Chapter 1
I had not meant to become best friends with Bryony Tsai.
It had been my intention not to be close friends with anyone at Harbor Cove.
Not that I wanted to be enemies with anyone either—I just wanted to get through these last six months with very few attachments.
And I was pretty sure flying solo was going to be easy to achieve.
Who wanted to make a new friend the second semester of senior year?
A friend they were just going to say goodbye to in six months?
I’d figured everyone would be on the same page.
I just hadn’t planned on Bryony. Or the exploding sink.
I’d been at Harbor Cove a week, and my plan seemed like it was on track. I’d met some people to chat with in my classes and had been floating between various tables and spots at lunch. I was being friendly with everybody, but not getting too close with any one group.
It was after PE, and I was taking my time getting ready in the locker room.
I’d had enough credits that I’d been able to test out of taking a language, which meant I had a free period next.
So, while everyone else got dressed in a rush and hurried back to their next class, I hadn’t been stressing about it.
And I also thought I was alone in the locker room, so when I rounded the corner and saw a girl sitting on the floor, with her back against the lockers, I jumped in shock.
“Agh!” I yelped, then shook my head, trying to pull myself together and get my heart rate to calm down. “Sorry,” I amended quickly. That didn’t seem like a way anyone would want to be greeted. “I didn’t know anyone else was here.”
The girl looked up at me, and I could see that her face was tearstained and puffy—she’d clearly been crying.
I was pretty sure I recognized her from our gym class.
“I’m not s-supposed to be here,” she said, wiping a tear away.
She had dark brown hair with pink streaks threaded through it, and blunt, straight-across bangs.
She was wearing a shirt that said, for some reason, LUCKY I couldn’t help it.
There was something about this girl’s laughter that made you want to laugh too, like singing along to a song you’ve always known.
I looked in dismay at my reflection—and at the identical dark stain that was now across the front of my pants. “This is awful!”
“I guess we just live here now?” She was still laughing as she looked from me to her, and the identical terrible situation we were now in. “I’m Bryony, by the way. Bryony Tsai.”
“Cass Issac,” I said, coming over to join her.
“Are you new?”
“Yeah, we just moved here from San Luis Obispo.”
Her eyes widened. “You moved second semester of senior year?”
“Yeah, but it’s okay. It’s…” I took a breath, about to rattle off all the excuses and lines I’d told myself about how it would be fine to have no friends, that I was okay starting over, yet again.
But as I looked at Bryony’s sympathetic expression, all those flimsy arguments collapsed.
“It sucks,” I said, sitting down next to her.
“It really does.”
“And I’m really sorry about your breakup—and your friends being jerks.” I shook my head. “That’s awful.”
“I mean, I guess better to find out now that they were kind of terrible? But I was just so blindsided. And now this happened,” she said, gesturing down at herself.
“Well, I’m in the same boat.”
“You could have just believed me,” she said, starting to laugh again.
“Yeah, in retrospect that would have made a lot more sense,” I agreed, laughing too.
We stayed in the locker room for the rest of the period—it took that long for our pants to dry. And by the end of it, when we walked out together and headed to lunch, sitting down and continuing our conversation without even having to talk about it, we were friends.
It was the last thing I’d been expecting—that I’d meet the best friend I’d ever had when I was determined not to make any friends at all. But Bryony and I had just gotten along, from that very first day.
And now, as I hurried out of the restaurant and saw her slightly dented white Jeep in the parking lot, I felt myself smile. I ran over to the passenger side and yanked open the door. “Hi, friend!” I yelled, as she jumped.
“Oh my god,” she yelped, placing her hand on her chest. “You scared me!”
I laughed. “You were the one who texted me you were here.”
“I know! I just didn’t expect you to, like, apparate here.”
“I hardly think that’s what I did.” I got into the car and immediately recognized what she was listening to. “Cereal ?” I asked with a sigh.
Bryony grinned at me. “Well, naturally!” Cereal was the podcast Bryony was obsessed with.
She’d been talking it up ever since we met, but I’d just never understood the appeal.
It was just two friends sitting around, eating and rating different breakfast cereals while chatting.
Bryony loved it and was always trying to get me to listen so we could talk about it.
But honestly, I’d never understood the point.
Why was I going to listen to total strangers gab over Lucky Charms?
What was fun about that? But Bryony was a super fan—she’d gone to a bunch of their live shows, lived for the new episode drops, and even now, was wearing Cereal merch—a T-shirt that read IT’S BETTER WITH MILK!
which was apparently one of the show’s catchphrases. “How was the dinner? Did Oscar cry?”
“Delicious, and of course,” I said, as I buckled my seat belt. I smiled across the car at her. “Are you so excited?”
“I’m so excited!” she practically yelled, and I laughed. “It’s going to be the best night ever.”
“It really is. Oscar was talking all about how he didn’t do anything for his grad night. This just feels super special.”
“It’s going to be amazing,” Bryony said as she put the car in reverse and backed out of the parking lot. “I’ve been hearing about it for forever, and now our turn is finally here.”
“I can’t wait. Angelo was telling me to take lots of pictures, to make sure and remember everything, because it’s only going to come around once.” I checked my phone—seven thirty. “Think we’re okay on time?”
Bryony nodded. “We’re good.” Everyone was meeting at Harbor Cove High, in the parking lot by the soccer field, and then we’d drive over to the park. Grad Nite started at nine, so the buses were going to start leaving at eight. “You want to DJ?”
“Always.” I scrolled through my songs, looking for her favorites, before stopping on Taylor Swift’s “Long Live.”
“Yes!” Bryony grinned at me and cranked the volume. “Perfect!” She started singing along to the song, her hand out the window, keeping time on the window frame.
As I looked at Bryony, I felt a little squeeze in my heart.
I knew that this, tonight, would most likely be the last time we would ever hang out.
But I quickly pushed this away, not wanting to deal with it just yet.
Tonight was about having an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Tomorrow was for dealing with the future.
Bryony parked, and then without even talking about it, we ran over to the group of seniors gathered by the waiting school buses.