"Rachel, please," Mom said, rapping on the bathroom door again. "I need in there."

  "It's not my fault!" Rachel said. "I don't have my own bathroom!"

  Mom met my gaze and gave me her version of rolling her eyes, which was somehow sweet when she did it. I went back to my toast and bck coffee, texting the guys in the group chat. Marty wanted to drink tonight. I was relieved when Casey said he couldn't (and reminded Marty it was Monday), and Rob said he had an online tournament—this tter comment resulted in all of us dunking on him with a handful of gifs each until the group chat was a headache-inducing blur of movement.

  Rachel yanked the bathroom door open and tore into the kitchen. She grabbed one of Mom's chocote banana grano bars from the Tupperware on the counter. Rachel's cheeks were pink and shimmery. Her hair was no longer straight but fell around her shoulders and down her back in ropey curls. She smelled faintly of burnt hair, sharp hairspray, and flowery perfume.

  "There's something glittery on your eyelids," I said through a mouthful of peanut butter, pointing to my own to demonstrate. "Right there."

  "It's supposed to be there," she snapped, flicking her hair over her shoulder, "it's called eyeshadow."

  "Whoa, okay." I downed some coffee. "It's nice."

  She wore a short, checkered dress over a white turtleneck and leggings dotted with star silhouettes. It should have been a csh of designs, but it looked good together somehow. She was chewing on a second grano bar and texting when Dad came from his office into the kitchen.

  "Rachel," Dad said. "Take some of that off."

  "Some of what off?" Rachel said.

  "Rachel Anne," Mom called from the hallway. "No need for that tone."

  "It's fine, Dad," I said. "It's just eyeshadow." I finished my coffee and stood up.

  "Whatever it is, there's a lot of it," Dad said. He had the newspaper under his arm, one of the few people left on the pnet who preferred straining his eyes to look at print journalism over simply reading on a phone. He didn't even own a cell. The most I'd managed to get him to do was py Wordle—not on the app, mind you, but through his web browser.

  "We gotta go," I said, "or we'll be te."

  "Rachel," Dad said, "I don't want to see all of that tomorrow. That's more than just eyeshadow. Understood?" We were shoving our sneakers on when Dad added: "Modesty!"

  Dad's interpretation of modesty was in opposition to vanity. Usually on television shows that featured an overbearing Christian retive, modesty was invoked as a critique of the teenaged daughter's cleavage or some otherwise revealing outfit. And yeah, Dad would have been bothered by that, too, but that wasn't really Rachel's style, anyway. For Dad, modesty was much broader than this. He insisted we care less about our appearance. We were supposed to be groomed and hygienic, with clean, neat clothes and good haircuts. But he considered it ungodly and shallow to focus too much attention on attractiveness.

  Once we were outside, I asked Rachel, "What's this look all about?"

  "I felt like dressing up." Her pink lips sparkled in the morning sunshine.

  "On a Monday morning?"

  "Is that okay with you?"

  I held up my hands. "I was just curious. Hey, wait a second." I nodded my head across the road. Talon was letting himself out. He flicked his still-damp hair off his forehead and smiled at me while he pulled shut the door behind him. My stomach fluttered. "Talon's coming, too."

  Rachel let out an uncharacteristic squeak. "Oh! Um, actually, I'm going ahead. See you at school. Bye!"

  We had a mock final in Chemistry that morning. Aaliyah Williams and I locked eyes across the rows and gave each other a collegial nod. We sat in the front on opposite ends of the cssroom. Besides Marty, she was my greatest competition—and, unlike Marty, I greatly respected her intelligence and work ethic.

