The Summer We Forgot

Chapter 1

Darby Wallis

JUNE 13

WATERCOLOR, FLORIDA

Mom keeps bins in the foyer. To hold our shoes. To make the house seem clean and tidy. She wants our lives to match a window display or magazine cover, something people will envy. And so we place our sneakers in her bins. We smile for family photos. We do our best to seem perfect, become mannequins in a storeroom selling this fake Highway 30A experience.

I have a bin of my own. It doesn’t hold shoes or dirty laundry. It stays hidden in my closet beneath sweaters I never wear, full of items that echo my deepest and darkest self. Clothes too short, too tight. Diaries and bad report cards for my eyes only.

Mom wants perfect. She bleaches the floors and countertops.

She doesn’t know I accidentally spilled coffee on her couch last week and turned over the cushion. She hasn’t found the stain yet, like she hasn’t found my bin.

Perfect: My hair swept into a high pony. Lips gleaming with gloss. Accolades in my high school yearbook that call me nice and smart, the sweetest girl.

All that seems a cruel joke now as I sit on my bedroom floor in a nest of secret things. I rummage through the contents of my bin, each C+ exam, miniskirt, and sleepover Polaroid confirming a truth:

I’m the furthest thing from perfect.

You sure about this, Darby? Eliza rolls across my bed’s white duvet. She lifts onto her elbows and watches me, her chocolate eyes beaming suspicion. It’s unlike me to insist we go to a house party—Kip DiMarco’s house party, no less. I’d rather eat pizza on the beach than risk disappointing my parents. I am the good friend, the good child. I do good things.

The bin in my lap might disagree.

Mom’s at book club. I stifle my reservations with a slow, certain breath. I rummage through what Mom and Dad don’t know. Ticket stubs from movies they wouldn’t have let me see. Clothes I borrowed from Morgan and never returned.

I can’t part with this time bomb of risks I have taken.

Evidence of the grand hoax I call myself.

And your dad? Eliza gives me the look, one that forms a knot in my stomach. The look asks if I’m capable of breaking rules. The look reflects a girl who cried when her fifth-grade Spanish teacher called her out for talking in class.

Downstairs. He’ll let me go. I lift a bandeau top. My heart races. Heat pricks the back of my neck. I shouldn’t get a rush from this petty stash. If anything, I should feel ashamed of myself, and I do. The guilt eats at me. The fear of being found out has lingered in my mind for years. But destroying the bin won’t erase my secrets. I am a good friend. I do good things.

Good isn’t perfect.

Good doesn’t stand out.

I grab my phone from the carpet and unlock its screen with a click. Nikki Fawcett appears in my social media feed. She poses in a private beach pavilion, oiled up, flashing an Insta-worthy smile that says, I’m hot and rich, and I’ll spend this summer eating snow cones, tanning in overpriced swimwear, and being exciting. She’s a renter. She comes to 30A for the do something—and for the photo ops of her doing that something.

Nikki lets her glossy dark hair drape her spine.

I tug the scrunchie from my blonde ponytail.

Nikki wears minis and crops to show off her figure.

I draw the shortest shorts from my collection.

Nikki is perfect—social media says so. People remember her. She doesn’t fade into the background. She doesn’t need bins of shame because no one expects her to act like me.

I don’t want to act like me.

Would you help? I wave a makeup bag at Eliza and scoot toward my full-length mirror. Tonight, I need more than mascara and lip gloss.

Eliza slides off my bed. She matches a display from our moms’ boutique with her bodysuit, linen pants, and hoop earrings. So . . . will a certain someone be at Kip’s party? She tackles me, her bony limbs wrapping around my neck, her coconut scent rivaling my white tea diffuser. Should your makeup cause a certain boy to regret—

No. I don’t know. I pass her a sponge and bottle of foundation, then close my eyes as she dabs the cream across my cheeks. A certain boy. Maybe he’ll be there. Doesn’t matter. The party offers a chance to do something. Kip invited every Gen Z on this highway: part-timers, renters, locals, half the student body of Emerald Coast High.

