“OH MY GOD, we’re almost there!”

Alex smirks at my enthusiasm as we see a sign for the exit we’ve been headed toward for two weeks. We’ve driven all the way from Boston in this rickety old Volvo, and the passenger seat has kind of started to feel like home. I can’t believe our trip is almost over. My breath gets shallow and my heart accelerates. The dream that’s been in the future since April—since I was a little kid, actually—is about to be the present.

I’m totally psyched, but as a clammy sweat breaks out on my forehead, I also feel queasy. It doesn’t help that it’s a hundred and twelve degrees outside, and this car’s old air-conditioning system only gets the temperature down to the low nineties. I switch to a more upbeat playlist on the iPhone, unroll the passenger-side window of Alex’s car, and let the hot, dry wind wash over me.

“Look out, LA! Here I come!” I shout out the window.

A guy in an old BMW makes a nasty gesture with his tongue.

“Ew!” I say, and I duck back inside the car and roll up the window. “Ew! Alex, that guy just went like this.” I show him the tongue move and Alex laughs, waving it off.

“Forget about him, Becca,” Alex says. “Stay focused. What’s your number-one goal again?”

“Get an agent. I will not rest until I have one. If Brooke can do it, so can I.”

“Bet your ass,” Alex says, and switches lanes.

Brooke was my main acting competition in high school, and she got into Tisch, NYU’s theater school. When I didn’t get accepted anywhere she was such a dick about it. Everyone felt bad for me—Carter Academy has a 99.9 percent matriculation rate, after all—but Brooke took her pity to a new level. I almost barfed on the spot when I learned that she’d found an agent literally the day after she moved to New York for a summer Shakespeare seminar. She’d been discovered at a café near Washington Square Park, wherever that is. Within a week, she’d booked an in-flight safety video for Delta.

“Oh, I love this song.” I turn up the volume to get Brooke and her perfect skin out of my mind. The latest girl-power song from my favorite pop princess blasts from the speakers. “I know you hate this jam, but I really need to sing it right now. Okay?”

“Go for it,” Alex says, and turns up the volume even higher. He grins at me as I belt out the song off-key. When he smiles, lines from his eyes frame his cheeks—the result of a relentlessly happy childhood. He’s had everything that money can buy and everything it can’t, too. It was really no surprise when he got into Stanford early.

The car does that shaky thing it’s been doing since Utah whenever we get up to seventy miles an hour. “Come on, Ruby, don’t fail us now,” Alex says.

I thought of the name Ruby when he bought the car from his next-door neighbor last year.

“What do you think, is Ruby actually going to make it all the way to Palo Alto?” Alex asked. After he drops me at my cousin’s place, he’ll be taking the scenic route up the coast.

“Oh yeah,” I say. “She’s a trouper.”

“Easy, baby,” Alex says to Ruby, who is rattling more than usual. Alex’s jaw flexes as he signals and heads toward the exit. Even after two years of dating he can still make me melt. He has a strong jaw and the nose of a future leader. His eyes are the color of a lake on an overcast day, and his blond hair smells woodsy close to his neck. And don’t even get me started on his body. He’s a champion skier and has the legs and ass to show for it. Last night we had the most amazing time at a motel in Palm Springs. We couldn’t get enough of each other. We barely slept. The people in the next room actually complained to the front desk, which we laughed about for the next hour, as quietly as possible, of course.

Alex turns on his indicator and takes the exit for Orange Grove Boulevard. Vivian’s exit. We’re almost there. Oh my God. We’re almost there.

“How hard can getting an agent actually be?” I ask. Alex opens his mouth to answer, but I stop him. “Famous last words, I know. I should probably learn how to wear eye makeup for on-camera auditions. I’m going to need some new looking-for-agent clothes, because everything I have feels a little too…I don’t know…Boston.” Alex seems nervous as the car slows, and we turn onto a wide boulevard lined with tall, evenly spaced palm trees. I know how he feels. I’m so nervous I can’t seem to stop talking. “Can you believe how perfect last night was? That was the best night ever. We have to go back to Palm Springs!”

