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“Where?” she screams again, raising the wine bottle as if she’s about to throw it on the head of anyone who withholds information.

“Branley, honey . . . ,” Lila says cautiously, climbing the steps toward what can only be her utter annihilation.

“Don’t you honey me,” Branley yells, scanning the downstairs for a target. Her eyes catch mine and I will her to be drunk enough not to recognize me.

“Is Alex here?” she demands. “Did she fucking come here?”

My tongue feels like it’s glued to the roof of my mouth, but I don’t need to answer because Branley is already coming down, bare feet slipping on the last few steps. Lila catches her but she jerks her arm away, gaze still locked on mine.

“Bran, I think maybe—” Park begins.

“I’m not talking to you,” Branley interrupts. “I’m talking to Peekay.” She points at me, her finger a bare inch from my face.

It’s the nails that get me. I know Branley, like it or not, and she aims for nothing less than perfection. Earlier tonight those nails were glossy, buffed, manicured, the pearlescent hue accenting the blue of her dress in tiny complementary ways that only someone who spent a few hours poring over colors would appreciate.

And now those nails are gone. Ragged. Bitten to the quick. Even the tender skin alongside the nail beds has been chewed. I don’t know how long Branley has been upstairs alone, but she drained a bottle of wine and gnawed at herself before the anger drove her down here.

She tried. That’s what I’m seeing in the damaged hand sticking in my face, the tracks of ruined eye makeup running down her cheeks. Branley tried to keep her abandonment to herself, tried to not make a scene, tried to retain some dignity.

And it’s leaking away, right now, right in front of me. The girls are using one hand to cover sly smiles and the guys aren’t even trying to hide the fact that they’re taking pics of Branley in her lingerie.

“C’mon,” I say, dragging a blanket off the back of the couch and throwing it around her shoulders. A little sigh escapes her and she sort of collapses forward into me, all her energy gone now that the anger has been spent. I lead her to the bathroom and she slumps into a corner, tanned legs now riddled with goose bumps.

I wet a washcloth and start working on her face, wiping away the layers of makeup that she painstakingly applied before, all of it for Jack. I wash away the remnants of lipstick, now feathered and cracked instead of decorating his body the way she’d planned. I clean her face while she sobs, her shoulders going up and down in a silent dance of bottomless sadness that I’m only too familiar with.

Branley’s heart is broken and it’s Jack Fisher who’s done it to her.

I can’t help but comfort her, wrapping the blanket around her tightly while she searches for words, telling me things that I’m not meant to hear. There are a couple of hesitant knocks, quiet questions whispered through the door by girls who only want to help, but Branley tells them all to go away. It’s me she wants, me she’s pouring herself into. And as Alex’s friend, I’m the worst possible choice.

“Does he love her?” Branley asks, her fist tight around a tissue.

“I don’t know,” I tell her, glad I can answer honestly. “If he said so, she never told me.”

“But what do you think?”

I wish I could say I don’t know again, but I saw Jack’s face when he spotted Alex tonight at prom, have watched him try to move through every day that they’ve been apart as if he wasn’t being torn in two.

“Yeah, he loves her,” I say. “And I’m pretty sure she loves him.”

I thought Branley would break down again when I said it, but she just nods as if I’ve confirmed the inevitable and blows her nose.

“It’s all I’ve got, you know,” she says.

“What?”

“This.” She indicates her drop-dead body with a casual wave. “I’m not smart or funny or mysterious.”

“Uh, you’re hot,” I tell her. “That goes a long way.”

“Nope,” she says, shaking her head. “What have I got left? Ten years? Fifteen? How long before my tits sag and my hair goes gray and I get wrinkles? How much makeup will I have to wear to compete with the other women who are interesting so people listen to them, who got good jobs because they’re smart, who got Jack because they’re mysterious? How long before my husband gets bored and bangs a younger version of me because I don’t have it anymore?”

Branley just asked me a long line of really depressing questions and I don’t have answers for any of them. I think she’s selling herself short because I’ve glanced at her papers when they come back and she pulls Cs. She might not be Ivy League, but she’s not a dumbass, and being nice might go a long way if she, you know . . . tried practicing it a little bit more. I don’t tell her these things because she’s drunk as shit and barreling on and probably wouldn’t remember anyway.

“This is what I am,” she says. “And I’ve only got so much time to use it in, so that’s what I’ve done and it wasn’t always the right thing and maybe it didn’t even make me feel good sometimes.”

She blows her nose again, and wads up the tissue. I hand her a fresh.

“I’m sorry about Adam,” she says.