Soda went everywhere, mostly out of my nose. Some of it got on my Benetton sweater set.

CeeCee was completely unsympathetic. “It’s diet,” she said. “It won’t stain. So how come we haven’t met him?”

“Yeah,” Adam said, getting over his initial mirth at seeing soda come out of my nostrils. “And how come this Paul guy knows him, and we don’t?”

Dabbing myself with a napkin, I glanced in Paul’s direction. He was sitting on a bench not too far away, surrounded by Kelly Prescott and the other popular people in our class, all of whom were laughing uproariously at some story he’d just told them.

“Jesse’s just a guy,” I said, because I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be able to get away with brushing their questions off. Not this time.

“Just a guy,” CeeCee repeated. “Just a guy you are apparently going out with, according to this Paul.”

“Well,” I said uncomfortably. “Yeah. I guess I am. Sort of. I mean…it’s complicated.”

Complicated? My relationship with Jesse made Critical Theory Since Plato look like The Poky Little Puppy.

“So,” CeeCee said, crossing her legs and nibbling contentedly from a bag of baby carrots in her lap. “Tell. Where’d you two meet?”

I could not believe I was actually sitting there, discussing Jesse with my friends. My friends whom I’d worked so hard to keep in the dark about him.

“He, um, lives in my neighborhood,” I said. No point in telling them the absolute truth.

“He go to RLS?” Adam wanted to know, referring to Robert Louis Stevenson School and reaching over me to grab a carrot from the bag in CeeCee’s lap.

“Um,” I said. “Not exactly.”

“Don’t tell me he goes to Carmel High.” CeeCee’s eyes widened.

“He’s not in high school anymore,” I said, since I knew that, given CeeCee’s nature, she’d never rest until she knew all. “He, um, graduated already.”

“Whoa,” CeeCee said. “An older man. Well, no wonder you’re keeping him a secret. So, what is he, in college?”

“Not really,” I said. “He’s, uh, taking some time off. To kind of…find himself.”

“Hmph.” Adam leaned back against the bench and closed his eyes, letting the strong midday sun caress his face. “A slacker. You can do better, Suze. What you need is a guy with a good solid work ethic. A guy like…Hey, I know. Me!”

CeeCee, who had had her eye on Adam for as long as I’d known them both, ignored him.

“How long have you guys been going out?” she wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” I said, feeling pretty miserable now. “It’s all sort of new. I mean, I’ve known him for a while, but the whole dating angle of it…that’s new. And it isn’t really…Well, I don’t really like to talk about it.”

“Talk about what?” A shadow loomed over our bench. Squinting, I looked up and saw my younger stepbrother, David, standing there, his red hair glowing like a halo in the hot sun.

“Nothing,” I said, quickly.

Out of everyone in my family—and yes, I did think of the Ackermans, my stepdad and his sons, as part of my family now, the little family that used to be made up of just my mom and me after my dad died—thirteen-year-old David was the one closest to knowing the truth about me. That I wasn’t the merely somewhat discontented teenaged girl I pretended to be, that is.

What’s more, David knew about Jesse. Knew, and yet didn’t know. Because while he, like everyone in the house, had noticed my sudden mood swings and mysterious absence from the family room every night, he could not even begin to imagine what was behind it all.

Now he stood in front of our bench—which was pretty daring, since the upperclassmen did not tend to take kindly to eighth graders like David coming over to what they considered their side of the assembly yard—trying to look like he belonged there, which, considering his hundred-pound frame, braces, and sticky-out ears, could not have been further from the truth.

“Did you see this?” he asked now, shoving a piece of paper beneath my nose.

I took the paper from him. It turned out to be a flyer advertising a hot tub party at 99 Pine Crest Drive on this coming Friday night. Guests were invited to bring a swimsuit if they wanted to have some “hot ’n’ frothy fun.” Or if they chose to forsake a suit, that was all right, particularly if they happened to be of the female persuasion.

There was a crude drawing on the flyer of a tipsy-looking girl with large breasts downing a can of beer.

“No, you can’t go,” I said, handing the flyer back to David with a snort. “You’re too young. And somebody ought to show this to your class adviser. Eighth graders shouldn’t be having parties like this.”

CeeCee, who’d taken the flyer from David’s hands, went, “Um, Suze.”

“Seriously,” I continued. “And I’m surprised at you, David. I thought you were smarter than that. Nothing good ever comes from parties like that. Sure, some people will have fun. But ten to one somebody will end up having to get his stomach pumped or drown or crack his head open or something. It’s always fun until someone gets hurt.”

“Suze.” CeeCee held the flyer up in front of my face just inches from my nose. “Ninety-nine Pine Crest Drive. That’s your house, isn’t it?”

I snatched the flyer away from her with a gasp. “David! What can you be thinking?”

“It wasn’t me,” David cried, his already wobbly voice going up another two or three octaves. “Somebody showed it to me in social studies. Brad’s passing them around. Some of the seventh graders got some, even—”

I narrowed my eyes in my stepbrother Brad’s direction. He was leaning against the basketball pole, trying to look cool, which was pretty hard for a guy whose cerebral cortex was coated, as far as I could tell, with WD-40.

“Excuse me,” I said, standing up. “I have to go commit a murder.” Then I stalked across the basketball court, the bright orange flyer in my hand.

Brad saw me coming. I noted the look of naked panic that flitted across his features as his gaze fell upon what I had in my hand. He straightened up and tried to run, but I was too quick for him. I cornered him by the drinking fountain and held the flyer up so that he could see it.