thinks is crazy, but I need to be somewhere completely new. I’m sick of Prescott—the snow, the ice, the wind so cold sometimes it feels like it’s actually eating you. All I know is I want to make movies, and Vermont is pretty bleak on that front. All we have are writers, snowboarders, and serial killers.
Hannah is going to NYU to study art, and Andrew is going to Johns Hopkins because even though he hides it well, he’s freakishly smart. Johns Hopkins is in Baltimore, which is 2,646 miles from Los Angeles, which is 2,777 miles from New York. I’ve looked it up. Next year, we’ll just be three distant dots on a map. That’s the scariest part. I’m ready to get the hell out of Prescott, but I’ll never be ready to leave them.
So we need to make the next few months count. All that’s left are the moments—the big memories we’ll look back on, the ones that will matter when we talk about high school twenty years from now. When school ends in June, the three of us have a plan to blast “Free Bird” from Andrew’s truck speakers and point our middle fingers to the sky as we zoom out of the parking lot—one final fuck you to everyone and everything else. I already have it planned out in my head, can picture the rest of the school year like the frames of a movie.
“Next year everything will finally be different,” Hannah says. “I can’t wait to get out of here.” Hannah is Korean—one of only three Asian kids in the entire school—and I know it’s part of the reason she’s excited to move to New York. Her parents actually met at NYU and then moved here from the city when she was five, and she’s been talking about going back ever since, living in some bohemian artist loft. I mean, I get it. New York is vibrant and exciting and diverse. Vermont is one big bowl of crunchy white granola.
“Prescott is the most depressing place on Earth,” I say. “But I’m glad you’re stuck here with me.”
“I’m so happy you were born, birthday girl,” Hannah says. “And I’m happy Andrew exists too. He’s one of the good ones. He gave us this room.”
I laugh. “I’ve just been using him for his bed this whole time.”
“I actually don’t think Andrew would mind you using him for his bed,” Hannah says, waggling her eyebrows.
“You’re disgusting.” I make a fake gagging noise like I’m in kindergarten. Hannah has been joking about Andrew and me getting together since middle school, but it’s never going to happen.
“You know”—Hannah frowns—“I really thought Chase was a good guy too. I bet he didn’t mean to tell everyone about Danielle. You know how Ryder is. He probably punched it out of him or something.”
I’m not sure if she actually believes what she’s saying or if she’s only trying to convince herself. Hannah has always tried to see the best in people, even when they don’t deserve it.
I pull back Andrew’s sheets and climb under them, not bothering to change. Hannah tucks herself in under her blanket. We lie still for a few seconds, looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, and then I hear Hannah’s voice, soft and muffled.
“It kinda reminds me of Charlie.”
I roll over to face her, propping my chin up on my hand. Cheating-Asshole-Charlie, as he’s more commonly called, broke up with Hannah mere days after they first slept together. Turns out he was also sleeping with Julie Spencer the whole time. I know being in Andrew’s room sometimes makes Hannah think about Charlie because this is where we spent the night after they broke up. Andrew looked up how to play all the best power breakup songs on his guitar, and we scream-sang along to them off-pitch and at the top of our lungs. You’re a Gryffindor and he’s a Squib, Andrew told her. You remember that.
He’s not a Squib, Hannah said. He’s a fucking Death Eater.
“What Chase did is bad, but it’s not the same,” I say now, needing to believe it for Danielle’s sake. “She’ll get over it. She’ll be okay because she doesn’t . . .” I trail off, but