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Nash.
    “Your girlfriends?” Brandon pressed. “Do you mean Celeste?”
    Nash knew exactly what Brandon meant.
    “Guys, let’s cool it,” I said.
    “I can call a cab,” Brandon offered. “In fact, I’ll call one now.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out his phone.
    “A cab?” Nash said. “I don’t think they drive to the Westside. They might get shot.”
    “That’s it,” I said. “I’ll take you home.”
    Nash snarled.
    “You don’t even have a car.” Ivy repeated Abby’s remark.
    “We can walk to my house from here. Then I can drive Brandon back. He’s our guest, and I’m not going to let him be treated like this.”
    “Let’s calm down,” Abby said. “This is a party, guys.”
    “I think it’s getting ugly,” I said. “We aren’t having a good time, Abby. I’m sorry, but some of your guests don’t know how to behave.”
    “Dylan, do something,” Abby pressed.
    Her boyfriend raised his hand as if to stop us. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” he teased. Abby tossed a sofa pillow at him.
    Ivy got up. “I don’t want to drive back to the Westside now,” she said to me. “We just got here. I’ll try to cool the guys down.”
    “Don’t worry,” I said. “You stay. I’ll take him back.”
    “But you’ll be all alone with him,” she told me.
    “I’ll be okay. There’s nothing at all to worry about. You saw—he’s very polite.”
    “Now I feel really bad. He was really polite and we brought him to a party where the guys were awful. This was supposed to be fun, not like school.”
    “I know,” Abby whined. “I wanted to be a good hostess.”
    “Don’t worry,” I reassured her, giving her a hug. “You were.”
    “I’m sorry, Brandon,” Abby apologized. “I really wish you’d both stay.”
    “That’s okay,” Brandon said. “I appreciate the invite.”
    “At least Pumpkin was nice to him,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.
    “I don’t want you to go so soon.” Ivy pouted.
    I wasn’t coming out and proclaiming my love for Brandon to them, but I hoped my actions said something. Even if I didn’t have such strong romantic feelings for him, I’d still have stuck up for him. I didn’t like to see my friends treating someone so badly. Nash and the guys were acting up, and it was inappropriate behavior.
    Nash was fuming. I was leaving the party with another guy—a Westsider. And to make it worse, there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
    “Please call me when you get there,” Ivy directed. “Promise?”
    “Of course,” I said as I headed to the front door.
    Ivy was always motherly to me, from that first day I’d met her on the bus. She liked to take care of me. It was one of her most endearing qualities.
    “Sorry about that,” I said when I caught up to Brandon. He was waiting at the lamppost by the walk in the front yard.
    “Nash is just fighting for you. I can’t blame him.”
    “You are too kind,” I said. I pulled the collar of my coat up to cover my blushing cheeks.
    “People are really going to talk now,” he said, “with you taking me home.”
    “Let them. I think I’ve been waiting for it. But I’m more concerned about the repercussions for you.”
    “Well, if Nash does tell them what he saw . . .” he lamented.
    “Then I’ll tell them he’s joking.”
    We started walking in the direction of my house.
    “Well, anyway,” he began, “I think I’m getting used to it.”
    “Are you?” I asked. It hurt me deep inside to know that Brandon was becoming accustomed to the negative treatment by my friends, their boyfriends, and other students at school. “How can you?”
    “I just focus on you.”
    “That’s so sweet.” I linked my arm with his and squeezed him. “But it must be hard. You don’t deserve to be treated the way you are. Our school is so cliquey.”
    “I think they all are,” he said.
    “Was it like that in Miller’s Glen?”
    He nodded.
    “So you were teased there,