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letter from UC Boulder, right?” He casts a shy little glance up at me. “But I have to keep my grades up.”
    The UC Boulder’s hockey team needs a goalie bad enough that it promised Dirk during junior year he could have a free ride, unless he failed out as a senior. Which, judging from the look on his face, he’s about to do.
    “I was hoping you could read the paper I wrote for Chopper?”
    Everyone except for me lives in fear of Chopper, our English teacher. Dirk reaches into his jacket and pulls out a bunch of papers.
    “Dirk,” I say. “I’m sick.”
    “Maybe when you’re feeling better?”
    I sigh, take the paper from him, and read the title: “The Not So Great Gatsby.”
    Dirk twists the visor of his Red Sox cap. “Your mom home?”
    I think about this question for a second. Then I say, “Did you need something else, Dirk?”
    He smiles, and it transforms him. I suddenly understand why girls at school might hook up with him and brag about it, instead of feeling ashamed for falling under his spell. “I know something’s not right between you and Ash,” he says.
    Everything in me freezes. “What did he tell you?”
    He shrugs, then takes a step toward me. “Listen, I know it’s none of my business, but like—if you need a friend, Lily? I can be a friend.”
    I do need a friend, somebody I can talk to about this whole mess. Somebody who’s not Asher, and somebody who’s not my mother, and somebody who isn’t Maya. But I’m damn sure the person I need is not Dirk.
    He takes a step closer. His words are clouds, a whole weather system between us. “I could be more than a friend,” he adds.
    “You should go home,” I say.
    “Okay.” He puts his cap back on his head, like he’s decided something.
    “I’ll email you,” I say. “After I’ve read your paper.”
    “And I’ll come back,” says Dirk. “Whenever you’re ready.”Another flash of that grin, like he’s giving me a secret for safekeeping. He heads back to his car, a beat-up old Dodge, whistling.
    Back upstairs, I lie down on my bed with Dirk’s paper. The first sentence is Jay Gatsby in the Great Gatsby by F. Scot Fitzgereld is said to be Great, but is it really?
    Oh, Dirk.
    I open my laptop and log on to the Oberlin site. Status updated .
Dear Lily:
    The admissions committee of the Conservatory of Music has completed its early action deliberations and has deferred a decision on your application until the spring. We received more than 5,000 early applications, and we had many more qualified candidates than we could admit.
    Your decision will be reconsidered in February and March with the entire applicant pool. Please be sure the Mid-Year School report is sent to us as soon as
    I shut my laptop, hard. Fuck .
    I pick up my phone and open up my favorites and my thumb is just about to press down on Asher’s name before I remember that we’re not talking. What do you do when you really need to talk to someone about your boyfriend, and your boyfriend is the person you want to talk to him about? I remember his parting words to me, telling me I should give my dad a second chance. You gave me one.
    My father used to call second chances mulligans . He thought of me as his chance to get his own life right the second time around. That was a stupid thing for him to think, and an even stupider thing to say. Nobody is a do-over of anybody else, and if you get to do anything at all on earth it’s live your own life, not be some sort of ghost version of somebody else’s.
    I look at my watch. It’s almost four. There must have been acrazy-ass line at the pharmacy. The salesclerk there is about 120 years old and no one has the heart to tell her to retire. My headache is back and Mom is taking forever to get the Advil. I wish that she was here. Because all at once I realize the person I need to talk to is Mom, and what I need to tell her is everything.
    I walk downstairs again to the kitchen, thinking I will make coffee. The caffeine will