Summer makes things happen. Maybe not for me, but for the other teens on 30A, summer brings growth spurts, romances, all the milestones that don’t fit between first and sixth period. I’ve seen the Pinterest boards, read the magazine articles. I’ve scrolled through enough bikini pics on social media to understand the importance of summertime. It’s as if teenagers have June through August to do something. To kiss the boy. Get drunk and end up shirtless in the neighbor’s yard. Take a road trip with their besties. Do something memorable.

I have a few months to make sure nobody forgets me.

Eliza finishes my makeup with a smoky eye. Now, to complete the ensemble. She hurries to my closet, sorting through linens and tropical prints. Without her style expertise, I’d live in a repeat of oversized tees and bathing suits.

My staff T-shirt from the Comber doesn’t count as fashion.

Where’s that satin camisole, you know, the one from Paloma? Eliza plucks a dress from the rack. She twirls to face me, hugging the garment against her slender frame.

Nobody on 30A looks even the faintest bit like her, and she prefers it that way. She’s five foot ten, leaner than a palm tree, with soft curls and an almond complexion. Not Victoria’s Secret. Vogue. The kind of person destined for magazine covers.

Should be next to the white playsuit. I lean toward the mirror, where a girl watches me with shaded eyes. Her hair isn’t dark and straight. She doesn’t wear minis and crops, not yet. But she resembles someone who leaves coffee-stained cushions unturned.

For years, I made excuses for myself. I called my routine sensible when others dubbed it a bore. I blamed my rule-following on protective parents and seventeen years of being told decisions have consequences. Friends asked why I work two jobs, and I responded with the same rehearsed line: I want a car before college, a Land Rover, white like everything in my bedroom. Seemed reasonable enough. Lots of people save up for cars.

It was a lie though. I worked two jobs—and still do—to impress Dad. He called me his responsible kid when I told him my plan to purchase a vehicle. And my bedroom isn’t white because I like white. Mom decorated the room to match her house and won’t let me change it.

Kip’s party signifies a step away from the excuses. I choose to do this for myself so I won’t begin senior year the same way I started junior year. When someone asks what I did this summer, I want one interesting story to tell. Of course, going isn’t wrong. Dad will give me permission, and I won’t do anything bad. I just need to be someone else for a few hours.

My chest aches with so many needs.

Nope. Can’t find it. Eliza riffles through my closet one last time. Darby, I think you were robbed. Your silver Birks are gone too.

Koda! I rise and stomp out the door, past Christian’s bedroom, now a storage closet for Paloma’s inventory. Mom took over the space after my brother moved into his dorm at Florida State. He won’t come home this summer, so Mom fills his room with boxes.

That’s it— I storm into my sister’s bedroom and choke on its stench, a fusion of self-tanner and strawberry body mist. Oh my gosh! Can you breathe in here?

Koda lounges on her bed, swaddled by a powder-pink comforter. She taps her laptop’s spacebar, freezing Michael Scott of The Office on its screen. What do you want?

Where are my clothes? I cross my arms, ready for a standoff with the fifteen-year-old.

How would I know? I’m not your maid. She glares at me from her throne of furry pillows, fairy lights, and Polaroid prints, the name Dakoda above her headboard in block letters.

Really? I scan the floor, spotting my camisole and Birkenstocks on her knitted beanbag. I snatch the clothes. Stay out of my room.

I return to Eliza and let her style me. She curls my honey-blonde hair with a wand, spritzes me with TOCCA Cleopatra to mask the lingering smell of deep-fried fish. When she gives a thumbs-up, I replace my work uniform with the silk camisole and shorts.

No way Morgan won’t notice you, Eliza says when I kneel to repack my bin.

This isn’t about him.

