Most Likely (Most Likely #1) - Sarah Watson Page 0,2

“But please not that one.” Logan started running the bottle of water up and down the line of his neck. Up and down. Up and down. “Oh, come on,” Ava huffed. “He’s doing that on purpose. He wants people to stare.”

“It’s working,” Martha said.

CJ laughed. Martha’s sexuality had been a question ever since they all watched the second-to-last Harry Potter movie. After it was over, CJ announced that she wished she could be Hermione Granger, and Martha announced that she wished she could make out with Hermione Granger. Whether her feelings were specifically directed toward Gryffindor’s most notorious female or toward females in general was yet to be determined. Martha was waiting to actually kiss a girl before she officially declared her sexuality.

“Come on, ladies,” Jordan said. “Martha’s gotta get to work. So what’s the deal?”

“I’ll drive,” CJ said. “Ava’s got the sharp thing covered—”

“Right. But seriously. Like how sharp?”

“Your choice,” Martha said. “I’m working until eight. Pick me up then?”

This would make them late. They’d be some of the last to arrive. But it’s not like they could ask Martha to blow off work. She was already a total stress ball about how she was going to pay for college next year.

So they agreed on eight PM, and then they discussed and settled on an appropriate level of sharpness, and that was that. They’d been talking and dreaming about this night for so long that it almost seemed surreal that it was finally happening.

As they walked away from the bleachers, CJ looked back for a second. She’d meant to catch her old cross-country coach’s eye. She wanted to give her a nod, a wordless way to let her know that even though she’d quit, she was still thankful for three years of coaching. CJ accidentally caught Logan’s eye instead. He quickly glanced away, but not before she realized that he’d been staring at one of them. What was impossible to tell, what she did not know, was which one of the four of them it was.

CHAPTER TWO

AVA, CJ, Jordan, and Martha (they always listed themselves in alphabetical order out of fairness) were a loyal and inseparable foursome. But their remarkable friendship had a fairly unremarkable origin story. There was no great moment of triumph, no great moment of tragedy. No magic pants. They simply met in a park one day when they were five. It was late summer and the line for the slide was long and they started talking while waiting for their turn. They were still a few weeks away from starting kindergarten, and each girl was nervous about it for her own reasons. There was a profound relief when they realized that all four of them had been placed in the same teacher’s class. One of them declared that it was fate, and all of them nodded even though two of them didn’t know what that word meant. By the end of that first day, they decided that they should all be best friends. It was as easy and natural as that.

Twelve years later, they still liked to say that it was fate that brought them to that particular park on that particular day. Though it’s hard to credit divine providence when every kid in the area practically lived in Memorial Park that summer. It’s not just that it had the best slide and the tallest set of monkey bars, but there was a certain curiosity and fascination with the names that were carved into the soft wood of the old jungle gym. At the time, Ava, CJ, Jordan, and Martha didn’t know why the names were there. They could barely even read. But that didn’t stop them from tracing their fingers over the letters and trying to sound out the words as the afternoon sun burned overhead and the sweet smells of summer seemed to stretch on forever.

That day felt like a million years ago and it felt like yesterday. That’s what Jordan was thinking as they drove to Memorial Park that night. They were running late, which was annoying even though it was basically her fault. She’d changed outfits about a million times before going back to the one she’d tried on first.

CJ pulled her car to the curb even though they were still around the corner and several blocks away from the park. “What are you doing?” Martha asked from the back seat.

“In case the cops show up,” CJ said. She turned off the ignition. “I don’t want my car placed at the