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could I do? (Answer: Um, say no because your best friend is heartbroken and needs you here, and besides, even if the aforementioned heartbreaking hadn’t taken place you guys still had plans to spend the summer together.) Then she looks at me like she’s expecting me to be happy for her.
    But all I say is, “We said we weren’t going to have summer jobs this year, remember?”
    “I know that’s what we said ,” Ava says, waving her hand like that was so five years ago, even though we just talked about it last month. She takes off her sunglasses and sets them down on the table, then shakes out her ponytail,letting her long, blond hair pool around her shoulders. “But I couldn’t pass this up! This isn’t, like, a summer job, Hannah, this is an experience .”
    I stare at her blankly. “But what about me?” I ask.
    “We-ll,” she says. “I asked the director if you could go too, but they only need one person.” She smiles, as if to show how nice it was of her to ask about me.
    “No, I mean, what about me? What am I going to do without you?”
    “Hannah, you’ll be fine,” Ava says.
    “No, I won’t!” I say. “I’ll be all alone all summer with no car and no friends and no anything!”
    “Hannah,” Ava says, “you’re acting kind of hysterical. What about Krystal Shepard? You like her, call her up and see what she’s doing this summer.”
    “ First of all,” I say, “I am not acting hysterical.” Not really true, but if there was ever a time to be hysterical, this is definitely it. “ Second of all, Krystal Shepard is going away to some pre-college program in Spain this summer. And third of all, Krystal Shepard is not you! No one is!” It’s true. I mean, it’s not that I don’t like Krystal, she’s just not a close friend. In fact, besides Ava, I don’t really have any close friends. In middle school we used to hang out with a lot of different girls, but there always seemed to be fights and drama, and eventually, after girls had been circling in and out of our group for years, our group became just meand Ava. Which, looking back, was actually really stupid since now I’m stuck with no friends for the summer.
    “And what about Noah?” I rush on, starting to get really panicked. “How can you just leave him like that?”
    “Noah,” Ava says. “doesn’t rule my life.” She takes a bite of her brownie, and then she says, “Hannah, I’m really sorry about the timing of everything. I am. You know I was planning to spend the summer with you. It’s just . . . I don’t know, I think it would be good for me, to challenge myself. And you can come and visit me anytime you want.”
    I don’t point out that, without a car, there’s no real way for me to get to Maine, and I don’t bother protesting anymore because I know her well enough to realize she’s not going to change her mind. What I really want to do is ask her how she can leave me here all by myself when I’m totally broken-hearted, and what she thinks I’m going to do all summer with my boyfriend hooking up with someone else, and me with no other friends and no car to go anywhere even if I did have friends to go places with.
    But it won’t make a difference. Ava’s willing to get up at nine on the morning after a party to take me to Starbucks, and she set me up with a rebound hook up, like, five seconds after I caught my boyfriend cheating. . . . But I know her well enough to know that when she makes up her mind, she makes up her mind. And if she’s set on going to Maine, then she’s going to Maine.
    So I just smile sadly, and tell her I’m going to miss her. Then I try not to think about how horrible the summer is going to be without her.
    And three days later, after Ava and I have spent countless hours at Super Walmart, picking out all the things on her packing list, she loads up her car and pulls out of my driveway, on her way to Maine. And I return to my bed, where I stay for the next four days.

The First Day of