Should be. What he did sucked. Eliza motions to the picture frame on my nightstand, a sea-green rectangle preserving Morgan, Eliza, Cyrus, Spooner, and me behind glass. We were friends once. The best of friends. Middle school comrades bound together by spit handshakes and secret clubs and bicycling from Grayton Beach to Seagrove.

That was two years ago. I’m over it. I adjust my anklet, its pucca shells harsh white against my sun-browned skin. I shove a bralette into the bin, and my hand stalls. It hovers over a friendship bracelet tucked beneath a stack of photographs.

Eliza crouches beside me.

Not everything is about him, I say, but it is. Despite my attempts to forget and move on, all things somehow route to Morgan. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want another reminder of what happened that summer. It’s been two years. I shouldn’t hurt anymore.

The pain didn’t expire. It grew up with me.

"Yeah, but you don’t have to be over it. I’d understand if you weren’t over it." Eliza kisses my cheek. She rests her head against my shoulder, and the ache within me eases. We’ve been friends since fifth grade, before our moms opened their boutique. Eliza watched me pal around with Morgan for years. She put me first when I put her second.

Come on. We only have a few hours until Mom gets home. I conceal my outfit under an oversized Seaside T-shirt. I stand and pull Eliza from the floor, laughing as she dances to the door, rapping lyrics of a party track. Every person has that friend who gets them through high school. Eliza Becker is mine.

Oh— I touch my bare neck and hurry to the shell dish on my nightstand. I lift an opal necklace, fasten it around my throat.

The picture frame collapses onto its back.

A weight settles in my stomach. I can’t bring myself to right the photograph, so I shift my attention to paintings of breakers and surfboards. No use ruminating on the past. We were friends, yes, but not anymore, not how we used to be.

Two years ago, we drifted apart. Eliza and I remained close. Morgan and Cyrus teamed up. Spooner left 30A when his parents divorced.

What Morgan did to me caused the divide. He and I had made a pact; we swore never to hurt our friendship. We sealed the deal with handmade bracelets. We snickered at other boys and girls who couldn’t stay friends because we thought we’d mastered the art.

We were better and smarter, and we wouldn’t dare fall in love.

But knowing him came with memories of sweatpants and suntans and riding in his Jeep until the sky turned pink and purple. Growing up with him involved the best days, fishing off his dock as crickets chirped in the background, watching outdoor movies until we fell asleep on his old bedspread. It was love. It was young. And I feel it all still, burning in the places it shouldn’t be.

Even though he betrayed me.

I heave my bin and stuff it into the closet, behind sweaters and a gym bag full of volleyball uniforms. Most people display mementos to help them remember, but some memories should remain buried in dark corners.

I still remember Morgan’s funny expressions. Still remember the octave of his snore, the smell of his skin after a day at the beach. Still remember how soft his lips felt against mine . . .

Before he ruined us.

Okay, I’m ready. I grab my purse and follow Eliza down the hallway. As we crest the staircase, a realization takes root within me.

My bin is a box of ghosts.

We go downstairs, where Mom’s obsession with tidiness reigns. She has organized the house with labels and bins, designated where to put shoes, where to hang backpacks, where to eat and sleep and leave blankets after use.

God forbid I drop a crumb onto her white couch or track dirt across the white carpet.

But such is Mandy Wallis, 30A’s perfectionist. She uses more cleaning products than everyone I know combined. She refuses to get a dog, not even a hypoallergenic one, because she hates pet hair, dust, sand—pretty much anything from outside. And when she’s not gushing about Goop and Reese’s Book Club, she’s decorating the house with bizarre furniture like driftwood coffee tables.

Mom wants the best. Only the best. Nothing else matters. If she’s not a size two, she’ll lie and say she is until she becomes a size two. Though her kids aren’t perfect, she tells people we are, white smile plastered across her face while she cleans up our messes.

She’s had a lot of practice.

