The calm, firm words freaked Allegra out. Hope had never seen her sister lose her composure in this way. Allegra was screaming, her hair was wild, and she tore around Hope’s bedroom as though looking for a way off the Titanic. She stared at Hope’s phone, saying, “What do I tell him? How do I get him to forgive me?”

Hope sighed. She wished that she, like Cyrano de Bergerac, had magic words to offer her sister. But, even with as little experience as Hope had with relationships, she knew that Brick was beyond Allegra’s reach at this point. He might forgive her in ten years or, more likely, twenty or thirty—when he was forty-six and possibly had a tempestuous sixteen-year-old daughter of his own.

“I don’t know?” she said.

Allegra handed Hope the phone and said, “Here, you text him. He’s always liked you. He respects you. Tell him I’m not doing well. Tell him to at least take my phone call.”

“Okay,” Hope said. She sent Brick a text that said: Hot glass looks like cool glass.

She waited. Surely he would respond to their secret code?

Nothing.

She texted: My sister isn’t doing well. She’s probably too selfish to actually kill herself, but high anxiety and depression are likely. Can you please just talk to her? Thanks. Your friend, Hope.

Brick responded: Please never contact me again.

Hope texted: It’s me, Hope. Really. Hot glass looks like cool glass.

Brick texted: Yes, I know, Hope. Please never contact me again.

Hope felt stung. This was not how it was supposed to go. Hope and Brick were supposed to forge a secret connection, a deep simpatico understanding that would lead to Brick falling in love with her. Brick was supposed to realize that Hope was everything Allegra was, only she was also good, nice, kind, and honest.

Hope threw the phone down on the bed. “He hates me, too, apparently.”

Allegra started to wail. She picked the phone up to call him again, and that was when the screen started blowing up with texts from Hollis, Hannah, Kenzie, and Bluto. And none of them were very nice. Hope read the texts over Allegra’s shoulder and cringed at the names her friends were calling her: boozehound, pothead, anorexic slut.

“Do I look anorexic?” Allegra asked, showing Hope the photo.

“Well, you don’t look fat,” Hope said, in a voice meant to point out a silver lining. In fact, despite the gruesome circumstances, the photo of Allegra was gorgeous in a way. Minus the booze and dope, Allegra and Ian might have been doing a shoot for fragrance. “Maybe the photo will go viral and someone at a modeling agency will see it?”

Allegra gave her sister a hopeful, watery gaze. “You think? Maybe?”

A text came in from Bluto: Lying, cheating slut.

“Maybe,” Hope said.

Allegra put up a good fight. She had some choice words for Hollis and Kenzie, and she unleashed a mighty wrath on Bluto, calling him a lard-ass succubus. When she ran out of oomph, she fell back on the bed next to Hope.

She said, “I don’t know what to do.”

Hope said, “They’ll come around.”

“It doesn’t matter. The toothpaste is out of the tube. You can’t call someone a lying, cheating slut and then take it back. These are relationship destroyers. It’s all Hollis’s fault. She’s been waiting for years to knock me down.”

Hope had to concede that this might be true. Hollis and Allegra were pretty well matched, but Allegra had always been just a little bit luckier. Now that she had proved herself fallible, Hollis would solely retain the title of Queen Bee.

“This too shall pass away,” Hope said.

“So what do I do until then?”

Hope didn’t understand the question and said so.

“What do I do until it ‘passes away’?” Allegra said. “I don’t have a job, like you. Now I can’t go to the beach. I’m forbidden from leaving the house, for starters, but even if I weren’t grounded, I couldn’t go to the beach alone.”

“Well,” Hope said, “you could always read.”

“Read?” Allegra said. Her tone of voice contained actual wonder, as if to say, What? As if to say, Why would I do that?

Hope tossed her sister the copy of Lolita. Hope had recently finished it and was thus able to claim personhood. The book had been excellent, thought provoking, original, and weird.

“Read this,” Hope said. “There are some big words in it. It’ll help you with your critical reading score.”

Allegra studied the cover of the book skeptically. “Lolita. Vladimir Nabokov. Is it even in English?”

“Yes,” Hope said. “It’s about a grown man named Humbert Humbert, who abducts a thirteen-year-old girl and drives with her across America.”

“Sick,” Allegra said, but Hope could tell her interest was piqued.

Allegra had stayed in Hope’s bedroom all of that first bad day, reading and napping, and Hope stayed in the room as well. She plowed through most of House of Mirth, and then she practiced her flute. She told herself she was staying in her room to watch over her sister so that she didn’t do anything stupid, but really Hope was just enjoying their quiet camaraderie. When Hope finished playing a selection from Mozart’s Flute Concerto in G, Allegra—who was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling, with Lolita splayed open on her chest—said, “You’re really good. I wish I were good at something.”

Hope said, “You’re good at things.”