“Where did you get that sweatshirt?” Amir asks when he, Will, MJ, and Sam come to pick me up for the homecoming game. “I want one!”

I’m wearing the hoodie Mom gave me yesterday as a joke gift. It just says COLLEGE across the front.

“My mom got it for me,” I say. “Because I’ve been driving her up the wall freaking out about college ever since I sent in my application.”

“You and me both,” MJ says with a sigh.

“My mom said she wants me to remember that I’m going to get into college somewhere, even if Johns Hopkins isn’t smart enough to admit me,” I continue. “Subtle hint taken, Mom.”

“They’d be crazy not to,” Sam says. “You’re probably going to be valedictorian.”

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” Will says, flashing me a wicked grin in the rearview mirror.

“Or me,” MJ says, socking Will on the shoulder.

“Hey!” Will cries out, laughing. “You know you have tiny fists of fury.”

“Poor you,” she says, laughing right back at him.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m valedictorian, despite these two goofballs,” I tell Sam. “I bet at least half the people who are applying early are their school’s valedictorian, too.”

“You have a point,” Amir says.

“Ugh. Okay, can we declare this a college-talk-free zone?” MJ begs us. “I’m desperate to forget about the whole thing for a while.”

“Going to be kind of hard to have a college-talk-free zone at homecoming,” Will points out. “Given that there will be a lot of people there back from, you know, college, talking about school.”

“But can we at least avoid the subject in this car?” MJ says. “How about we talk about this brilliant tweak I thought of for Karla the Killer?”

She proceeds to explain some intricate detail of their battle bot, which means nothing to me, so I kind of stop paying attention to the words and just watch Will. He’s so adorably animated when he talks about Karla. We haven’t had any time alone over Thanksgiving, and I miss him. Sometimes I think that once we all find out where we’re going and get our grades this quarter, maybe I’ll be ready to stop keeping this a secret. Hopefully by then I’ll have pulled enough ahead of Will and MJ that they won’t be able to catch up, and nobody will care that Will and I are dating. I thought maybe this thing with Will wouldn’t last past September, but now I’m going to a homecoming game with him? Not only that, we’re in a pretty intense, if secret, relationship. We’ve even exchanged the L-word. That kind of intense.

I have to keep reminding myself that next September we could be on opposite sides of the country, and I’m not down for long distance. This isn’t forever, this is for now. My heart tightens at the thought, and I shove it away and try to focus on what MJ is saying about Karla.

The parking lot at school is already crowded when we pull in. I spot Ada with her older sister, Grace, and run to catch up with them. I give them both giant hugs.

“You’ll never guess what happened at Phil Dugan’s party last night,” Ada says.

“Um … you finally got with Tony Ortega?”

“I wish,” Ada says. “But no, it’s about Carly.”

“Carly made out with Tony Ortega?”

Ada smacks my arm. “Hush your mouth!” she exclaims as I rub it. “No, Carly hooked up with Jayson Trantor.”

“Shut up! What?”

“Yeah, I know,” Ada says. “That’ll teach you to bail on me to go to an Oversized Aviators concert with Saffron.”

“It was a last-minute thing!” I say. “Saffron texted and said she had an extra ticket because her friend got sick and she knew I love the band. You totally would have bailed on me, too, and you know it. You stan Oversized Aviators even more than I do!”

“True,” Ada admits. “I’m jealous, that’s all.”

“Understandable,” I say. “But back to Carly and Jayson. I guess he’s kinda hot, even if he’s not my type.”

“Yeah, I know. And so does he,” Ada says.

I laugh. I don’t know much about Jayson other than he’s hot and he’s on the wrestling team and aced our sophomore Spanish class. “One-time thing?” I ask.

“Nope. Carly and I were supposed to come to the game together, and she blew me off to go with Jayson instead.”

“God, I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with high school drama anymore,” Grace chimes in, zipping up her jacket.

Ada gives her an are-you-kidding-me look. “Like you didn’t spend most of Thanksgiving dinner catching us up on the latest sorority house drama?”

“Greek life, not geek life,” Grace says, and Ada rolls her eyes at the ridiculousness.