I worry about Mom sometimes, when I find her in the kitchen at midnight, coating her cheeks with homemade facial masks. When she spends hours in her car, yelling at Christian on the phone, then comes inside as if nothing happened. She won’t admit she’s hurting, like she won’t admit she takes medication for OCD.

A few years ago, I discovered her pill bottles in the laundry room. I’m pretty sure Dad doesn’t know about them. He doesn’t know a lot of things about Mom. They’re all smiles and kisses and date nights, scrubbed floors, bloodshot eyes, best of the best and nothing less.

We’re all liars in this house.

Go talk with your dad. I’ll wait outside after I grab a yogurt from your fridge. Want anything? Eliza fishes her bedazzled sneakers out of the guests’ shoe bin.

From my own fridge?

I’ll get an extra-special yogurt just for you. She grins and pinches my cheek.

Make it a cold brew, I say as Eliza ambles toward the kitchen. First time she came over, she ate canned ravioli on the couch. Mom almost had a heart attack. Dad laughed himself to tears. It was a spectacular moment, and since then, Eliza’s presence has pacified my family. We all seem to take a deep breath when she walks through the door. She’s just comfortable. Always. In her own skin, relationships, environment.

People who like themselves free others to do the same.

Hey, kiddo. Where’re you off to? Dad asks when I step out the back door into his man cave—a screened-in porch with a plasma-screen TV and stocked bar. He lounges on the sofa, watching football, sipping iced tea from an FSU cup.

Kip DiMarco invited Eliza and me to a party. I sidestep his discarded flip-flops and collapse onto the cushion beside him. It’s in Rosemary Beach.

What kind of party? He drapes his arm over my shoulders, hugging me tight. His day at the realty office must’ve been tough, because he’s changed into his basketball shorts and I’m a Cool Dad T-shirt, what he wears when he’s stressed.

The safe, father-approved kind. I look up at him and flash a smile. May I go?

You know the rules.

No drugs, alcohol, or boys, I say with a nod. "I won’t do anything you wouldn’t do."

That doesn’t make me feel better. Dad chuckles, his eyes glinting like coquina shells in the surf. He studies my makeup and baggy T-shirt. Your mom gets back around ten—

I’ll be home by nine thirty.

You’re the good one, he says with a smile. His comment strips the oxygen from my lungs. I stiffen against his side, heat spreading through me like a fever. Kill a virus. Boil me from the inside out until I come clean. I am clean though. Cleaner than Dad. We both keep secrets from Mom. They bond us. At least, that’s the excuse Dad uses when he takes me for snow cones and calls it hitting the gym. We keep our imperfections hush-hush, and Dad feels closer to me. Win-win.

Except I’m not the good one. I didn’t get suspended for cheating on my eighth-grade math final like Koda. I don’t torment my parents like Christian. I follow rules, I please, I work to be the me Mom describes to others.

Good seems less what I am and more what I must be. Christian used up all the mistakes Koda and I might have been allowed to make without penalty.

I don’t have room for error.

Thanks. I’ll text you when I leave the party. I hug Dad’s neck, then rise. Already, the Florida humidity has latched onto my clothes. I tug my neckline to keep sweat from gluing it to my chest.

Stay with Eliza, Dad says as I rush toward the back door. And take your bodyguards.

A nickname for my Taser and pepper spray. He gave me the weapons two years ago, said I needed to guard myself. From what, I’m not sure. 30A is a safe place. Then again, Joe and Mandy Wallis have a record of being protective parents.

Eliza waits in the driveway, propped against her golf cart with The Black Keys blaring from her phone. She finishes a yogurt cup and slam-dunks it into the garbage can. So? Did Cool Joe give his permission?

I climb into the passenger seat and prop my feet on the dash. Where’s my cold brew?

With a squeal, Eliza hops behind the wheel. She shifts the golf cart into reverse, its loud beeps drawing attention from several neighbors. Cold brew is in the cup holder, next to my matcha latte. She eases onto Cerulean Park.

Didn’t you get that matcha last week?

