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be too pissed. As she made her way back to the table, it was like her ears had popped on the way down a mountain—her head suddenly felt lighter. She knew she needed to talk to someone about what had happened last night. But itcould wait. Didn’t she still deserve some semblance of a regular teenage life?
    Back at the table, the girls were talking about Josie Swanson, another junior, whose parents were paying for her to have a private SAT tutor and a college admissions coach.
    “May as well pay for her to have a personal academic assistant at college so she can keep scamming the system,” Fiona said. “Doesn’t she know that good grades and good schools are for, like, smart people?” Everyone knew that Fiona wanted to go to Harvard, and she wanted to get there all on her own. She’d balked even at buying an SAT review book.
    “It really is kind of ridiculous,” Gabby chimed in. “Do you know that she has a hot tub? I’m jealous. Apparently there was some impromptu senior party there on Saturday night.”
    Em took a bite of her lunch. Everything was the same—the thick dough, the too-sweet red sauce, the salty cheese. But for some reason, her guilty pleasure suddenly tasted gross.
    “Speaking of hot tubs, Gabs, can you please ask your mom when it’s going to get warm again?” This from Fiona, whose health craziness did not extend to sun damage—she started laying out in April and was usually brown by mid-June.
    “Fee’s dying to go back to that beach where we met those crazy USM boys last summer,” Lauren said. “Gabby, do you remember how absurd that one guy was, the one who kept bringing you beach glass?”
    “It was embarrassing,” Gabby said with raised eyebrows. “I hope he found himself a nice girl his own age.”
    Em’s eyes wandered over to the far left bench, where the junior footballers sat. She tried to look away quickly, before her gaze could linger on the empty spot at the end of the bench—the one where Chase used to sit, the one that had remained empty since his death, as if people feared it was haunted. And even though she wanted to think that was silly, she had to admit she was glad they were sitting several tables away.
    “. . . What do you think, Em?” Gabby nudged her.
    “About what? Sorry, I was zoning for a second.” Em pulled her hair into a low ponytail at the nape of her neck and tried to focus. All of a sudden sitting there in the cafeteria and gossiping didn’t feel right. In fact, it felt distinctly jarring.
    “That’s a surprise.” Gabby rolled her eyes. “I asked what we should do after the Spring Fling. Whether or not there’ll be an after-party.”
    While Em tried to think of something to say—what would the old Em have said?—she watched Gabby’s eyes drift over to the same table, the football table, and linger there for a second before snapping back to attention. Em knew she was probably thinking of Zach, who used to preside over that zone—over all the athletes in the school, in fact. Zach had gone off to boarding school last month, supposedly. But then last week Andy Barton had told them that he’d heard Zach had been involved in a nasty accidentand was in some fancy physical therapy facility in Florida. Now there were rumors that he’d never be able to play sports again.
    Em wondered whether Gabby felt bad for Zach . . . or if she felt the same sense of relief that he was gone , that his presence wasn’t a constant reminder of how easy it was to make mistakes.
    She watched as Pierce Travers, a sophomore and Zach’s likely replacement as quarterback, caught Gabby’s eye and smiled. He really was adorable. For a moment Em found herself back in social butterfly mode, hopeful that something might happen between Pierce and Gabby. At least that would prove that Gabby was really over that asshole. That Em hadn’t broken up Ascension’s best It Couple or something.
    “I hadn’t really thought about it,” Em admitted. But she knew she had to do