Page 9

Chapter 9

Everett

I trusted Grace. I trusted her implicitly, but right now, I felt that bittersweet sting of betrayal. Turn around, I wanted to say. Please, turn around and take me home. I have to go to Abigail’s science fair…

Everything had started out well enough—Isa was as icy as the neutral walls in Grace’s house, though that was nothing new—but now I knew where we were headed. And while Grace hadn’t told Isa and me our destination, I-95 South was pretty much a fifty-minute straight shot into Philadelphia. Years ago, on trips with Dad, it’d been the Yellow Brick Road that led to the Emerald City.

Sweat beading on my forehead, I could feel this morning’s Eggos stirring in my stomach, but I knotted my fingers together until my knuckles went white. I couldn’t puke in the Cruz Tesla, which I didn’t even know they owned until today. Isa would flip; she was already hard-core backseat driving, leaning forward every other minute to check the speedometer. “You’re going seventy-two in a sixty-five,” she told Grace, who replied, “But someone’s tailgating me, Officer!”

Plus, Grace had just made a crack about James and me and a nonexistent FCS parenting project that Isa had taken offense to on James’s behalf, so her feathers were ruffled. It looked like I wasn’t the only unhappy camper on this trip; Isa seemed bummed that James hadn’t been invited, and I wondered why. Today’s ride to school with him had been more than enough quality time for me.

“Any chance we can listen to something else?” I asked after we’d suffered through half of the Les Mis album. Isa’s voice brightened the depressing songs a little, but jeez, was that musical full of despair.

“Sure,” Isa said. “Your choice.”

I navigated across Spotify, scrolled for a bit, and soon a Taylor Swift song thumped over the speakers. Reputation ’s “Dancing with Our Hands Tied.”

Taylor’s Version, my thirteen-year-old sister Margot would’ve corrected me. It’s “Dancing with Our Hands Tied (Taylor’s Version).”

The Tesla seized in response. “Grace!” Isa screeched when the car snaked left in the lane, and after righting it, Grace quickly apologized as Isa launched into a lecture on the “care and control” of the car.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Grace tighten her hands on the steering wheel. Look at me, I willed her. Because if you look at me, I’ll look at you.

Did this song trigger her like it did me? A knot had tightened around my heart years ago, and I had an inkling Grace had an identical one—or hoped, at least. She and I’d never technically done anything (our one dance together had been to some club banger at my bar mitzvah), but we were somewhere in this song’s story.

I loved her. I loved her, and it felt like our hands were tied. The pressure in my chest told me our friendship couldn’t sustain itself as only a friendship; it was begging and pleading to be more, and if that didn’t happen, I would eventually be strangled by it. Inevitable, I thought as Grace’s gaze slid toward me for a beat. Her blue eyes sent a shiver up my spine. We are inevitable.

It was too bad our past and present made things so complicated.

But hey, shout-out to Margot for playing this album enough times that I was able to relate to it on a such a deep level.

After the first chorus, Isa dramatically sighed. “Hilarious, Everett.”

Grace chuckled. Isa, according to Margot, respected Taylor Swift as a musician, fashion icon, businesswoman, and overall voice of a generation, but Taylor’s pop era was not her cup of tea. She was cottagecore (whatever that meant), all about folklore and evermore.

I switched to Adele. Thanks to Mom, I also had her entire discography down, and I couldn’t help myself; I started dancing in my seat after another complaint from Isa. Maybe my morale couldn’t be boosted, but hers could. And I would try. Grace had shown up to school in a terrifying mascot costume. She had big plans for us.

So I bopped my head, shook my shoulders, and waved my arms in the air. “I’m cringing,” Isa announced, her lips twisting into a pout. She wanted to laugh, I know she did. “Some things never change.” Giggles soon spilled out of her mouth with no sign of stopping. There was Isa, a hint of the true Isa, the old Isa—my favorite person to annoy, knowing she secretly loved it as much as I did. “You are the worst dancer.”

“High praise!” I forced myself to joke as I inwardly spiraled. I wanted to turn around, I wanted to go home, I wanted to vomit, I wanted to get in bed, I wanted to sleep.

Maybe I’d dream of Grace.