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The guy out in front was all rugged-looking, dirty beard and a hat, a loose jacket. The kind of guy who I thought would laugh and tell us to keep on going while he kept the light on us. But he never even glanced at Branley or Park’s girl while they yanked their clothes in place. Instead he looked right at me and said, “Get the fuck out of here, douchebags.”

I was so busy tucking it all back in I thought everybody was pissed because of us, that their faces were set hard and their lights were pointing at the ground because they didn’t want to know—for sure—what we’d been doing. But that wasn’t it.

Her hand was sticking up out of the dirt, stripped to the bone, the gnawed-on skin peeled back to the wrist. I froze in the act of pulling up my zipper. I didn’t know then that once the area was cordoned off, parts of Anna Craft would be found all over the place. I thought it was a shallow grave she’d tried to dig herself out of, with me a few yards away doing my best to pound a different girl down into the ground.

“What?” Branley had said, eyes on my face as always, completely missing that they’d found what we were supposed to be looking for.

I left her. I did exactly what that guy said and turned around and got the fuck out of there. I ran because one of the faces in that circle of light was Alex Craft, a girl I’d gone to school with my whole life, a girl who sometimes you don’t see. I saw her then, as she reached down to touch her sister’s dirt-streaked fingers, like a kid digging up a toy that got mired in the sandbox. And I haven’t been able to unsee her since.

This is what I think about when she brushes past me on the first day of our senior year, her dark hair swinging as she walks, face still wearing the hard mask I saw that night, like it’s permanently set.

I wonder if she heard that guy call me a douchebag.

And I want to know if she agrees.

Because I sure as hell do.

3. PEEKAY

I have a name, but everyone just calls me Peekay because I’m the PK—Preacher’s Kid. I’m thinking about this because my name—or at least my nickname—should be somewhere in the pic Sara just sent me, a screencap she snatched off my boyfriend’s phone while he was passed out at a party. A screencap of increasingly dirty sexting that should alternate between Adam and Peekay but instead says Adam and Branley.

I toss my phone into the passenger seat and focus on not crying while I wait for the woman from the animal shelter to arrive and unlock the building. My leg is bouncing up and down while I burn off my anger, the car keys jangling against my knee. I yank them out of the ignition when I spot the beaded key chain that says “Peekay & Adam 4-Ever.” It’s made out of letters and footballs and hearts, the paint rubbed away in spots from years of friction as it passed in and out of my jeans pocket.

Years.

“Fucker,” I say, and break the black cord that holds them all together, sending letters and hearts and footballs all over my car.

I’m not supposed to say that word, because I’m a preacher’s kid. But I’m also not supposed to drink beer or know what a dick smells like, so language is the least of my sins. My phone makes a noise at me, one that used to make me dive for it in the middle of the night, breathless and happy. A noise that used to send my stomach up in my throat. Except now that organ is definitely going another way, and I get out of my car so I don’t have to look at the screen all lit up with his name, hearts on either side of it. Some beads roll out behind me and one crunches under my foot as I get out.

It’s the “&.”

More pieces fall out onto the gravel and I hear another car. I tuck my hands up into the sleeves of my hoodie because it’s colder than it’s supposed to be today (thanks, Ohio) and I’m ready to get inside the shelter and start my Senior Year Experience.

On my grade card it will say SYE—Animal Shelter Volunteer, and that will probably be followed by a capital A, nicely aligned with all the others. I have a very different idea about what constitutes a Senior Year Experience, and Adam was supposed to be a part of that. Until now.

I stomp my foot, telling myself I’m doing it to keep warm, and that the little heart charm that has now been ground into a fine powder had nothing to do with it. The other car pulls up next to mine, but it’s not the lady from the shelter. It’s another student, and it takes me a second to place her as she gets out of the car.

Actually, that’s kind of a lie. I know exactly who she is, I just can’t remember her name. So I’m standing there, my fists balled up in fabric and my feet smacking against the ground, when I say, “Hey, Anna. You volunteering here for SYE?”

She looks at me for a second before I realize what I just did.

“I’m Alex,” she says.

“I know, right. Yeah, I totally know,” I say, my words falling out all over each other. “It’s just—”

“It’s just that when you look at me all you think about is my older sister, so your brain offers that name instead.”

“Yeah,” I say, more than a little set back by her factual presentation, like I’m a science fair judge instead of a girl who just put her foot in her mouth.

“Yeah,” she echoes back at me, then moves toward the shelter. Which, it turns out, was unlocked.

I watch her walk away from me, back rigid, and I think it’s going to be a long Senior Year Experience. Then I hear my phone again, insistently making its Adam noise, and I think about those texts between him and Branley Jacobs and that word slips out of me again.

“Fucker.”

It’s cold enough that it makes a fog in front of my mouth when I say it, and even though I brushed good this morning I can smell stale beer. So there’s the word and the beer, all hanging there together in the air, and my dad would probably be really disappointed in me right now. Also because I know what a dick smells like. Or what Adam’s does, anyway.

But just his.