Free The Year We Fell Apart by Emily Martin Page A

arrive in my happy place.
    Sadie comes over with a flat iron. She actually has the patience for straightening my curls, so I let her have at it.
    “Beautiful,” she says when she’s finished.
    For some reason, I always believe her when she calls me that. Partly because she’s beautiful, so she really ought to know. And maybe also because she was the first person besides my mother to use that word to describe me.
    “Thanks.” I absentmindedly take another sip of Boomerang and immediately regret it. Blech.
    She circles back with eyeliner and puts the finishing touches on my makeup.
    “You look so hot tonight. Kyle’s gonna be all over you.”
    “Which is precisely why we should go to the movies instead.”
    Back when we first started hanging out freshman year, I didn’t have much interest in all the parties Sadie got invited to. I was perfectly content dragging her out for ice cream or getting dragged through the mall in Raleigh. It wasn’t until sophomore year that she wore me down and I finally accepted one of her invitations.
    It’s comical, looking back at how intimidated I was by everyone Sadie hung around with. I used to beg Declan and Cory to come with me, though I couldn’t blame them for refusing 99 percent of the time. At these parties, we were on Sadie’s turf, and they still wanted nothing to do with her. Sadie didn’t exactly set out a welcome mat for my other best friends, either. But I kept tagging along because other boys I’d never even spoken to were suddenly paying me an awful lot of attention. Being in Sadie’s company made me desirable by extension. And at first, I liked the way it felt to finally step out of my bubble and into a foreign social life. Like I was better than the freakishly tall tomboy who swam under everyone’s radar.
    Sophomore Harper was downright hilarious.
    Sadie raises an eyebrow and dabs a fresh layer of gloss onto my lips with the pad of her ring finger. “Well, what else do you expect from Kyle? He tasted the honey and now he wants the whole pot.”
    “Gross, now I keep picturing him dressed as Pooh Bear.”
    “Ha, Pooh Bear. That’s gonna stick.”
    Pooh Bear is going to be disappointed if he thinks he’s getting any honey from this pot. Anyway, if I’m being honest, he’s not even the real problem here. He’s like a fruit fly: annoying, but harmless. With most of Carson’s underage population planning to attend this shindig, I can think of several graver threats. Including Mackenzie.
    I’m not even sure if I trust her or Gwen yet, and they certainly don’t owe me any favors. What’s to stop them from telling Declan what happened this afternoon? Hell, half the kids from my own school would leap at the opportunity to talk shit about me. Sooner or later, Declan is going to hear the rumors. He thinks sneaking into the pool is bad? If he knew the real reason I stopped speaking to him in October, or that Jake wasn’t even close to the only guy I had a lapse in judgment with this past spring, he would never see me the same way again.
    Sadie finishes my makeup and touches up her own, then turns to her closet. I sit down on her bed and wipe some of my lip gloss off on the back of my hand.
    “So who’s it going to be?” she asks.
    “Huh?”
    “If Kyle’s done, who’s next?” She slips out of her shorts and steps into a spandex skirt. “No, wait, let me guess. Could it be . . . Declan?”
    My fingers find my necklace. “Nothing is going to happen between Declan and me.”
    “Mm-hmm. I’ve heard that one before.”
    She pulls out a different skirt and tosses it in my direction. She’s always offering up her closet to me. But if the clothes are tight on Sadie, they’re catastrophic around my hips.
    “Anyway, I’d hope not,” she goes on. “Because we both know how much better you could do.”
    Summer after eighth grade was the first time I caught Declan looking at me differently. I’d tagged along on one of his numerous trips to the driving