“Why are you sitting in the dark?”

“Eh, don’t know. I’ve been sitting here awhile. It’s peaceful. Tiff’s out at a Black Friday blowout sale with her friends. Where’ve you been?”

“I got a job. At the Camelot,” I said.

“Really? Why?” he asked, tipping his nightly glass of Bushmills to his lips. I sat down on the opposite end of the sofa.

“Don’t know. Seemed like a good thing to do. A way to keep busy,” I answered.

“Guess it’s better than pounding those drums.”

“Yeah, guess so.”

“Your mom called.”

I swallowed, hard, the cold beer burning the back of my throat. The taste of grease and cheese snaked its way up, not as good the second time around. Pop and Tiff had been out when I got in the night before and were still sleeping when I’d left in the morning. We hadn’t discussed Thanksgiving at all.

“Why did you hightail it out of there before dessert?”

I shrugged. “Watching my figure.”

Pop took another sip of Bushmills. “Your mother told me about the lacrosse thing. Grayson, if it bothers you so much, there’s got to be some league you could play in.”

“Pop, it doesn’t bother me,” I said, not wanting to get into a conversation about how I missed St. Gabe’s, which would just set him off into stories from his glory days. Today had been a good day, a day I’d forgotten about all that other crap.

“Then why’d you leave? You know how much this stuff upsets your mother. You have to take one for the team now and again.”

“What team? I’m definitely not an Easton.”

He swirled the whiskey in his glass. “Grayson, you know, if the tables were turned and you agreed to live with her, there’d be no way I’d put up with your bullshit. They are your family. It’s about time you came ’round to it.”

The day my mother left wasn’t monumental. My parents’ divorce was sickeningly amicable. That’s the word I heard them use when talking to friends. I remember looking it up. Peaceful. And on the surface, it was true. There were no shouting matches. No glasses thrown across the room. No heated debates over who got what. They simply woke up one day, decided they didn’t like the life they were living, and said, “Okay, done with this . . . next.” But the one thing they couldn’t split down the middle was me.

My mother had wanted me to live in Connecticut with her and Laird. This was before I figured out they’d probably been together before she broke up with Pop. I was in sixth grade and didn’t want to leave my friends. That was natural, she’d said, but I’d make new friends. Have better opportunities. A whole new world. And a dog.

I’d been groomed by Pop to go to St. Gabe’s. The silver and crimson Crusaders. Sat and froze my butt off during every Turkey Day game with him telling me, “That’ll be you someday, kid.” And even though I had no interest in football, the way he took such pride in it, the way he talked about the good old days, made St. Gabe’s sound like the only place for me.

But the dog . . . the dog was a tipping point. My mother had given me an out clause: If I completely hated it, I could come back and live with Pop. I would have weekends and holidays in Bayonne and summer vacations wherever he chose to take me. It would all work out great, she assured me. And I had decided as much. It was after school, on a Friday at dusk, when I’d padded down the stairs to tell him I’d give the Connecticut thing a try.

He’d stood with his back to me by our sliding doors to the deck. We had this thing about scaring each other, and I was stoked, because damn, this was a good one. He’d been so deep in thought, he hadn’t even heard me walk across the living room floor. I was about parallel to him, ready to pounce, when I noticed he was crying. Not sobs, just quiet, wet streams on his face. He was holding his glass of Bushmills, swirling the ice in the glass. And in that instant, even at eleven, I knew that if I left, this was what his life would become. When he saw me, he staggered back and dropped the glass of whiskey. The moment became about mops and blotting and vacuuming the shards, and it all took a good ten minutes to clean up.

We’d had a frozen Red Baron pepperoni pizza that night, and I’d told him I wanted to stay with him.

My mother already had Mr. Motherfucking Home Wrecker and a wedding date and a house in Connecticut. Pop had me, Bushmills, and frozen pizza. Maybe it all would have gone down the same if I chose to live with my mother. Maybe Pop would have found Tiff, and his real-estate business would still have boomed. But maybe it wouldn’t have.

“Screw them,” I said, standing up. Sick of the darkness, the beer, and the depressing direction this conversation had taken, I clicked on the lamp and squinted in pain. My father put his hand over his eyes.

“Hey, don’t talk that way about your mother,” he said.

“Why? If she cared so much about keeping the family together, why’d she go create a new one?”

My father made an attempt to stand up, but he kept sliding down, losing his footing. He slammed down his drink on the end table; a splash of whiskey came up over the side.

“I hate this effing couch; my ass keeps slipping!” he yelled. A beat passed where neither of us said anything, just stared until we both cracked up. I reached out, gave him a hand, and pulled him to standing. He squeezed my shoulder.

“They are your family, Grayson. Even Laird.”

“Whatever.”

“Don’t whatever me. I won’t be here forever.”

“That’s the whiskey talking. Stop.”

“Maybe. But promise you’ll make an effort at Christmas.”

“Yeah, sure,” I lied.

NINE

WREN

“SO TELL ME AGAIN, WHAT WAS WRONG WITH Caleb?” Maddie asked, handing me another piece of tape.

In an attempt to build some community-service hours, I’d joined the Sacred Heart Spirit Club. The club must have been a holdover from the century when most Sacred Heart students got married right after graduation. The bylaws were an old-fashioned decree about learning how to beautify the world at large, beginning at home. I was pretty sure that hanging glitter stars and snowflake garlands along the hallways after school wouldn’t impact the world at large, but if it counted as community service, then I was determined to beautify. Mads was along for moral support.

