I jog over to the door in my mother’s ruffled red-and-white polka-dot apron and swing the door open.

“Oh, hell no,” I say the moment I see what’s waiting for me, and I swing the door shut again, locking the deadbolt and the chain.

“Callie,” says Ellen through the door. “We come in peace.”

“I don’t know about peace,” says Willowdean. “But could you at least pretend to have an ounce of manners and let us in?”

“What do you want?” I shout back.

“Tell her,” I hear Willowdean whisper.

Ellen says something too quietly for me to hear.

“We’re here on a mission,” Amanda shouts.

“Not for you,” Willowdean clarifies.

“We’re here for Millie,” says Hannah.

“Millie who?”

“That’s it,” Willowdean says. “Callie Reyes, I swear to Dolly Parton that if you don’t open this door, I’ll sit my ass here until your mama gets home, and if your mama is anything like mine, I’m sure she’d love to meddle all up in your personal business.”

I huff through my nose and unlock my door one lock at a time before finally opening it a few inches. “Well,” I say, not making any motions to welcome them inside. “Let’s get this over with.”

I open the door and find the four of them standing there with stern looks and crossed arms.

Hannah rolls her eyes. “This is such a waste of time,” she says under her breath.

“I agree,” I mutter as they all file in.

In the kitchen, we all sit down at the table, but there aren’t enough chairs. “I’d prefer to stand,” says Amanda.

I shrug and plop down into the chair I’d held out for her. “Is this some kind of intervention?”

Willowdean looks at Ellen with big wide eyes, telling her to go first, but Ellen nudges her forward with her chin just like my mom does when she’s trying to communicate with me in a room full of people.

“Never quite took you for the domestic type,” Willowdean finally says.

“Are you here to offer cooking tips or for some other God-ordained reason?” I spit back.

Hannah drums her nails, which have been colored in with black permanent marker. “No, but if you could go ahead and complete my Life Skills final and make me a casserole while you’re at it, I wouldn’t be mad.”

Amanda sniffs the air. “It does smell pretty good in here.”

Willowdean crosses her arms and looks to Ellen once more. “We don’t think you’re awful. And that turned out to be a really big surprise.”

Ellen rolls her eyes. “What my girl is trying to say is that we sort of got to know you over the last few months, thanks to Millie. And, well . . . Amanda filled us in on everything.”

Amanda leans against the counter, crossing her legs at the ankles. She digs into the fruit basket and takes an apple. “Like, right down to your necklace on the security footage at the gym.” She points at me, her eyes squinted as she bites into the apple, and with her mouth full, she adds, “By the way, I totally knew it was you who wallpapered the main hallway with that Shamrock shit list or whatever.”

“Okay,” says Hannah, “but that was, like, super obvious.”

“What do you want?” I ask, my tone exasperated. “I got shit to do.”

Ellen fidgets in her seat, crossing her legs back and forth. “What we’re getting at is that somehow we started to consider you a friend.”

“A friendly acquaintance,” says Willowdean.

Ellen swats at her thigh before continuing. “And friends tell friends when they’re being ridiculous.”

My eyes ping-pong back and forth between the two of them. “Friends?” I ask. “Ha! Are y’all delusional?” I know I’m playing it tough, but I can feel myself softening just a little bit. Maybe it’s the weeks I’ve spent without Millie, but this sudden, very tiny dash of . . . not kindness . . . but not awfulness . . . well, it’s tugging at my soft bits.

“I wouldn’t push your luck,” Willowdean tells me. She pauses before adding, “At first, we—”

Ellen nudges her.

“I,” Willowdean continues. “At first I didn’t get what Millie saw in you.”

“Nope,” says Hannah. “That’s definitely a we statement. Cosigned.”

A deeply satisfied grin spreads across Willowdean’s face. “You’re kind of selfish and rude and, like, really not that funny. But then you started coming around more and . . . well, you ended up being sort of funny.”

Amanda holds her apple up like a gavel. “For the record, I think you’re pretty damn funny.”

“And smart,” adds Ellen. “And loyal,” she says.

“Well, there’s something you don’t have much experience with,” I say.

Ellen swallows hard. “You’re right. After Willowdean and I mended our fence, I was certainly not loyal.”

“You ditched me,” I tell her, my voice flat, because I can’t risk letting her know how awful that really made me feel.

She nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. But gosh, Callie, you also gotta know that you haven’t always been the easiest person to be friends with. Hell, if anyone was gonna crack you, it would be Millie. So I’m sorry that I just ghosted on you after the pageant, but I’m also glad that I got a chance to get to know this new and improved version of you, too.”

“I get why you’re mad,” Willowdean says. “About Millie not telling you she was the one who recognized you on the security footage. You could say that I have a little bit of a temper, too. But would it have changed anything?”

“I might not have made that list,” I tell them. “With all the secrets. Or wasted so much time being pissed off at the Shamrocks—girls who were my friends.”

“Girls who let you carry that blame all alone,” says Ellen in a soft voice. “Listen, I don’t think there’s any use in pointing your anger in one direction or the other. The whole situation sucked, but it happened.”

My arms fall limp at my sides. I hadn’t realized that this whole time I was crossing them so tight over my chest.

Willowdean clears her throat. “And you gotta get over it. No use wasting a perfectly good friendship on yesterday’s history.”

“And Millie needs you.” Amanda tosses the core of her apple into the trash can from across the kitchen. “She didn’t get into camp at UT, and now she’s going back to Daisy Ranch. You get what a big deal that is, right?”

And that hits me right in the gut. I shake my head. “Oh my God. How could they not accept her? And she swore she wouldn’t go back to Daisy Ranch!”

Amanda nods. “Exactly. I tried talking some sense into her, but if you really care about Millie, maybe you should try, too.”

Ellen and Hannah stand up and join Amanda.

“Listen,” says Ellen, “if you ever want to—”

“I’m, like, super territorial,” Willowdean interjects, still sitting firmly in her seat. “Like the day we learned to share in elementary school? I was probably absent. But what Ellen is trying to say is that if you ever want to hang out . . .”

“We don’t mind having a third wheel,” Ellen finishes. “Or a fourth or a fifth or a sixth or whatever.”

I watch the four of them suspiciously. “Thanks for ringing my doorbell relentlessly.”

After they leave, I slide down the door and onto the floor, still wearing my mother’s apron. Shipley sniffs me, searching for scraps, before plopping down beside me, and I stroke her soft ears.

I can’t make my brain shut up. The dance team and whoever’s fault that it was that I was caught. Millie getting rejected by the broadcast journalism camp. Ellen. Willowdean. Hell, even Amanda and Hannah. All of it swirls around in my head and I can barely process any of it, so I do what I would do in any time of Shamrock crisis. I prioritize.

What is the one thing I can actually fix? I don’t know if there’s anything left to salvage with Sam and Melissa. And Millie . . . well, I know I need to go to her. I gotta make it right somehow. Not just because of me lashing out at her, but I can’t let her go back to Daisy Ranch. Not after the way she talked about all those summers there and how this would be the year everything changed. She was so damn positive and determined. There are a lot of people who could probably stand to be knocked down a few pegs, but Millie is not one of those people.