CHAPTER

8

As soon as I see Quinn, I feel totally ridiculous. We meet near the pier for the movie and she runs toward me, waving and calling my name.

“Hey,” I say, cool as a cucumber when she reaches my side. Her hair has dried curly, with blue-black spirals everywhere. She’s wearing cute white flip-flops and a pair of cute black shorts with a cute white tank top with little red kiss prints all over it and she’s basically the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.

And me? I’m in frayed cutoff shorts, a boring old navy blue T-shirt with a neck that might as well be up to my forehead so it covers my scar, and Kate’s boots, which I now realize are the stupidest choice of all choices for a night on the beach.

“Hey, awesome boots,” Quinn says, looking me up and down.

My shoulders let go of my neck. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, totally love them. They’re like rock star boots.”

My face warms and heats. I finally understand what it means to beam—I am a human lightbulb right now.

“You ready?” she asks. “My mom gave me some money, so our tickets are on me.”

“Awesome, thanks. And I’m so ready,” I say.

Then Quinn loops her arm with mine and my heart feels like a whirligig in my chest. In a good way. It’s been so long since my heart did something that felt this right.

After Quinn gets our tickets, we find a spot as close as we can get to the water without getting wet. She brought a big blanket and we spread it out over the cool, dry sand. A huge screen and a bunch of speakers are set up by the dunes, so we have to turn our backs to the water to see the movie. But I can still hear the ocean, whispering softly to me like a friend.

I pull the popcorn out of my bag.

“Want some?” I ask, and offer the gallon-sized Ziploc to Quinn.

“Oh, yeah, thanks.” She digs in, grabbing a big old handful of popcorn and chocolate and stuffing it into her mouth.

I appreciate a gal who eats with gusto. I grin and do the same. The salty butter and dark chocolate are perfect together. I’ve missed tasty food so much.

“So are you excited to be here for the whole summer?” I ask.

Quinn is chomping on a mouthful of popcorn, so she doesn’t answer right away. She holds up a finger and chews and chews while the movie screen flickers to life. Finally, she nods.

“I love it here. These shoots my mom does take months sometimes,” she says. “She has to do about a million shots from a bunch of different depths, and some days, whatever she’s taking pictures of won’t cooperate. There are a lot of bottlenose dolphins off the coast here, but you never know where they are. We’re going out tomorrow morning to see what we can find.”

I nod, entranced. “What’s the coolest animal she’s ever photographed?” I ask.

Quinn scrunches up her face in thought. “Probably an octopus. Or the immortal jellyfish. It’s super-tiny and can start its own life cycle over again. They’re so weird-looking. It’s like they shouldn’t exist, because what in the world are they, but they do and they’re really amazing.”

“Wow. Did you get to see them?”

She shakes her head. “It was too deep for me to dive, but I saw the photos. And my mom’s really good.”

“I’d love just to be on the boat.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool, when you’re that far out in the middle of the ocean. It’s really quiet. Like, freaky quiet.”

“What’s your favorite place you’ve lived?”

She tosses a single piece of popcorn in the air and catches it on her tongue. Margot and I used to do the same thing all the time, except we’d throw the popcorn at each other.

“I wouldn’t call it lived,” Quinn says. “But, I guess, maybe…” She trails off and then shrugs. “I don’t know. Alaska was cool.”

“Alaska? You’ve lived in Alaska?”

“Yeah. Right before coming here.”

“Wow. The only cool thing about where I live is that it used to be a lighthouse.”

Quinn’s eyes go wide. “You live there? That lighthouse is amazing. It’s so pretty, with the red and white stripes.”

I wave a hand. Lighthouse shmighthouse. Alaska. If I’d been to Alaska, I’d talk and talk and talk about it and never shut up, but Quinn doesn’t seem too interested. Still, my curiosity eats at me until another question spills out.

“Did you make a lot of friends in Alaska?”

She doesn’t answer for a second. I’m about to say, hey, whoa, you don’t have to spill your best friend history to me or anything, but finally, she glances at me.

“One. This girl named Sadie whose mom was a fisherman. Fisherwoman? Fisherperson. She had a big boat and we’d go out on it every week. She was…”

Quinn trails off and squints toward the movie. Her throat bobbles with a hard swallow.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” She shrugs and takes a deep breath. “I had to leave without saying goodbye to Sadie. It was hard, because I, well, I thought we were friends. Maybe even…” She blows out a breath through puffed cheeks. “Anyway, I never talked to her again.”

“Did she have your number?”

Quinn nods and shrugs again. “It’s whatever.”

“Did you call her?”

“Nah. What’s the point, right? It’s not like I’ll ever see her again. Plus, she was friends with all these mean girls and…”

More trailing off, more shrugging. But hey, I know about mean girls. Every time Kate brings up how I haven’t seen Margot in a long time, I trail off and shrug too.

“I don’t get to keep many friends,” Quinn says. “I’ve never even had a best friend. Never stick around long enough. Can you believe that?”

No. No, I really can’t, because Quinn is so cool and interesting and pretty and smart. But I guess moving around would be really hard on best friend–hood. Just like being sick. Just like thinking you can trust someone when you really can’t.

“I don’t have a best friend either,” I say.

Her eyes go wide. “No way.”

“Major way.”

She sits up straight and grabs some more popcorn. “We should try it out. You know, the whole best friend thing.”

I grin so big my face hurts. “For real? You want to? With me?”

“Of course with you.”

“What if you…” Don’t like me, is what I almost say, but that sounds like Old Life Sunny. New Life Sunny is cool and calm and confident. So instead, I make my mouth say, “I think we’d be really awesome best friends.”

She nods and smiles and my heart zings and zips around my body.

“So totally would. What should we do first?” she asks.

“First?”

“Yeah, like, our first best friend adventure.”

“Oh…” I look up at the movie screen, where this dark-haired actress is riding her bike around Rome. “I guess a movie and greasy popcorn isn’t much of an adventure.”

“It’s a start,” she says. “Now we just need something… exciting.” She pops up onto her knees and looks around with her hands on her hips, as though something exciting is going to wave its arms above the crowd and yell, Hey, I’m exciting!

Then it hits me.

Step Two is completed. Quinn is my best friend. At least, we’re going to act like we are, which will probably lead to being really real best friends. I like her. I like her a lot and she doesn’t seem to think I’m a big old stick-in-the-mud like Margot did, so I think Step Two is totally done.

On to Step Three: Find a boy and kiss him.

“I’ve got something we could do,” I say.