“Hey, Dara and Ada, are you gonna sit with us?” Will shouts from behind us as we go into the bleachers.

“Yeah!” I call back. We wait for them to catch up and then we all go into the football field and search till we find an empty spot high up in the bleachers that’s big enough to fit all of us.

“Oh, look, there’s Carly!” MJ says, pointing to a spot lower down in the bleachers. She starts to wave to call her up.

“Wait, is she with Jayson Trantor?” Will says.

“Yup,” Ada says.

“How did we miss that?” MJ says.

“Because we skipped Phil’s party to play Iron Harvest,” Will says.

“And I totally killed you both,” Amir says gleefully.

The game starts, and I try to follow along, but I’m just not that into football. Mostly I’m here to hang with my friends. So I cheer at the right times but without really knowing what’s going on.

Will is sitting between MJ and me, but he’s focusing his attention on MJ. We always play it cool when we hang with everyone, but his leg drifts toward mine and then stays there, so I feel the heat of him and we’re somehow connected.

“You know, that tweak you came up with for Karla might just be genius,” Will tells MJ. “Karla’s gonna whip Boris’s butt.”

“Remember, it’s not just Boris we have to beat,” MJ says. “It’s all the other robotics clubs in the county.”

“I’m not worried,” Will says. “My girl Karla can take them all.”

“Your girl Karla?” MJ says with a raised eyebrow. “Don’t you mean our girl Karla? She’s the monster of many Dr. Frankensteins.”

“Karla’s not a monster!” Will says. “She’s neutral, like all technology.” He grins at MJ. “Now, the people controlling her … that’s another story.”

“Speak for yourself, William,” MJ says.

Will snorts. “Yeah, right. Weren’t you the one who convinced me to eat a mud pie by telling me it was a brownie?”

“Oh my god, Will!” I exclaim. “You didn’t.”

“Oh yeah he did,” MJ says with a grin. “He was such a gullible little kid.”

“But I got back at you by coating a sponge with chocolate icing and offering you a piece of cake,” Will says, grinning back at her. “Your face when you tried to take a bite was meme-worthy.”

“I still haven’t forgiven you for that, by the way,” MJ says. “Or for saying that cats are evil.”

“They are!” Will says. “Remember how Newton scratched me and I got sick?”

“That wasn’t Newton’s fault! You invaded his space!”

“The little fleabag thought your entire house was his space,” Will says.

“You can’t speak that way about my dead pet—”

“Okay, kids,” I say, interrupting MJ. “I’m going to go get a snack. Want anything?”

“I’ll come with you,” Will says. “Before MJ kills me.”

My heart gives a flutter. Until Ada says, “Me too.”

So no moment alone with Will. Sometimes I wonder if all the secrets we keep are really worth it. But then I think about the regular updates Rumor Has It has been posting on the valedictorian race.

“Can you get me some popcorn?” Sam asks.

We head to the snack truck, and just as we go behind the bleachers, the crowd on our side goes wild.

“Don’t tell me I missed a touchdown,” Will says. “Because that will make me very sad.”

“TOUCHDOWN for the Greenpoint Panthers!” the announcer says.

“Okay, we won’t tell you,” I say, with a half smile.

“Not cool, Simons!” Will says with a look of fake menace on his face.

“I’m soooooo scared,” I say, and start running, and Ada explodes into laughter.

“She thinks she can outrun a track star, does she?” Will says, and I hear the sound of his sneakers hitting the blacktop coming up behind me.

He manages to grab my hoodie and pulls me into his arms, and then lifts me over his shoulder like a sack of vegetables.

“Ada, I think Dara is an elf,” he says, turning. I get a glimpse of Ada catching this on her phone. “She weighs, like, nothing.”

“I’m not an elf, you’re just a giant, you behemoth!” I say. “Put me down!”

“Say please,” he says.

“Fine, please put me down.”

He loosens his grip on me and I slide down his body. Our eyes meet and I feel the electricity between us. “Wish we were alone,” I whisper.

“Me too,” he whispers back.

I pull away from him then, because Ada is catching up.

It’s getting harder and harder to keep us a secret. I wonder how much longer we’ll be able to do it.