I take the number six bus straight from school to Sal’s. After-school activities are usually two hours, so I figure Jonah and I can watch at least two more episodes of Create You before Mom starts to worry. I should start my homework on the bus. Instead, I look out the window. What Sophie said to me about the petition—the petition that I signed—bounces around my head like a trapped rubber ball. By the time I get to Sal’s, it feels like the rubber ball will be stuck inside my head forever.

“Why so glum, chum?” asks Jonah. He turns the page down on another thick book and slides a pen behind his ear. Jonah doesn’t usually talk like that, all rhyme-y. But it doesn’t take a genius to tell something’s wrong.

“No reason,” I say.

“Um, so not buying that,” he says. “I’m thinking it’s something really bad because you kinda look like this ratty old T-shirt. No offense.”

Jonah holds up a faded blue T-shirt from a pile on the counter. It’s full of tiny holes. The fabric is so thin that the light from the front window shines right through. It looks kind of beautiful, like a kaleidoscope Nina used to have, the kind that makes light seem like it’s playing a game of tag. But that’s not what Jonah means. He doesn’t mean I look beautiful. He means I look pathetic. Sad. Worthless. The rubber ball in my head starts bouncing faster.

“Why does everyone think that if you just say ‘no offense’ it makes everything okay?” I ask. “Like, ‘Cove, you’re a total loser with no friends. No offense.’”

“Whoa there, partner,” says Jonah, raising his hands in defense. “Rein it in.”

But I don’t want to stop.

“And why does everyone think they can say those kinds of things at all? Why do people think they can do stuff, like bark at you in the hallway or say they’re fighting for your rights, when really they’re just insulting you to your face? It’s not like I go around asking you why you moved here and why you spend all day alone in a store underlining sentences in books and watching shows on your laptop. It’s not like I say, ‘Hey Jonah, why don’t you try making some friends your own age? No offense.’”

The words come fast, before I can think them through. But even if I had thought them through, I still would have said them. Because I needed to know if they would make me feel better. I needed to know if being mean to someone else, someone you actually like, helps make everything else go away.

Turns out, it doesn’t. Because I feel worse. Way worse.

“Are you done?” Jonah asks.

I nod.

“Well, that’s a relief. Because that kind of stunk. No offense.”

“Sorry,” I say. Even though I feel badly, I smile. I can tell by Jonah’s tone of voice, by the way he flicks his head so that the spikes in his hair lean to the side, that he’s not really truly mad.

“It’s okay, Cove,” says Jonah. “We all need to vent sometimes. Blow off a little steam. Any chance your particular steam blowing has something to do with what we were talking about last time?”

“You mean with Create You?” I ask.

“I mean with your long-lost BFF.”

Jonah leans an elbow on the counter and balances his head in his hand. He wants me to start talking. But there’s something I need to know first. “Seriously,” I say. “Why are you here?

“Ah,” says Jonah. “Throwing it right back. In therapy, that’s called deflecting. And yet, I will ignore your trickery and answer the question.” He switches elbows and inhales. “I’m here because I had nowhere else I needed to be. I want to be a writer, so I applied to grad school thinking, ‘No prob, I got this.’ I quit my job, gave up my lease, the whole deal. But I didn’t get in. I got wait-listed, which is pretty much worse than not getting in because it means I was super close, but just not quite good enough. a.k.a., I’m stuck in limbo. a.k.a., a unique form of waiting hell.”

“Is that why you’re always reading those thick books? Because you want to be a writer?”

“Congratulations, Sherlock Holmes. Consider the mystery solved.”

“But why here?” I ask. “Why’d you come to Martha’s Vineyard?”

Jonah pops the collar on his shirt. “What’s so bad about here?”

“Are you deflecting?” I say, smiling.

He laughs. “Quite possibly. Now spill it. Tell me why you’re so down in the dumps.”

I tell Jonah the whole story. About Nina leaving, Sophie and Amelia at the Jaws Bridge, the picnic that’s not really a picnic, the mean shirts, and the petition. I even tell him about the barking. I haven’t had anyone to talk to about this stuff since Nina left. When I’m done, I feel so much better and so much worse. Better because I got it all out, like how my mom always says to blow out bad energy. But also worse, because now Jonah knows what the kids at school think about me.

“Damn,” says Jonah when I finish. “I forgot how rough growing up can be. I know this is the part where I’m supposed to give you some insightful advice or whatever, but all I can think is that those shirts are an abominable abuse of fashion.”

“Tell me about it,” I say.

“There are only two people who can redeem the world of fashion from such a horrendous atrocity.”

“Benjamin Boyd and Martina Velez?”

“My thoughts exactly.”

Jonah opens his laptop and pulls up Create You. He takes a package of multicolored Swedish Fish from his leather bag and tells me I can pick out all the red ones. But as I reach my hand in, Jonah pulls the bag away.

“You know you look nothing like a dog, right, Cove?” He says it more seriously than I’ve ever heard him say anything before. “Those girls, they’re mean. They’re just like mean girls everywhere, trying to bring down everyone around them to make themselves feel better. It’s not about you; it’s about them.”

“I know,” I say.

“Okay,” he says. “Good. Just checking.”

He hands me the bag of Swedish Fish. I pick a red one and stretch it as wide as I can before placing it in my mouth. I don’t truly believe Jonah. I think those girls really do think I look like a dog. But as I cross my legs underneath me and the show begins, I feel better. The tall buildings of New York City flash across the screen. I don’t look for Nina like I did before, but I do feel closer to her.

“Is everyone pumped for today’s challenge?” asks Benjamin Boyd.

“Yes!” answers Jonah. “We’re pumped!”

“Excellent,” continues Benjamin Boyd. “Because today’s challenge will require you to dig deep. Today you will be designing a symbol of appreciation. It can be any article of clothing designed for someone in your life, living or not, who you would like to thank for the impact they’ve had on your journey.”

“Deep,” says Jonah.

“Yeah,” I say.

We watch as Carver sews a fancy dress for his grandmother to wear dancing, because she always told Carver to dance to his own beat. Mika sews a jacket for her mom, who makes her feel safe and warm. Paris sews a baggy pair of pants with wide leather suspenders for her older brother, because he helps her up whenever she falls down. Jonah and I laugh at that one.

Even as I focus on the details—the way Carver holds the scissors when he cuts an enormous piece of fabric, the way Mika drapes her mannequin, the way Paris hammers metal studs into leather—I think about what I would create. A string hangs down from the hood of my sweatshirt. Without looking away from the screen, my hands move the string in a familiar pattern. When the show breaks for a commercial, I realize I’ve tied a bowline knot. I imagine weaving a necktie of bowline knots. I would give it to Clark, to thank him for always making me feel special.

I remember something Nina said to Clark the afternoon we were learning the bowline. “The rope keeps slipping,” she complained. “And it doesn’t even make sense. Rabbits don’t run around trees and through holes. This is stupid.”

“Not everything has to make sense,” responded Clark. “Sometimes you just have to feel your way through a challenge.”

That made sense to me. Numbers, equations, puzzles, all the things that were so easy for Nina to figure out, didn’t feel easy to me. They still don’t. But guiding the singed end of a rope around itself and weaving it in just the right pattern, that I understood. I could picture the silly rabbit. I could feel the sturdy trunk of the tree. I could smell the dirt in the hole. Just like I can picture a necktie of bowline knots.

I can’t make clothes out of singed rope and knots. But I do have ideas.

If I can learn to sew, maybe I really can get on Create You.

Maybe everything will be okay after all.