“Becca,” Alex says. He bites his lip as he makes a left on to Bradford Street, Vivian’s street.

“I don’t want to say good-bye. I really, really don’t want to,” I say. I feel carsick actually, and a little untethered. We slow down in front of Vivian’s complex.

Alex looks pale as he parallel parks, and yet, even with his pallid complexion, the sight of him nearly takes my breath away. I snap a picture, the last of the roll of film. Before we left, my mom gave me her old camera so that I could take pictures with actual film. It’s nothing fancy, just a vintage-y point-and-shoot from when she was my age. I’ve spaced the twenty-four shots out over the course of our road trip.

“Why’d you do that?” he asks.

“You just look so cute when you parallel park, and I’m not going to get to see you do it again for a while,” I say, and inhale sharply. I have a cramp, like I get when we do the mile run for gym class. I clutch my side.

“You okay?” he asks.

“I’m just freaking out a little. I can do this, right?”

“Of course you can,” he says. He turns the engine off and faces me. I put my hand on his leg. “But…we need to say good-bye now.”

“I know. Your orientation is tomorrow. At least we have the Jones concert in six weeks. How many days? I think it’ll be easier if I think in terms of days—”

“Actually,” he says, his face rearranging in an unfamiliar way, “I think we should take a beat.”

“A what?” At first his words don’t register. But then he tilts his head, looks me in the eye, and squeezes my hand. My heart drops straight through the floor of the car and lands with a sizzle on the hot tar. “Wait. You’re breaking up with me?”

He inhales a definitive breath.

“Why?” I ask. My stomach turns over. For a second I think I might throw up.

“Everyone knows long distance doesn’t work,” he says.

“But we won’t be that far apart. It’s only an hour by plane. There are airfare deals all the time!”

“It’s not just that. I want to make a fresh start, you know? It’s a new chapter of my life, and I want to be able to throw myself into it. And so should you.”

“Are you telling me this is for my own good or something?” I ask.

“We’re going to be doing such different things. I think it’ll be hard for us to relate. We’re in different phases of our lives.”

“I wouldn’t call it a different life phase. Didn’t we just graduate from the same high school?”

“Look,” Alex says as he wipes sweat from his upper lip. “A part of me wishes that I could stay with you and cheer you on….”

“You can!”

“But I’m going to be so involved in my own life at Stanford. And I deserve to be able to enjoy myself.”

“You deserve it?” It sounds like a sentence he’s been practicing. I feel a sharp stab in my chest as I wonder how long he’s known he was going to do this. “How long have you been planning this? The whole trip?”

“I guess I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Hey, you deserve your freedom, too.”

“I don’t want any more freedom,” I say. “I’m scared of all the freedom I have.”

“You’re going to be fine,” he says.

“You don’t really think I’m going to make it, do you?” I ask. I’m in so much pain that I’m on the verge of hyperventilating. My ears are buzzing.

“That’s not true,” he says without looking me in the eye. He pops the trunk and gets out of the car.

Vivian emerges from her condo wearing a preppy tunic, white jeans, and a huge grin. She waves from her door. I try to signal for her to go back inside until Alex and I can talk more—this is all happening so suddenly, can it even be real?—but she doesn’t get it. I step out of the car, heart pounding even as my blood seems to slow. Alex hands me my suitcase and purse as Vivian walks toward us across an impossibly green lawn.

“Hey, girl!” Vivian calls.

“Hi,” I say through a broken smile, and then I turn back to Alex and ask quietly, “What about last night?”

“It was great,” he says as though this has nothing to do with anything.

I open my mouth to speak, but I can’t think of what to say to this boy who I’ve loved for two years, who I thought loved me.

“Take care,” he says.

Take care? What does that even mean?

Seconds before Vivian reaches us, he gives me a stiff hug and hops in the still-running car. I wait for Ruby to be out of sight, and then I turn to Vivian and burst into tears.