  Back in snowy February, Aaliyah and I were called into the principal's office. Mr. Rathert-Hill waved us into two wooden chairs across from his desk. He looked flummoxed. We've never had two students with such close GPAs, he said, looking apologetically between us. Usually choosing the valedictorian is easy. But Aaliyah, you're point zero four percentage points ahead of Ryan. Yes, you heard that correctly. So, the title belongs to you. He leaned across the desk to shake her hand and beamed at her. We're thrilled to have you represent our school and your peers at graduation. Had he only brought me in to rub it in? But if I was going to lose valedictorian to anyone, I was gd it was Aaliyah. We were pretty evenly matched in History and Computer Science. I was top of the css in Biology and Chemistry; she came out ahead in Physics and Advanced Mathematics. Yet it still stung to lose out. At the end of our meeting, Mr. Rather-Hill told us I would be acting as the valedictorian understudy of sorts. Highly unusual, he admitted, but if Aaliyah, say, falls ill—and we hope to God she doesn't!—then we'll have you step in. But I'd never seen Aaliyah miss a day of school. I congratuted her and said I couldn't wait to hear her speech. That night, when I told Dad about the situation, he tried to conceal the look of disappointment—but I saw it. He told me it was a tight race, and I'd done my best. His words sounded less like comfort and more like defeat.

  Even though our exam was only practice for our real final, I took the win when I beat Aaliyah's time. For the remaining twenty minutes, I sat with Great Expectations open on my desk, flicking through dogeared pages and sticky notes. I'd already brainstormed thesis ideas and outlined recurring motifs and images, so I took the time to zone out and consider Talon's issue. Most nights I berated myself for at least a few minutes for not picking up on clues over the years, for failing to detect my best friend's abuse. Even that word (abuse) seemed trite and insignificant, the wrong signifier for what Talon experienced. But now I imagined him in a few short weeks, graduated, preparing to move to Vancouver. Packing up his guitar and his piano. Maybe staying with Griffin for a week or two or a month while he found a pce to rent. Of course I was happy for Talon, picturing the future opening up for him, but it would be strange to be in different countries, so far apart for the first time in our lives. Our upcoming distance—even now, as a hypothetical situation—felt like trying to bance an equation that didn't add up. Talon was always a few strides away across the road. But getting away from Stephen was the important factor. Was his abuse something that still needed to be reported? Once we finished high school, would we never speak about it again? Would Stephen hurt someone else, or only Talon? Had he harmed Griffin or Dean at any point?

  When the bell rang, I headed towards my locker. I slowed down when I saw Rachel standing in front of Talon. Only inches separated their bodies. Did they need to stand that close? Granted, the hallway was packed, but still. The space between Rachel's dress and Talon's Priority Three shirt seemed charged, somehow vital to the whole exchange. The school still smelled of cleaner and dusty, ripped-up vinyl and siding; because of the hum of the industrial fans and the regur student noise, I couldn't make out a word either of them were saying.

  Both of their cheeks were red. Rachel was twirling her long hair around her index finger. Talon looked down at her, nodding; I couldn't read his expression from where I stood. I hung back for another moment or two until Rachel gave Talon a meek double thumbs up and disappeared into the crowded hallway. I recalled climbing up the arbutus tree into my window, tipsy. Rachel grabbing me a cinnamon bun and the sharp sugar on my tongue. Asking if she could go to prom with Talon. Why did she want to go to prom three times? Why with Talon? Couldn't she let me have my own prom and my own best friend?

  Talon looked happy to see me when I came up to my locker.

  I opened the lock with my one free hand. "Hey," I said. "How was css?"

  "Yeah, fine. Well, bad, obviously. But fine." Talon gnced around and lowered his voice. "Ry, something came up with Rachel."

  "Oh yeah?" I tried to keep my face neutral.

  I shoved my enormous Chemistry text onto the top shelf; it was a careful game of Tetris to keep everything in those tiny lockers. My chest felt tight. I imagined Rachel in her jumpsuit, looking elegant and pretty and—female. Her arms up around Talon's neck and his hands on her waist or, worse, her hips. Why wouldn't he like her? She was smart and funny and they'd always gotten along. This was cssic movie shit: she grew up and now he saw her as more than a friend.

  Talon tugged on my arm. "Listen for a sec."

  I turned to him. He was chewing on his middle finger.

  "Rachel asked me to prom," he said.

