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now.”
    â€œBigger than my mom saying no?”
    â€œYes.” Hannah was biting her nails. Perfect Hannah with her perfect teeth was biting to ugly nubs the nails at the ends of her perfect long fingers.
    Chloe frowned in confusion. “What’s the matter with you?” Though Chloe herself found Hannah to be slightly androgynous, with her tall, boyish body—straight hips, straight waist, smallhigh breasts, short hair always slicked back away from her face—other people, boys especially, did not agree. Her serious, appraising eyes, brown, round, and unblinking, made Hannah look as though she were engaged—as though she were listening. Chloe knew it was a ruse: the steady stare simply allowed Hannah to be lost inside her head. She wore makeup she could ill afford, but strived to look as though she just splashed water on her face and, voilà, perfection. Her current demeanor was out of character. “What’s the matter?” Chloe repeated.
    â€œNothing. Everything. How likely is it,” Hannah asked, “that Blake and Mason are actually going to go?”
    â€œA hundred percent.” Chloe pulled her friend’s twitchy hand out of her mouth. “Stop doing that. What’s wrong?”
    Hannah didn’t reply. She was too busy bloodying the tips of her fingers.
    Chloe plopped down on Hannah’s lavender bed and stared at their reflection in the floor-length closet-door mirror. For a long time Hannah had wanted to be a ballerina. For many hours in her room she practiced her arabesques and soubresauts in front of that mirror, hoping one day she would stop growing and her parents could afford ballet classes. She finally got her lessons in the divorce settlement, but by then she was five-ten and too tall to be lifted into the air by anyone but Blake, who was definitely not a ballet dancer.
    Hannah turned up her music, which was already plenty loud. She did it so her mother couldn’t hear her, but the result was that Chloe couldn’t hear her either. Hannah had a barely audible soprano, like a low hum, and over the high treble strands of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” she was nearly impossible to make out.
    She lay on her bed next to Chloe. “Chloe-bear, I’m in trouble.”
    Chloe didn’t hear.
    â€œI have to break up with him and I don’t know how to do it.”
    That Chloe heard. “With Blake?” She bolted up. She was horrified.
    â€œNo, with Martyn.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œShut up. Be serious.”
    Chloe shut up. How to tell Hannah she was being serious? Who the hell was Martyn? She hoped her pitiful ignorance didn’t show on her face. She scrunched it up knowingly, trussed her eyebrows, nodded. “Why, um, do you have to break up with him?”
    â€œHe was going to give me money to go to Barcelona, because he knows I don’t have enough, but if Blake is going, he won’t give me any.”
    Chloe blindly navigated the maze before her, hands out in front. “So don’t tell him Blake is going.” Who the hell was Martyn?!
    â€œExcept . . . he was going to meet us in Barcelona for a few days.”
    Chloe weighed her words. “Martyn was going to meet us in Barcelona for a few days?” As if repetition would make Hannah’s words make sense.
    â€œI didn’t want him to, Chloe, believe me, but I don’t have enough money to go, and I thought, what’s a couple of days, when we’re going to be there two weeks, right?”
    â€œMartyn was going to meet us in Barcelona.”
    â€œDon’t be mad. I was going to tell you he was coming. I was just waiting for the right time. Please don’t be mad.” Hannah briefly leaned her head into Chloe’s head, and then clapped her hands, businesslike. “No, that’s it. I’m going to end it. It’s for the best,” she said. “He is getting too serious, anyway. We need to break up,