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kids, I remind myself, like Nico. They invite him to their parties. They let him stay at their summer homes. Even Daisy Loring, who once accused him of stealing her mother’s earrings.
    Probably Nico’s friends have a million stories about nice things he’s done. Only those aren’t the stories I’ve heard. And it’s not the Nico I know.
    Nico’s not rich and he doesn’t have famous parents. His mom’s a home nurse and his dad, well, Nico usually calls hisdad a loser and leaves it at that. He used to live in Queens before moving to Manhattan. But Nico does have two things. He’s beautiful. I mean, ridiculous, with blond hair and blue eyes and a cleft in his chin. He’s well built; a man’s body, not a boy’s. Supposedly, Nico’s been approached by modeling agencies, he’s that handsome.
    And danger. Nico has danger. It’s as if because he doesn’t come from our world, he doesn’t have to follow our rules. He breaks them, laughs about it, and everybody else laughs right along with him. So when he threw a drink in Kirsty Pennington’s face, it was Ah, they were both kind of drunk. And when he got busted for drugs in the Hamptons—could have happened to anyone.
    “So, what are you saying?” I ask Taylor. “Nico was mean to her or …?”
    Taylor shakes her head sharply.
    “Well, what happened between them?”
    Taylor shrugs. “Nothing, as far as I know.”
    This rings false. One thing you could be sure of with Wendy, when she promised drama, that promise was kept. I press. “Did you see them together at all?”
    “Once. She was standing next to him, and they were talking.”
    “What was he like?”
    “Did just enough to keep Wendy interested. You don’t have to do much with her, let’s face it.”
    I ignore Taylor’s dig at Wendy. “Where was Sasha?”
    Taylor drinks her coffee as she tries to remember. “Not with Nico.”
    Frustrated, I say, “You would have noticed if Wendy and Nico ended up making out on the couch, right?”
    “There was no big drama explosion,” Taylor says firmly. “Wendy split not that long after you—and from what I saw, she left alone.”
    “So, she didn’t get Nico.”
    Taylor stares. “Did you ever think she would?”
    I sit back. The image of Wendy on the screen—
I am going to get you and you are going to love every moment
—so much bravado. Her scampering over to Nico the second he arrived. I imagine his sneer as he turns away from her. Wendy backing off, shot down again. Top girls win, Wendy loses. One last diss, one last flush, one last cackle.
    I need one person there that I know is on my side
.
    God, why didn’t I stay?
    I mash my mouth shut, trying not cry. Just then a woman comes up to us and says, “Excuse me?” We look up. “I’m so sorry, but I couldn’t help hearing …”
    When I was younger, I did speech therapy because the cleft palate screwed up my pronunciation. Endless hours of listening and repeating words and sounds. Maybe it’s that, or maybe all the times I’ve listened to people “confess,” but a lot of times when people talk, I don’t hear the words. Because the words don’t matter. What they’re really saying is in the tone of their voice, or their eyes, or the way they hold their mouth. And when this woman says she couldn’t help overhearing, I know she’s lying. Her tense smile, the excitement in her voice—everything about her feels hungry.
    “Did you know that poor girl? The one they found in the park?”
    Taylor and I look at each other. I pick her to speak. Taylor says, “She went to our school.”
    “How terrible. Was she a friend?”
    “Why?” Which is Taylor saying, Drop the act.
    The smile slips. The woman nods:
Got me
. “I’m with the
Herald
, I don’t know if you know—”
    “I know it’s garbage,” says Taylor.
    The woman doesn’t even bother getting insulted. “I want to know who your friend was. We’re hearing stories. Ugly stories.
Unfair
stories.”
    I ask, “What kind of—” Taylor