neck. I hugged her back, but my stomach was still clenched.
“Are you okay, Codi?”
“Yeah,” I said, hugging her tighter.
She rubbed her hands up and down my back. “It was a great party.”
I swallowed against the sudden swelling in my throat. “You think so?”
“People like being around you. You know who you are and what you feel.”
I couldn’t answer. She kissed the side of my head and asked, “Ready for sleep?”
I gave her an old art camp T-shirt and a pair of lounging shorts. She washed her face at my sink and I sat on the bed, watching her, my heart settled and aching at the same time.
We crawled into bed and lay facing each other. She played with my hair, smoothing it back from my face. I didn’t want to close my eyes, but I couldn’t fight the exhaustion coming over me.
“Will you tell me about the green house?” I mumbled. “The one you first lived in?”
She whispered to me, her words sweet and comforting, and I fell asleep with her hand in my hair.
It was the last nice thing I remembered before I woke up, hours later, to the sound of Maritza and JaKory screaming at me.
19
“What the fuck, Codi?!”
My head was throbbing, my limbs felt like lead, and everything was far too bright. I pulled myself up in bed and was disoriented to find Lydia sitting next to me.
“What the fuck?!” Maritza shouted again, and all my senses caught up to me.
Maritza and JaKory were standing at the foot of my bed, their expressions wild with shock. In the doorway behind them, my brother stood stock-still, his mouth hanging open.
I didn’t know what time it was. I didn’t know how Maritza and JaKory had come to be there. I didn’t even know if Ricky and the others were still in the house.
“What’s going on, Codi?” JaKory asked, his voice shaking. “There are people from school downstairs. They look like they just woke up here. Did you throw a party?”
There was a pressing silence. I could feel Lydia’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t look back.
“Do we know you?” Maritza said loudly. She was staring hard at Lydia, and my stomach plummeted so fast I thought I might be sick.
Lydia took a sharp breath next to me. Her arm moved against mine. “I’m Lydia,” she said in a small voice. “It’s nice to meet you both. Codi’s told me a lot about you.”
Maritza and JaKory looked back to me. Their glares, their looks of betrayal and hurt, burned right through me.
“That’s funny,” Maritza said in a low voice, “because Codi hasn’t told us anything about you or anyone else here.”
The silence that followed was unbearable. My heart was pounding so hard it hurt.
JaKory shook his head. There were angry tears in his eyes. “Come on, Maritza,” he said, turning away, “we’re obviously not supposed to be here.”
They tore out of my room, and I stumbled out of bed after them.
“Lydia, I’m so sorry, I’ll be back in a minute,” I said, and then I pushed past my brother and chased Maritza and JaKory down the stairs, begging them to listen to me. In my peripheral vision I could see the kitchen was full of my other friends, frozen in the middle of breakfast, watching everything with their mouths open.
“Codi!” Natalie called. “Should we leave?”
“No,” I said, hurtling out the door, “no, everything’s fine!”
I ran down the driveway and into the street, where Maritza’s car was, my bare feet burning on the hot asphalt.
“Maritza! JaKory! Hold on!”
They turned around. I waited for them to start yelling again, to curse me out, to call me names, but they just looked at me like they’d never seen me before.
“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “I—there’s a whole story behind this—”
“Okay,” JaKory cut in, voice full of acid. “What is it?”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out.
“So you have a whole new set of friends we don’t know about,” Maritza said, tears spilling out of her eyes. “Is that why you’ve been so weird this summer? You went off and became this whole new person who throws parties and has girls sleep in her bed, but you couldn’t bring us along for the ride?”
I still couldn’t answer. I stared at the asphalt, wondering if it was real, wondering if any of this was real.
“They looked at us like we were aliens,” JaKory said.