“Let’s see, he licked my neck—and not in a sexy way, in a Great Dane kind of way. Sloppy,” I said, securing part of the garland and shimmying across the step stool to drape the rest of it. I reached out for more tape.

“That’s it? One flaw was enough to make you blow us off for the rest of the weekend?” she asked. She pulled the tape away as I reached for it, forcing me to turn to her.

“What?” I asked, grabbing it.

“There’s more to this, Wren. I know it. Caleb was hot, funny, and here for two nights. In a word, perfect.”

“Then why didn’t you offer Jazz that perfection?” I asked, taping the last bit of garland to the crease where the wall met the ceiling.

“I did. She wanted to rest up for her long run on Sunday, so she said. I think she’s just afraid that no one will live up to her movie-romance ideals,” she said, giving me a hand down. “Besides, Caleb was really into you.”

“What do you think?” I asked, stepping back to admire my work.

“I think you’re above decorating the hallway,” Maddie said. “Wren, why did you join this lame club? You know it’s like—”

“NHS lite, I know. It’s not all about decorating the hallway. They do some cool community-service projects too. I just want to do something, Mads, not sit back and wait until I’m worthy enough for the NHS.”

“What about yearbook? You’ll be up for editor next year.”

I loved yearbook. Of course, it helped that both Jazz and Mads were on the committee. The solitude of working on copy or figuring out the puzzle of an interesting layout was perfect for me, but I wanted to do something different too.

“Yearbook’s great, but it’s not exactly social, is it? I need to get myself out there. Prove being quiet doesn’t mean I don’t want to be a part of anything. So Spirit Club it is. I think that garland looks exceptional, don’t you?”

“It’s crooked,” said a voice from behind us.

We parted to see Ava Taylor, vice president of the Spirit Club and all-around annoying suck-up. For some reason Ava liked to pretend that she wasn’t once the third corner of the Maddie/Wren/Ava triangle of St. Vincent de Paul grammar school. During the summer between eighth grade and freshman year, she got her first kiss from a high school guy and dumped us as if we were some Barbie-playing ten-year-olds. At freshman orientation she already had a circle of friends and made it clear we weren’t welcome by completely ignoring us. Soon after we stopped analyzing why and went on with our own social lives. We met Jazz, and she more than filled the void Ava had left.

But, still.

Our disbanded friendship was the big pink elephant in a tutu pirouetting in the hallway. Part of me believed that if I stared into Ava’s eyes long enough, the girl who could write in cursive backward and touch the tip of her nose with her tongue would still be in there. The same girl who insisted we build a tent of blankets in her room to sleep under, but who later laid out such a whomping fart, we had to vacate and sleep in her den.

These days it looked like Ava farted pixie dust, if she farted at all. Her cool, green eyes surveyed my work. The corner of her mouth downturned slightly. She got up on the stepladder and moved the end of the garland two inches to the left.

“Perfect,” she said, stepping down.

“Big difference,” Maddie said under her breath.

Ava folded up the stepladder, put it against the wall, and clapped her hands together as if she were trying to get dust off of them.

“That’s all for today. Be here fifteen minutes before the first bell tomorrow. That should be enough time to finish up.”

“Why can’t we finish up now?” I asked.

“I have dance-team practice. Competition season is coming up. Don’t worry about being late to your first class. Spirit Club is always excused.”

“Great,” I answered, not thrilled with the prospect of having to wake up earlier all for the sake of hanging decorations.

“You know, I’ve been dying to talk to you, Wren,” Ava said, coiling her arm around mine. My body stiffened. Maddie’s eyes nearly popped out of her skull. My expression had to be the same.

“About what?”

“Darby Greene told me Grayson Barrett picked you up after school last week? Is that true?” She asked the question slowly as we strolled down the hallway, keeping her eyes forward until the last word.

“Yes.”

She snickered. “Oh my God, I didn’t believe her. How do you know him?”

My skin prickled.

“She saved his life,” Maddie said, stopping in front of us. I’d been about to give a less informative answer.

Ava unhooked her arm from mine and her hand went up to her mouth. She puzzled a moment until her eyes charged with understanding. “Wait, so you’re the cocktail waitress?”

“Cocktail waitress?” I said. How could she possibly know any of this?

“That’s right. You work at your parents’ catering place; Gray was at his cousin’s wedding. Now it makes sense, sort of. Still, why did he pick you up after school?”

“I don’t know why he picked me up. He just did. Why do you care?” I asked, my eyes narrowing.

She stepped back, her full ponytail swaying with the movement. “I don’t. Just wondering how you know him. You don’t exactly hang out with the same people, do you?”

“Where do you get off—” Maddie began, but I put my hand up to stop her and then glared at Ava.

“We work together. At the Camelot. We’re pretty tight,” I said, fabricating.

“Seriously? Grayson works with you?”

I spun away from her, done with the conversation, angry with myself for giving her one shred of information. Why didn’t I just keep quiet? Maddie caught up to me, her mouth a thin line.

“Why did you stop me? I wanted to let her have it,” she said.

“I can fight my own battles,” I snapped, galloping down the stairs ahead of her to the locker dungeon.

“Wren, why are you mad at me?” she asked, calling after me.

I growled and ignored her question, stomping off to my locker. I took out my frustrations by shoving books into my messenger bag. I wasn’t even sure what I needed. I flung my scarf around my neck, grabbed my coat, and slammed my locker shut, turning the lock dial in a violent twist. Maddie was waiting at the top of the stairs in the vestibule.