  I gnced from his long eyeshes to his full lips before turning my eyes back to his. Who wouldn't want to go to prom with him? Who wouldn't want to dance with him while he wore a suit, swaying to saccharine music beneath cheap streamers and sharing sips of smuggled booze? Well, maybe most kids our age—but that was because high schoolers were dumb. I understood that and I was one. Popurity was predominantly based on extroversion, and clothing, and family wealth. You could maybe get around those three metrics if you were loud and obnoxious in css, or an athlete, and Talon was neither of those things.

  Rachel clearly got it, though. She recognized Talon's beauty and talent.

  Okay, fuck it, whatever, I thought, you can't change it now. Don't scare him off right when you have him again. So what if he's going with Rachel? He'll be with you, too.

  I nodded. "Nice."

  He furrowed his brows. "Nice?"

  "Yeah. It'll be fun, all of us going together."

  He pulled his finger from his mouth. "I said no."

  Relief flooded me. My chest unravelled. Could I hear birds chirping?

  "I feel terrible," he said. "She specified she wanted it to be, uh, a date-date."

  "She'll be fine," I said cheerily.

  "I feel super fucking mean," he said. "But I think of her as my little sister. Does she—she doesn't have a crush or something, right?"

  My little sister. I bit back a smile. "If she does, she hasn't told me. Don't worry. She'll get over it."

  Talon didn't look convinced.

  "She asked me if she could take you to prom," I said, smiling sideways at me, "but I didn't think she'd do it."

  "I don't even know why she'd want to go with me. Well, whatever. I told her the truth. That I'm not going to prom."

  "You're not?"

  He shook his head. "I thought about it, but… I was going to try for your sake. Or, like, the groups' sake, I mean. But I can't." He gnced around; his shoulders edged upwards towards his ears. "I hate this pce. You're the only person I like. And Casey—he's cool."

  I thought of how Rob and Talon used to be close. Back in grade eight, they'd had an annoying six months of trying to learn Elvish together. Now they barely looked at each other. There was a clear disconnect, some discomfort between them.

  "Speaking of hating people," I said, "can I ask you something?"

  Talon looked at me.

  "What happened with you and Rob?"

  Talon swallowed. "Nothing."

  "Then why is it weird with you guys?"

  "It's not weird," he said tightly, "we just don't have anything to talk about."

  The bell rang for next css.

  "Band," Talon said, grabbing an overstuffed duo-tang. Disorganized sheet music threatened to fall out from every angle. "See you at lunch."

  After school, the guys and I crammed in Rob's car to go rent suits. We waved at Talon, who was putting his earbuds in for the walk home. He held up a hand.

  Marty leaned out the passenger seat: "Dude, you're a fucking traitor! You'll regret this! It's prom! It happens once, man! Fucking once!"

  Talon pointed at his ears, shrugged, and grinned.

  During our English block that afternoon, Casey had booked us a limo. It was pretty greasy—even in the photo, you could see a few tears in the leather, and rust above the rims—but it was cheap and, most importantly, would fit all of us. Rob was having doubts now that he knew Talon wasn't coming because he was the only one who wasn't paired up but Casey and I shouted him down until he acquiesced. Of course, I was enormously bummed that Talon wasn't coming with us. But a tiny part of me was relieved, too, because I found it hard to bance hanging out with both Lily and Talon for some strange reason. At House of Jacob, a locally-owned rental pce, we scoured the racks. There were a couple other guys from school there, st minute shopping like us. Marty held up a cream suit with bck pels.

  "No, dude," I said, "not the white suit."

  "You can't," Casey said.

  "Nothing fits me, anyway," Marty said, shoving it back on the rack. "I'm not a fucking giant like you, Cloud."

