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himself on me.
    “Jeez, Emma, are you okay?” Chloe calls from behind. The calm fwopping of my best friend’s sandals suggests she’s not as concerned as she sounds. Track star that she is, she would already be at my side if she thought I was hurt. I groan and face her, not surprised that she’s grinning wide as the equator. She holds out my flip-flop, which I try not to snatch from her hand.
    “I’m fine. Everybody’s fine,” I say. I turn back to the guy, who seems to get more gorgeous by the second. “You’re fine, right? No broken bones or anything?”
    He blinks, gives a slight nod.
    Chloe sets her surfboard against the rail of the boardwalk and extends her hand to him. He accepts it without taking his eyes off me. “I’m Chloe and this is Emma,” she says. “We usually bring her helmet with us, but we left it back in the hotel room this time.”
    I gasp. I also try to decide what kind of flowers I’ll bring to her funeral after I strangle the life from her body. I should have stayed in Jersey, like Mom said. Shouldn’t have come here with Chloe and her parents. What business do I have in Florida? We live on the Jersey Shore. If you’ve seen one beach, you’ve seen them all, right?
    But noooooooo. I had to come and spend the last of my summer with Chloe, because this would be our last summer together before college, blah-blah-blah. And now she’s taking revenge on me for not letting her use my ID to get a tattoo last night. But what did she expect? I’m white and she’s black. I’m not even tan-white. I’m Canadian-tourist white. If the guy could mistake her for me, then he shouldn’t be giving anyone a tattoo, right? I was just protecting her. Only, she doesn’t realize that. I can tell by that look in her eyes—the same look she wore when she replaced my hand sanitizer with personal lubricant—that she’s about to take what’s left of my pride and kick it like a donkey.
    “Uh, we didn’t get your name. Did you get his name, Emma?” she asks, as if on cue.
    “I tried, Chloe. But he wouldn’t tell me, so I tackled him,” I say, rolling my eyes.
    The guy smirks. This almost-smile hints at how breathtaking a real one would be. The tingling flares up again, and I rub my arms.
    “Hey, Galen, are you ready to—” We all turn to a petite black-haired girl as she touches his shoulder. She stops mid-sentence when she sees me. Even if these two didn’t share the same short dark hair, the same violet eyes, and the same flawless olive skin, I’d know they were related because of their most dominant feature—their habit of staring.
    “I’m Chloe. This is my friend Emma, who apparently just head-butted your boyfriend Galen. We were in the middle of apologizing.”
    I pinch the bridge of my nose and count to ten-Mississippi, but fifty-Mississippi seems more appropriate. Fifty allows more time to fantasize about ripping one of Chloe’s new weaves out.
    “Emma, what’s wrong? Your nose isn’t bleeding, is it?” she chirps, enjoying herself.
    Tingles gather at my chin as Galen lifts it with the crook of his finger. “Is your nose bleeding? Let me see,” he says. He tilts my head side to side, leans closer to get a good look.
    And I meet my threshold for embarrassment. Tripping is bad enough. Tripping into someone is much worse. But if that someone has a body that could make sculpted statues jealous—and thinks you’ve broken your nose on one of his pecs—well, that’s when tripping runs a distant second to humane euthanasia.
    He is clearly surprised when I swat his hand and step away. His girlfriend/relative seems taken aback that I mimic his stance—crossed arms and deep frown. I doubt she has ever met her threshold for embarrassment.
    “I said I was fine. No blood, no foul.”
    “This is my sister Rayna,” he says, as if the conversation steered naturally in that direction. She smiles at me as if forced at knifepoint, the kind of smile that comes purely from manners, like the