Almost unattainable scores on the SAT were my only hope of scraping my sorry ass into college past the pathetic GPA I could only raise so much. Not even a straight 4.0 this year would be enough. I’d made use of every free online pretest and every study guide in the library for the past eight or nine months. If my scores on this goddamned entrance exam weren’t ridiculously high, I was screwed, and there would be no string Heller could pull to change that fact.

I hit enter, the screen flashed several times, and then there they were: the numbers that determined my future. I sat back in the chair, staring, my heart rate hurtling higher.

I’d done it.

‘Ninety-eighth percentile?’ Boyce’s brows arched and he hooted. ‘Does that mean what I think it means? Shit, man. I knew you were a brain, but holy f**k.’ He grabbed my shoulders and shook them, laughing. Boyce was the only person – Heller aside – who knew how badly I wanted this escape. How much I needed it. ‘Dude, you did it.’

I nodded, still stunned.

‘Oh, man.’ He shoved me. ‘This sucks. I’m going to be stuck in this crap town while you run off and f**k tons of college girls.’

I shook my head and smiled. Leave it to Boyce to zero in on the only part of college that might have appealed to him.

Belatedly, we heard a truck door slam. ‘Shit,’ we said in unison.

The bell over the door jangled right after I cleared the history, shut the computer down, and bolted from the chair, but Boyce’s dad wasn’t a complete idiot.

‘You jackasses looking at  p**n  again on my computer?’ he roared, not even waiting for the door to shut behind him. Thinning hair stood straight up on his head, as though he’d received an electric shock.

Technically, we’d only watched  p**n  on his computer once, though I was pretty sure Boyce still did it whenever he could. We’d come to an unspoken agreement that watching it together was too weird.

‘We were looking up college entrance exam scores,’ Boyce said, tracking his father’s movements. I didn’t even know he could string those words together.

‘Lyin’ sack of shit,’ Mr Wynn growled, lunging. We slid out of his way, Boyce ducking the meaty fist that flew at his head, halfheartedly, the way you’d wave a hand at a fly to shoo it away. His dad cursed us all the way out the door.

Boyce and I had bonded over defective fathers and absent mothers, but that’s as far as the parallels went. His father was an abusive f**k, where mine was silent and detached. His mother left his father – and her two sons – when he was almost too young to remember her. He’d never seemed to hold her desertion against her. I would’ve ditched his ass, too, if I was her, was all he’d ever said about it.

‘Time to celebrate, my man.’ He steered me towards the Trans Am as his father cursed him from the door of the shop.

‘Quittin’ time is at six!’ he bellowed, ignoring the fact that he’d closed up for two hours mid-afternoon to visit a ‘lady friend’ in the next town – a person Boyce and I weren’t certain existed. How any woman could find Bud Wynn attractive was beyond our powers of imagination. ‘You worthless piece of –’

We slammed wing-wide doors shut on the familiar tirade and Boyce turned the key, igniting the stereo, while I grudgingly acknowledged the sounder fact of my father’s muteness.

LUCAS

Jacqueline would be moving home in two days. The space between us was magnetized – I couldn’t think of another way to describe it. I fought her pull every second of the past twenty hours. I knew exactly where she was, and I wanted to be there. I hoped that once she was gone, once she was further from me, I would get a respite.

Carlie and Caleb were in my apartment, playing video games. They were in that zone – the one where school has let out for two weeks, and there’s nothing but eating and sleeping late and getting presents as far as you can see – because at sixteen and eleven, you can’t see all that far. You think you can … but you can’t.

I can’t say their perspective was contagious, but it was fun to watch.

There was a knock on the door, but I wasn’t expecting anyone. Before I could think, Carlie was up and unbolting the door.

‘Who is it, Carlie?’ I jumped up, going for the bat. ‘Don’t just open the door –’

‘It’s a girl,’ she said, rolling her big, dark eyes.

A girl? What girl? Carlie pulled the door open. ‘Jacqueline?’ I said needlessly, because of course it was Jacqueline, showing up after I’d told her goodbye. ‘What are you doing here?’

She turned to tear down the stairs and without thinking I reached out and seized her arm. Her momentum swung her right into the air. I grabbed her with both hands and pulled her to my chest, my heart stopping, restarting, revving up, and then slamming like a train engine. When she wriggled like she wanted loose, I realized that a pretty girl had answered my door.

‘She’s Carlie Heller,’ I murmured, leaning to her ear. ‘Her brother Caleb is inside, too. We’re playing video games.’

She swayed into me, professing unnecessary apologies into my chest.

The last thing I could feel, holding her in my arms, was sorry. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have come without telling me, but I can’t be sorry to see you.’

I confused her. That was obvious enough. I supplied some implausible excuse about trying to protect her with this separation, and my brain scoffed – liar – while she told me that didn’t make sense.

‘Unless … you don’t want to,’ she said.

Unless I don’t want to? My whole body was prepared to mutiny if I allowed her to leave here thinking I didn’t want her. I shoved both hands into my hair.

‘Brrr! Are y’all coming in, or what?’ Carlie said behind me. ‘’Cause I’m closing this door.’

Jacqueline was shivering, and I was standing barefoot on the landing outside in the middle of December. I captured her hand in mine and brought her inside, refusing to consider Carlie’s hundred-watt smile. She went back to her corner of the sofa, where Francis allowed himself to be hoisted and repositioned in a way that would’ve got anyone else on the planet a hiss and scratch.

Caleb, objecting to the disruption because he’d been kicking Carlie’s ass and mine, made some surly comment and got an elbow from his sister while I placed Jacqueline in my corner of the sofa. After making introductions, I sat on the floor in front of her and wondered what the hell to do now. Unchartered territory – that’s what this was. I’d given her every reason to let go, and she wasn’t doing it.