  Giant was an exaggeration. When I had breached the coveted six-foot threshold the summer before grade ten, the guys had acted like they were going to beat me up. When Marty saw me—he'd been away for six weeks in Germany and France with his family, so he missed my growth spurt happening in real time—he sank to his knees, put his hands in his sun-bleached curls, and screamed, Why, God? My height settled somewhere north of six foot one. Technically, Casey decred me six foot one and a half, but Marty scoffed at this; apparently half inches only mattered when they came to him. Talon and Casey were nearly the same height, a hair shy of five eleven. They stood back-to-back for longer than strictly necessary, both trying to edge out the other with their hair. Rob was five eight and Marty rounded up to five six. The only reason I knew all of this with precision was because we spent an entire obsessive afternoon at Casey's, out in his garage. We cross-referenced between Casey's father's three measuring tapes, measuring and re-measuring. You're only tall because your family's Scandinavian, Marty griped to me, rolling up the tape, and Casey shot back with, Then how do you expin your short German ass? Even Marty ughed.

  "Whoa," Casey said, reaching behind a bunch of bck and navy suits to pull out a vivid yellow suit. "This is sick!"

  "Yeah," I said, "that'll look rad on you."

  "What?" Marty said. "So I can't wear white but Case can wear whatever the hell that is?"

  "It's yellow," I said, "are you confused by the color yellow?"

  "White's me," Rob said, "even I know that!"

  "What color's Ana wearing again?" I said to Casey, suddenly worried. "Will it csh? Does that matter?"

  Casey shot me a simirly panicked look. "Uh, like, peach-pink, dude. Don't these colors go together?"

  I frowned. "I think so."

  I wasn't sure if Rachel would be feeling down after Talon's rejection or not, but she enjoyed fashion, so I figured asking her for help would cheer her up if she was, indeed, moping. What goes with gold? I texted her. She wrote back instantly and told me that my eyes and coloring would look particurly good in a soft blue, navy, or charcoal, and that all of those would ftter gold. Bck and gold obviously go together, Rachel wrote, but that'll make you look translucent. You've been warned. I found the colors she recommended and texted her photos from the changeroom. She voted charcoal. The old clerk—a stooped, short man with whisps of white hair above his sun-spotted ears—smiled approvingly at my choice and directed me towards his collection of ties. He told me a skinny tie would look dashing on me and emphasize my height. He held out a subtly textured gold tie.

  "That's perfect, thank you," I said. "And what do you have for corsage options?"

  "Follow me," the clerk said.

  There were two types of corsages: one that pinned to the girl's chest, and one that wrapped around the wrist. Casey and I stared at both types, touching each gently as though we could absorb the right answer through the material.

  "Fuck it," I said, "I'm asking."

  Me: Hey Beaumont, do you prefer a regur corsage or a wrist corsage?

  Lily: Surprise me, Cloud! You can't go wrong

  I chose wrist and Casey chose the cssic.

  In the end, Casey got his yellow suit with a coral bow tie. Marty went with all bck, which I had to admit looked striking on him, particurly with the purple bolo tie. Rob was nervous about which color to choose because of his auburn hair but we encouraged him to try a grey suit that was several shades lighter than the one I'd chosen. Casey wolf whistled and Rob went pink in the cheeks, rolling his eyes but clearly feeling good about himself in the suit. I wished Talon was with us; I tried to picture which suit he'd gravitate towards. He looked handsome in green. Or maybe a berry-colored suit. I could see him wearing all bck, too, like Marty. Maybe tried-and-true bck and white. But it didn't matter, now—he'd made his choice. Although the four of us had only spent an hour in the store, we were all wiped after setting up our rentals. We arranged to come back the day before prom to grab our outfits and the corsages.

  "Let's get food," Marty said, "I'm fucking starving."

  Rob went through the McDonald's drive-thru. I poked my head up between him and Casey but Lily wasn't working. We pulled around and sat in the parking lot facing the blue foothills of the mountains, eating junky, steamy food. The car smelled like pop, chicken nuggets, fries, and beef. While we shoved food in our mouths, we brainstormed our pn for Thursday. First, we'd go to the game. Second, we'd walk up to Kip Lamb's house party. We would tell our parents we were watching the baseball game and then having an all-night study session before crashing at Casey's, waking up, and going to school Friday. All that goodwill we had banked with our parents over the years was paying off in spades. I confirmed Talon's attendance. Casey said it was cool if we invited the girls over, so long as we fucked somewhere where he couldn't see or hear us.