With almond milk so it wouldn’t spoil.

"Almond milk does spoil. I fake a gag and buckle my seat belt. How do you not have food poisoning or some weird bacteria?"

Because of all the yogurt. Eliza taps her temple, smiling as she floors the accelerator, and sends us zooming onto 30A.

Watercolor melts into Seaside. An amphitheater, food trucks, and flocks of bicyclists replace wine bars and the Sandpiper Beach Club. Mom and Lulu own Paloma, which resides in the town’s center, a few steps from Amavida, my dealer of iced lavender-oat-milk lattes.

Dang, the crowds get worse every year. Eliza navigates the bumper-to-bumper traffic. She clicks on an indie-rock playlist, and a smooth melody drowns the roar of voices and seagulls and boys hollering from their trucks. She complains about the summer masses at least once a week. But she loves it here. We both do. We live for the sun and sand, driving her golf cart from town to town, helping our moms with their boutique. No other place compares.

And we don’t plan to ever leave.

I tilt back and let my hair wave in the wind. We cruise past palm trees and mansions, the ocean glowing turquoise beyond them.

Welcome to 30A—a strip of highway on Florida’s panhandle, where sugar-white beaches and planned communities attract vacationers from all over the country. The rich and famous. Middle-class families. Tourists ready to drop a few grand on paddleboard rentals, beach-view stays, and frozen rosé. It’s a picture-perfect paradise for renters, part-timers, and retirees, and it’s run by people who make their living off everyone else’s loose purse strings.

Dad, for example, the owner of Wallis Realty.

Eliza’s father, Rolf Becker, the property lawyer.

Locals, who put up with tourism because it funds their lifestyles.

I clutch my purse and Eliza’s bag from Sundog Books as we inch toward Seagrove, past Bud & Alley’s restaurant and the Comber.

There must be something in the water. That, or money makes beautiful people. Moms decked out in Lululemon, running with their goldendoodles. Dads with aviator sunglasses and Vineyard Vines T-shirts. Children dressed to the nines. All impressive. But not as mind-blowing as my peers. Think cast of a teen drama, where everyone looks older and sexier than they should.

We need a game plan, Eliza says over the music. She glances at me, her windswept curls billowing. In case we run into Morgan. Like, should we ignore—

He’s just a guy, Eliza. I don’t know him anymore. I squeeze her arm to assure her I’m okay. Believe me. You’re way more important.

She loves me better than he ever did. When he broke my heart, she gave a shoulder to cry on, threatened to slash his tires, promised best friends forever and always. Now I spend weekends with her instead. I model for her photography projects, eat her acai creations, do whatever makes her happy so I won’t lose another friend.

Eliza steers us through Seagrove and into Watersound. She dangles her left foot over the road, swinging it as we go max speed. When did you last see Morgan?

Two months ago. I drove Mom’s car to Publix for dairy-free ice cream. It was late, so I wore my pajamas and glasses, hair in a messy topknot. As I wandered the frozen-food section, Morgan passed me without a word. He grabbed a box of pizza rolls from a freezer, then continued walking. I stared at his back. He didn’t have the right to pretend we’d never existed, but I did. I was the victim. I wanted to yell at him, tell everyone about the damage he caused.

Hurt muzzled me.

I still think about that night, us as strangers in the frozen-food aisle, and how I hurt in a way hatred cannot hurt.

Summer and its reminiscing will end in a couple of months. I’ll return to Emerald Coast High for my last year. Memories will fade over time, get buried under new experiences. After we graduate, Morgan will go off to college. I’ll stop wanting to forget. And years from now, if we see each other at the grocery store, maybe he won’t pretend I’m not there.

I don’t remember, I say as we enter Rosemary Beach.

Oh, great song— Eliza cranks up the music and sings, her performance drawing attention from people on the sidewalk. She dances in her seat and I follow along, both of us whipping our hair until we can’t breathe from laughter.

