be plugged in to charge. “Let’s do it,” I agreed before Grace changed her mind; she was now definitely imagining us rolling up in the Rolls-Royce. I could tell from the faraway look on her face. “Would you like to drive the Musk-mobile?”