  Marty and I were in the backseat together, knees squishing uncomfortably. I leaned forward and tapped Casey on the shoulder. "Have you and Ana—you know?"

  "Nah, but I think Thursday's the night," he said, grinning at me around a mouthful of cheeseburger. "You, buddy?"

  I leaned back and downed another handful of fries. From the corner of my eye, I could sense Marty peering at me. "No way," I said, "I'm not losing my virginity in the same room as you buffoons."

  Marty threw his head back and ughed. We devolved into crude jokes about Casey's shed, and throwing wrappers at each other, and asking what our boundaries were for having sex in front of each other (Rob cimed he'd go all the way, he didn't care; Casey said his limit was a lowkey, beneath-the-covers handjob, but he'd move to his bedroom if Ana wanted to do it; I insisted that, ideally, nothing sexual would ever happen in front of any of them). For the next two hours, we drove up and down Six Mile River's dingy strip while the falling sun cast a peachy glow across the trees and main road—past the abundance of fast-food restaurants, the gas stations, the shitty hotels—pying music and talking. In mere months, I would be an official resident of California. So even though driving around aimlessly was dumb and familiar, and we were eating the same greasy food we always ate after school and dissecting the same hypothetical situations we always did, I told myself to stay present and in the moment and enjoy the guys' company. Casey and Marty were both attending UBC in the fall, but Rob was off to Washington. Although Talon would be in Vancouver at the same time as Casey and Marty, I think we all sensed our impending scattering. The car was filled not only with the sharp scent of cheap cheese and balled-up waxy food wrappers but an unspoken combination of anticipation and nostalgia for a time and pce we hadn't yet left.

  When I got home, Rachel's face was scrubbed clean and pink. No hint of eyeshadow or shiny cheeks or dark shes or glossy lips. Her curls were up in a ponytail. She'd pulled pajama pants beneath her dress. She was tucked into the corner of the couch with the fluffy Warning! I may talk about Jesus at any time pillow wrapped in her arms. I felt bad about finding passing joy at her rejection.

  I lowered myself onto the cushion next to her feet. "Hey," I said.

  "Hey."

  "Your hair looks nice today."

  She gnced at me and rested her chin on the pillow. "Thanks."

  We sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes.

  "Does Talon have a crush on anyone?" Rachel said.

  I gnced up from my phone. "I don't know," I said truthfully.

  She nodded and went back to staring at the floor.

  "Ryan?" she said.

  "Yeah?"

  "Do I look like a little girl to you?"

  I squinted. "I'd say more of a medium-sized girl."

  She shoved my leg with the heel of her foot.

  "Look," I said, "there's always going to be about twenty percent of me that sees you as a little girl. But only because I'm your older brother. You don't look like a kid anymore, though. Okay?" I grabbed the remote. I knew what would cheer her up. "Want to watch YouTube?"

  "How'd you do?" I said to Talon. We stood at our lockers Wednesday afternoon; I was pulling out my texts for English.

  "I passed the quiz," Talon said. "Fifty-two."

  "That's great!"

  Talon turned so that his back was against his locker. He rolled his eyes. "It's not great."

  "What are you at in the css?"

  He winced. "Forty-four. I didn't hand in a whole b, I guess. And I missed three quizzes. And I just suck at biology and science in general."

  "Hold on. Let me calcute." I grabbed my notebook, turned to a page in the back, and held it up against my locker. I did some quick algebra. "All right. You're going to need a sixty-eight to get fifty in the css."

  "Sixty-eight? I can't even pass your mock exams!"

  "You got forty-nine on the st one. Rounded to fifty, that's a pass."

  He briefly closed his eyes. "I'm fucked."

  "No, you're not."

  "And there's not even a summer css for bio. I'd have to take it in September." I saw panic on his face. "I can't stay here until next Christmas. Or maybe I just won't take it at all. Maybe I'll just say fuck it and drop out."