This kind of stuff makes her happy.

We reach Kip’s house around sunset and park on a ribbon of grass, where dozens of carts sit empty. I pull off my T-shirt. Eliza detangles my hair, then hands me a lipstick from her purse. I glide the copper pigment across her lips, giggling when she bats her faux eyelashes.

Once she approves our primps, we approach party central, a mansion in the heart of Rosemary Beach. It’s at least three stories with a second-floor pool deck and beach access.

Dad sold the property to Dr. DiMarco years ago.

Ladies and gentlemen, the 1 percent, Eliza says in her game-show voice. She gestures to the house. Because everyone needs a second mansion.

If you don’t like it, go home! Kip yells at us. He loiters with a cluster of boys near the garage, puffing on a vape. For someone who boasts about his trust fund, he has a surprisingly bland appearance. He wears the same polo and loafers as his friends—I use that designation lightly. He’s around my height, built for tennis, with shaggy blond hair that went out of style in 2010.

Eliza rolls her eyes and locks arms with me. She’s despised Kip since the dare that splintered our friend group.

I saw your Instagram post today. Hot stuff. Kip steps toward us, grinning as if he knows how much Eliza loathes him. Want to hang with us guys?

Back off, DiMarco. We don’t associate with your kind. Eliza shoves past him, dragging me up a stone walkway. She forgets more birthdays than grievances. Wrong her or her friends, and she’ll hold a grudge until she dies. Heck, she might even take it with her.

But you came to my party?

We love free food. Eliza yanks me to the mansion’s front door, her fingers bruising my bicep. She doesn’t let go, not even after we’re inside with glow sticks clipped around our necks.

Bass tones vibrate the floor, and I tremble, my heart racing with the music’s beat. I follow Eliza across a foyer. Bodies packed shoulder to shoulder overflow the house. The walls seem made of suntanned skin. The air is perspiration and respiration, concrete mixing inside my lungs.

Okay. Here’s the plan: We dance, raid the buffet, and bow out before cops show up. No Solo cups. Water bottles only. Avoid everyone dressed like Kip. Eliza curves her shoulders inward, maybe to minimize contact with the partiers.

Agreed. I tense when she releases my arm. If we get separated, there’s no guarantee we’ll find each other. Probably a hundred teenagers fill this house. A recipe for disaster. And by disaster, I mean drama. Somebody is bound to spread rumors, start a fight, hook up with the wrong person. 30A is paradise, but even paradise has its share of pain.

Someone always gets burned.

Eliza and I go upstairs to the main living room. We elbow onto a makeshift dance floor, the space hotter than a sauna, reeking of expensive perfume and cheap booze. I jump to music as people mosh against me, sweat drenching my clothes in seconds. I try to behave like everyone else, seem fun and exciting, not think about how I’d rather be at home watching Netflix.

But this is what I wanted. To claim a strike Christian stole from me. To listen to this voice within me that says the good girl is a fraud. To do something as a gambit for senior year. So, I don’t act like me. I act like Nikki, because she’s perfect. Social media says so. People remember her. She doesn’t fade into the background or hide secrets as if they’re corpses.

Chapter 2

Darby

JUNE 13

ROSEMARY BEACH

Tatum Aldrich crashes onto the dance floor, his muscle-roped body decked head to toe in glow sticks. He pumps his fist alongside my school’s mascot, a dark-green Seahawk.

How someone managed to sneak the costume out of the band closet is beyond me.

Darby! Tatum points, his mouth crooked with a smirk. Each summer he comes to 30A to party with Kip and Nikki while his parents manage their properties, the Comber being one of them. You have a show planned for us?

Grow up! Eliza snaps at him. That was a million years ago.

Man, you still have the photo? Tatum waves at Kip, who now perches on a couch armrest flirting with Nikki’s friends. Is Morgan here?

