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“How could I forget? I still can’t touch hot dogs.”
    Great America food patio. Phil dared Donovan to eat three foot-long dogs in one sitting. Paid for them with his allowance and everything. Donovan did it, but ended up vomiting his accomplishment at the edge of the patio five minutes later. Phil sympathy-puked shortly after that and needless to say, the park employees and our parents were not amused.
    â€œMa wants to have Donovan’s family and you guys over for dinner,” Phil says. “We haven’t even talked to them and she’s already planning the menu. She’d probably feed me to death if we were separated as long as Donovan and his mom.”
    â€œYour mom would try to feed the entire neighborhood to death.” I pull out my phone to text Sara-Kate, let her know we’re only a few blocks away.
    She’s waiting outside, smoking on the front porch of her darkened house. She strides toward us in a body-hugging tunic, leggings, and knee-high suede boots and I can’t imagine what it would be like to have curves like that and not want to hide them.
    She’d kill me if I ever said this out loud, but Sara-Kate is kind of a cartoon character. Her features are just so exaggeratedly perfect that if you stare at her too long it looks as if someone drew her. Bow-shaped lips and brown eyes so big and sincere you could drown in them. She knows her way around a makeup bag, but I’d never put anything on my face if I was her. She’s just as pretty without it.
    â€œHey, doll.” She kisses my cheek, wipes away the lipstick print with her thumb, then crawls behind me to sit in back.
    â€œWhere are your parents?” I ask, looking pointedly at the cigarette dangling between her index and middle fingers. I keep the window cracked.
    â€œMy mom has a show in the city tonight.”
    â€œYou’d better be careful with that thing,” Phil says in his dad voice as he turns to eye Sara-Kate and her cigarette.
    â€œHave I ever burned or otherwise desecrated your precious car?” she says, holding it just outside the window so the smoke and ash will blow behind us in the wind.
    â€œJust watch where you hold it, okay?” Phil heads toward Klein’s, which means the houses grow larger with each street we cross. The yards become more spacious, the cars in the driveways more luxurious.
    Sara-Kate blows two perfectly circular smoke rings out the window, then pushes her round face between the seats. “Thanks for driving, Philip.”
    â€œNo problem, Sara-Katherine.” He turns his head slightly to give her the side-eye.
    â€œBut it’s not Katherine.” Her perpetually sunny face twists into a pout.
    â€œAnd it’s not Philip.” He pauses as we drive by my favorite house in Ashland Hills: all white and three stories high with a flat roof, sturdy columns, and a long balcony off the second level. “Not unless you’re my mother.”
    But he doesn’t hide his grin fast enough when I look over.
    Klein’s parents are always on some type of vacation or business trip, and his parties have become an institution. He hires actual DJs from Chicago and these things generally last all night and the cops never break them up because his family has more money than anyone in Ashland Hills.
    His street is already lined with cars, so we have to park on the next one over. My parents would flip their shit if it ever got back to them that I’d thrown a party this size. Not that I ever would. Mom and Dad are pretty chill on a day-to-day basis, but when something big goes down, they take action
fast.
Attempting to pull off a party like Klein’s would land me at least a monthlong grounding. Probably more.
    Ellie Harris is sitting on the front steps as we walk up. She leans her head close to Lark Pearson, looks at us, and throws her head back in laughter. I don’t know what Hosea likes about her, because I haven’t found much.