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“Is she going to prom?”

“No. She doesn’t have a date and she said she doesn’t want to third-wheel us or Sara.”

“Like it would be hard for her to get one.”

I choke back a laugh. “Yeah, you should go mention that to her; just make sure there aren’t any needles nearby.”

“Tell her to go anyway,” Park says. “What else has she got to do? Sit in a room full of stuffed animals with fake nipples?”

“Fair point,” I say. “I’ll see what I can do.”

49. ALEX

In my mind there is a scale.

I do not know how many small lives add up to a big one, or if there is a formula to work it out. How many cats do I have to save? How many dogs? How many injured animals on the road do I have to drag to safety, their blood on my hands, their wild-smelling hair on my clothes?

I think if there is a number then it must be very large, and so I keep my eyes open as I drive, when I run, as I walk through the halls at school. I’ve scooted spiders out of the path of heavy feet, let a field mouse in through the front door in the middle of winter, swerved on ice to miss raccoons. Everything I can think of, anything I can do to make it better.

I want to tell Jack that I’m doing these things, try to show him that if I don’t have regret, exactly, then at least I have guilt. I’ve put the words together, stitched them into sentences at night, hoping in the morning I will have the courage to spit them out like a string, the others flowing more easily after the first. But Branley is always with him, her normalcy so big and bright that I don’t want to put myself next to her, my darkness in stark contrast.

So I let it go. I feed the kittens. I listen to Park and Claire in their happiness and I pick up the next orphan in the box.

And the scale tips a tiny bit more.

50. JACK

My free ride came in, a magic carpet in the shape of a piece of paper that people took pictures of me signing.

Mom and Dad are smiling more, my future solidified by the swipe of a pen, though I know Mom’s is bittersweet. And I can’t even tell her I’ll come home a lot, because I won’t. Park is going to Kentucky, Branley is following me because her hooks don’t extract easily, and the only other person I’d bother coming back for is Alex, who I can’t think of without a wash of guilt and the taste of vomit in my throat.

They made a big announcement at school because we haven’t had anybody get a full ride since pocket change could pay tuition. They even had the marching band follow me around playing the fight song during one of the class changes. It was awkward and embarrassing and kind of awesome at the same time, and as I walked past the poster that has the senior countdown on it, I swear I choked up. Which doesn’t make any sense because all I’ve ever wanted to do is leave, and I’ve got a new fight song to learn anyway.

Then I passed Park and he pretended to punch me in the gut and we wrestled each other down to the ground, and the band circled around us, still playing, because they didn’t know what else to do. Which was so goddamn funny Park and I started laughing like idiots and then Peekay called us both assholes, and Park grabbed her ankle and pulled her down with us. She held her instrument in the air as she fell and screamed, “Not my trumpet!” which was equally hilarious.

It was a great fucking day, and I could pretend like there were tears in my eyes because I was laughing so hard. Nobody knew it was really because now that I get to leave there’s a part of me that’s going to miss this place, and nobody knew that when I passed Alex our eyes met, and I saw tears sitting in hers, too.

51. PEEKAY

You do not just tell Alex Craft she is going to prom.

I’m pretty sure Alex has never done a single thing in her life that she didn’t want to do, so finding a way to get her to prom is like casually suggesting to my dad that maybe he should consider Islam instead, just for variety.

Sara still needs a dress, so I told her we were taking Alex with us, hoping that somehow racks of dresses will have the same effect on her that depressed dogs in cages do. But Alex sits silently in the store, watching without comment as Sara parades around in a bunch of dresses. Open torso, slit to the hip, cut to the breastbone, skirt so short you can see the curve of her ass. Finally she puts on a deep purple one with an open back and Alex speaks up.

“That’s the one,” she says.

They’re the first words out of her mouth since she got in the car, so Sara actually listens. I’ve been spouting out compliments and advice for the better part of an hour. My arms are weighed down with a magenta “maybe” and a flamingo-pink “possibly,” but it’s Alex’s solitary comment that gets Sara’s attention.

“Why?” she asks, brow furrowed skeptically as she glances over her shoulder at Alex.

“You’ve got great back muscles,” Alex says.

“I do, don’t I?” Sara agrees, checking herself out in the three-way mirror. “So what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Let’s see those back muscles, girl.”