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sometimes it hurt so bad I cried. Other times, I’d bite my lip hard enough to draw blood. To distract myself, I’d close my eyes and replay the images of the party, over and over again, on the miniature movie screen in my mind. Taylor-and-Ryan, Taylor-and-Ryan, Taylor-and-Ryan.
    The whole time my mother was firing questions. How were things looking? Was the swelling any better? When would it go down completely? What about the scarring? What were they doing now, to prevent scarring later?
    Finally, the nurses would cut her off. “Okay. Mrs. Mayer? The doctors will be making rounds in a little while. They’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
    Day Five. The doctors brought in diagrams to explain things to me. 3-D models of the human skull. “This is the zygomatic bone.” “This is the malar.” “The lachrymal.” “The maxilla.” While they blathered on, I stared out the window at the summer passing me by. Why couldn’t this have happened to me in January? I should be at the beach! I pictured Ryan’s hands, rubbing oil onto Taylor’s bare back, as the two of them lay poolside in the LeFevres’ backyard, drinking Crystal Light.
    “Alexa?” the doctors said. “Do you understand what we’re saying about your face?”
    “Uh-huh,” I’d say, nodding. “Yup.”
    My face. Everyone in the hospital was obsessed with my face. The doctors, the nurses, the med students, and—worst of all—my mother. Unlike my dad and Ruthie, who ate in the cafeteria and went home to sleep, my mother never left my side. She was too busy hounding the doctors to go anywhere. How was my face healing? Was the swelling going down? What would it look like later? My face was all anyone could talk about. And me, the actual owner of the face? I couldn’t have cared less. The only thought in my head was Taylor and Ryan. Taylor-and-Ryan, Taylor-and-Ryan, Taylor-and-Ryan.
    “Look at these roses Ryan sent,” my mother said when the flowers and cards and balloons started pouring in. “They’re absolutely gorgeous.”
    I pretended not to hear.
    The next fifty times my mother commented on Ryan’s roses—how gorgeous they were, how thoughtful he was—I said nothing. Finally, without stopping to plan my words, I cracked. “Will you throw them in the trash? Please?”
    I kept my eyes on the ceiling, but I could feel my mother’s stare.
    “I beg your pardon?”
    I turned my gaze to the wall. Cards were taped up everywhere. Get well soon, Lexi. Hope you feel better, Lex. God speed, Alexa. We’re praying for you.
    “Alexa,” my mother said.
    “What.”
    I expected a lecture on gratitude. Instead, she walked around the bed and pulled up a chair. “What happened? Did you two have a fight?”
    Obviously, I couldn’t tell her. This was Laine Chapman Mayer, Southern belle, who I am 99 percent sure did nothing more than kiss until she got married. Her idea of The Talk was to hand me and Ruthie a book titled Abstinence and You: 501 Reasons to Wait . The notion of telling my mother about Ryan and Taylor’s hookup was insane.
    “A fight,” I mumbled. “Uh-huh.”
    “Oh, honey.”
    This was my mother’s big opportunity to launch into her high school boyfriend story. Landry McCoy, star forward on the basketball team, Laine Chapman, head cheerleader, who, naturally, fell madly in love, applied to all the same South Carolina colleges, and—
    “Oh, God,” Ruthie said, entering the room with a soda the size of a barrel. “Is this Lifetime Television, The Laundry McCoy Story?”
    “ Landry McCoy,” my mother corrected her.
    “Who names their kid Laundry? That’s just wrong.”
    “It’s Landry , and it’s a family name.”
    Ruthie took a sip of soda and grinned. “Good ole Laundry McCoy … Well, go on.”
    It is an old routine with them. My sister mocks our mother’s high school boyfriend, but she secretly loves hearing the Landry McCoy story almost as much as our mother loves telling it.
    I used to love it, too. Especially the