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I say, returning his smile.
    I strap on my seat belt, and Reece takes off. It’s obvious that, for some reason, he gelled his usually light-brown hair tonight, making it look dark and stiff. It doesn’t quite work for him, but it doesn’t totally not work, either. I don’t know what it is, but his dorky fashion missteps win me over every time.
    In the back, Ming and Xander finally break apart—it’s easy to tell even without looking since the way they kiss sounds like they’re slurping from cereal bowls—and I turn toward Xander. “So, where are we going?”
    “This girl,” Xander says, shaking his head at Ming. The “rock star” hair he’s been growing out is covering his eyes, and he pushes it back. “How many times do we have to go over this? It’s called a ‘surprise’ because you don’t get to know before we get there.”
    “Just go with it,” Ming says with a smile in her voice as she pokes my arm.
    “Coley needs to learn to be true to her roots,” Xander says. “Australians are supposed to be all about adventure.”
    “She doesn’t have Australian roots,” says Reece. “She’s a half Kiwi from New Zealand.”
    “Half Kiwi, half strawberry?” Xander asks.
    Xander happens to be the person in this truck who’s technically known me the longest, and who also knows me the least. He’s a grade ahead of me—just like Reece and Ming—and we never hung out until he got together with Ming before Homecoming. The main thing I know about him is that he’s as music obsessed as Reece: He plays drums for the marching band and is also in a band with some guys from school.
    “I’m half Kiwi, half American,” I tell him.
    “I spent the night at Coley’s last night,” Ming says. “So I got to meet her older brother and hear his cool accent. Which made me wonder—why don’t you have an accent, Coley?”
    “Why do you think?” I ask. “We moved here when I was little and I’ve been surrounded by you people ever since.”
    I don’t tell them the rest—that Bryan pretty much lost his accent too, until it magically reappeared when he got to high school. As far as I know, no one has called him out for it, but it seems to me that he does it to impress girls. Case in point: He sounded almost like a regular West Coast American all week until Ming came over yesterday.
    “You can’t blame me,” Ming says. “I’ve only known you since last year.”
    “Me too,” Reece says.
    Ming moved here from Oregon at the start of my ninth-grade year and Reece moved here from Alaska the year before that when I was still in middle school.
    There’s silence for a moment, and then Xander says, “Okay. I admit it. It was all me. When I was in second grade and Coley was in first, I enlisted everyone in the country to help me make her lose her accent. Television, movies, day-to-day conversations. We were ruthless.”
    “This is what happens when Xander puts his mind to something,” Reece says.
    “Looking back, it was a pretty huge success,” Xander deadpans. “Especially when you consider that my power of persuasion these days is twenty percent effective at best.”
    “No way.” Ming gives him another loud kiss. “It’s more like forty-five.”
    The kissing continues and I keep my eyes directed straight ahead. “So, Reece!” I practically yell so that I can drown out the smacking sounds. “I see that you’ve brought us to the Valley. Are we going to the river? The railroad tracks? A tattoo shop? I wouldn’t mind stopping for a snack somewhere!”
    “How does the highway leading out of town sound?” Reece asks, raising his voice extra-loud too.
    “Only if we can drop off these two!”
    “You might as well give up the guessing game now,” Xander says to us. “You won’t be able to figure out where I’m taking you because I guarantee that you’ve never been there. Oh, and you need to take a right there past the school.” After directing Reece through a few more turns, Xander says, “Okay,