Sometimes CJ couldn’t understand how Jordan had ever dated him. (Sure, it was only for about five minutes during freshman year, but still.) He was too perfect. It made him boring. Right then, Logan peeled off his shirt and used it to dab the sweat off his chest. Well, that certainly wasn’t boring. It was intimidating, though. With his shirt off, his tan skin and carved shoulders, which he’d earned teaching summer swim lessons at the rec center pool, were on full display. CJ folded her arms over the pooch of her stomach self-consciously. She’d spent all summer swimming too, and all it had given her was a face full of freckles.
“Maybe I am into dudes.”
This was Martha talking. Instead of drinking the bottle of water he’d been given, Logan touched it to the back of his neck. Ohio summers had a way of lingering, and the air was heavy with humidity. Sweat and water dripped down his shoulders.
“You can be into dudes,” Ava said. “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 scene of the crime.”
“Clarke Josephine Jacobson,” Jordan said. “You’re being ridiculous.”
CJ wasn’t listening. Or if she was listening, she was doing an excellent job of ignoring Jordan. She climbed out of the car and the others followed. Then she put her keys into her backpack and pulled a black sweatshirt out of it. She zipped the hoodie all the way up despite the fact that the night was warm and muggy. Jordan watched with curiosity as CJ pulled the sweatshirt hood around her face and tugged the strings so tightly that only her green eyes remained visible in the darkness. As she tied the strings into a crisp little bow, the others traded a look.
Long ago, the four girls had promised never to talk trash about any member of the group behind her back. They took their promises seriously, so when CJ looked over at them and uttered a muffled “What?” from behind the cotton/polyester blend of her hoodie, they didn’t make fun of her behind her back. They made fun of her to her face.
“You cannot be serious,” said Martha.
Ava looked her up and down, and tilted her head to the side. “Aren’t you a little hot in that?”
“I think she looks adorable,” said Jordan. She turned to CJ. “Smile.”
“Huh?” Right as CJ turned, Jordan snapped a picture.
“So cute,” she said, looking at the photo.
“Ha ha. You guys are hilarious. I don’t want to get caught.”
It’s not like what they were about to do was a felony or anything—they’d looked it up just to make sure—but it’s not like it was completely legal either. (It was a misdemeanor.) Jordan tried out different filter options on the picture.
“Don’t you dare post that,” CJ said in a slight panic.
“Why not? Look how cute you are.” Jordan held her phone out.
CJ took the phone and her eyes widened in horror. “I am not even remotely cute.”
The picture wasn’t exactly flattering. CJ’s face was all squished up by the hoodie, which made her freckled button nose—arguably her best feature—look a little too buttony. Wisps of blonde hair clung sadly to the sides of her face, and she looked tall. She was tall—the tallest girl in the class—but if she’d known the picture was coming, she probably would have done that weird thing she always did where she jutted her hip out to the side and shifted her shoulders down in a way that she claimed made her look normal heighted. Jordan watched as CJ deleted the photo.