  "It's one css! You can't not get your diploma because of one css—"

  "Yes, I can. Do I even need it?"

  "You absolutely need it, Tal. People barely get by with bachelor's these days. You need your diploma."

  "And you know what?" He brought his finger up to his mouth and began to chew on the cuticle. "I'm almost failing history, too. So why bother?"

  "Ask Casey. He'll help you with that."

  He exhaled, blowing air upwards towards his hair.

  I put away my biology notebooks and grabbed Great Expectations. "Want to hang out tonight?"

  "Yeah," he said, "but I can't. Dad wants me to stay home. Since we're going out tomorrow."

  That wasn't inherently strange, right? Fathers asked their children to stay at home all the time for myriad reasons: chores, homework, a vague sense that if they were inside, they weren't in danger. (Although for Talon, hadn't it been the reverse all this time?)

  Talon and I were in a good rhythm. As promised, he was at school every day. He showered most mornings, too, which I considered an accomplishment given his track record. I made him lunch Monday, Tuesday, and today, and If Mom noticed, she didn't comment. Each time I didn't tell my parents or call the cops or write an email, that was a choice, and I'd have to live with that. But what Talon told me that night he climbed in my window—I kind of let it fade away. Not completely. Beneath everything, the knowledge of what his dad had done sat in my chest like a heavy stone. But it was easier to ignore the weight because I saw Talon daily now, and as far as I could tell, he wasn't in immediate danger.

  "And is that okay?" I said. "Staying home?"

  Talon closed his locker. He nodded.

  "You swear?"

  He hesitated for only a moment. "Cross my heart."

  That evening, I found Mom in the kitchen. She was hunched over the table. When us kids were growing up, Mom and Mia bonded over crafts; I had faint but constant memories of the two of them at this same table or spread out on the living room floor, surrounded by tape and textured paper and the acrid smell of glue. Sometimes the coffee table was littered with small bouquets of dahlias and peonies and pristine white hydrangeas that made my nose itchy—they plucked them from Mia's garden when they were at peak bloom so they could dry them. But when Mia passed away, Mom's passion for that type of artistry faded. It heartened me to see her now in front of her eclectic recipe book; she doodled in the margins and sometimes had photographs of a particurly fancy pie crust or me or Rachel with a pte of food in front of us or overloaded forks halfway to our mouths.

  I pulled a chair out and sat down. "What are you working on?"

  "A summer pasta sad," she said. "Something fresh but easy for the next round of food boxes." She pced her pencil down and smiled at me in the dim lighting. "What is it, sweetie?"

  "Is baking a cake hard?"

  Mom gently closed the oversized book. "Oh, it really depends. Not necessarily. But depending on how complex you'd like to be or how you'd like to decorate it—yes, they can become pretty hard."

  "What was that cake Mia used to make when we were little?"

  "That's called red velvet, which is somewhat trickier. Are you thinking of baking?" Mom's eyes fshed. "For a certain lovely dy named Lily?"

  "Well, actually," I said, clearing my throat, not meeting her eyes, "I was hoping I could surprise Talon."

  "Oh? Have I missed a special occasion?"

  "No, no. It's just… He's not coming to prom with us. And Stephen isn't really one to, you know, celebrate much. I don't know. Talon struggles with school, as you know, and I just thought—it would be nice for someone to celebrate him. If his family won't do it."

  "That's very thoughtful of you," Mom said. "Why don't we do a practice run together?"

  In the semi-darkness of our kitchen, I looked at Mom's open and trusting face. She brushed her pale fringe out of her eyes. You can tell her right now, I thought. All I had to blurt out was that Stephen hurt Talon. I didn't need to get into the specifics. Mom and Dad would help. They would ensure the proper authorities were called, that Talon was removed from his house, that he would be safe. Couldn't I face the loss of Talon's friendship in favor of his freedom?

  "Honey?" Mom said. "Are you feeling sick?"

  But you're so close to graduation now, I reminded myself. Talon knows the situation better than you do.

  "No," I said, "sorry. A practice run would be great."