I freeze, my knees weakening. Acid stings the back of my throat. Tears warm my eyes. I hyperventilate, confused with the urges to puke and sob and curl into a tight ball. They wouldn’t be this mean. They wouldn’t force me to relive what happened two years ago. I’d rather flash the whole party than see that cursed photo one more time.

Or confront the person who cheapened me for it.

Kip meets my gaze, and his face blanches. He must feel some remorse for the dare—not the silly bets we made to allay our boredom, but the one that splintered our friend group. He encouraged the break. He saw the photograph.

As did everyone in his contact list.

Jerks, Eliza hisses as she guides me off the dance floor. Want to leave?

Morgan appears in the crowd. I stop, and Eliza bumps me. He elbows through the whirlwind of crop tops and glow sticks, out of place in his board shorts and What SUP T-shirt.

A lump fills my throat. I choke on it. I blink to blur Morgan and the people I don’t know. I blink to draw Morgan back into focus. He still has broad shoulders and short legs—the swimmer’s body middle school girls laughed at until they wanted it beside them at sophomore homecoming. His face is sharper, his skin tanner than when I saw him in the frozen-food aisle. But he’s the same boy who took me diving for sand dollars, the same boy who came to my house for Thanksgiving dinner. I used to make fun of his caterpillar eyebrows and the scar between them until they became my favorite features.

I used to not feel like this.

People stare and snicker as though expecting a performance, as if I’ll finally yell at Morgan because of what happened in that closet. Tatum whoops. Kip sinks into the couch. Strangers glance in my direction to see what the fuss is about. They won’t see anything. They’ll hear rumors, take sides, pick off scabs to keep my wounds fresh.

Why hide a bin when people store memories for me?

I need water. I abandon Eliza and beeline to the kitchen, forcing a path through crowds drunk on White Claws. If Morgan notices me, he doesn’t look twice. He joins Cyrus Gunn near the living room bookcase and whispers into the ear of a girl who’s prettier than me. I shouldn’t care. I don’t know him anymore. Our history is gossip swapped at parties, another high school scandal that’ll go dormant until class reunions.

At least I’ll be remembered for one do something.

Nice purse, Nikki. Where’d you get it? Eliza’s voice resonates from the dance floor like an airhorn. Looks so familiar.

I spin around to watch my friend attempt to rip the designer bag off Nikki Fawcett. A leather cross-body. Made in Italy. I know because I ordered them for Paloma.

Hands off. Nikki shoves Eliza. She cradles the bag, her injected lips curling into a sneer. You need to chill out.

If you steal from Paloma again, I’ll tape posters of you on every storefront from Dune Allen to Inlet Beach. Eliza gets in Nikki’s face, their bodies inches apart. She cups her mouth and yells, "I think Nikki Fawcett is a thief has a nice ring to it!"

This will be all over social media within the hour, not an exposé about Nikki’s kleptomania. The public has known about her dirty habit since she lifted eight-hundred dollars’ worth of merchandise her first summer on 30A. Old news. People want a show, and girls fighting in a whirlpool of florescent intoxication is a crowd-pleaser.

Perfect.

Bad-girl Nikki.

Shameless and admired by everyone.

I rush to Eliza’s side and pry her away from Nikki. She’s not worth it. Let’s get food. I think I spotted tapas in the kitchen—

Excuse me? Nikki blocks our path, close enough my nostrils sting from the contents of her Solo cup. She wears high-waisted denim and a bikini top, gold chains piled around her neck.

Nothing in my bin compares.

A flutter lifts through me, followed by sweat beading on my forehead. I step toward Nikki as partiers dance around us. Look, I don’t want to fight with you.

I don’t want to give her a reason to hate me.

Apologize. Nikki points her acrylic nails at Eliza, though her gaze on me is a knife she might run through my back.

Not a chance, Eliza scoffs. She’s caught Nikki shoplifting at least five times.

You stole the bag, I say. But we won’t call the police—

That’s rich, coming from you. Nikki’s expression confirms she already hates me.

What do you mean?