Chapter 2

The way they jumped to defend her still turned my stomach.

I'd known Cole and Wes since we were six. They taught me to dribble in Cole's driveway. They walked me home when boys got handsy at parties. They used to swear that whatever happened, the three of us were family.

Then Lila transferred in junior year.

She came up to me at lunch the first week, soft-spoken and shy, and said my family's foundation was paying her tuition. She brought me a tin of cookies to say thank you — homemade, her grandmother's recipe, she said. I thought she was sweet. I introduced her to Cole and Wes myself.

They were never the same after that. Everything became about Lila. And every time she wanted something, they used our history to make me the one who gave it up.

Last time, I kept believing they'd come back to me. That hope is what got me killed.

"Then I'm done," I said. "You go to her school, I'll go to mine. Pretend we never met."

Both of them froze. Cole opened his mouth and nothing came out.

I picked up my bag and turned to go. Lila grabbed it out of my hands.

"Margot, I know you didn't mean that." She was already pulling out my phone, thumbing it open like she'd watched me unlock it a hundred times. Which she had. "You're upset. Let me take care of this before you do something you regret."

She opened my email. The one to my UConn coach.

I lunged for the phone. She slipped behind Cole and Wes, and the two of them stepped together like a wall.

I couldn't get past them. I watched her type.

She hit send and turned the screen to me, smiling. A message to my coach pulling out of my commitment. And under it, a clip — me, three games ago, throwing an elbow that never happened, cut to look dirty. Already posted. Already tagged.

"There." She handed the phone back. "Once a school pulls your spot this late, it's gone. Nobody has scholarships left. So you're coming with us now."

My hand was up before I thought about it. "Who told you that you get to decide my life?"

Cole caught my wrist and shoved me back a step. "Lila's trying to help and you're attacking her. After everything."

"It's done anyway," Wes said, looking down at me. "Might as well make the best of it. Lila's going to pick one of us to date once school starts. The other one can settle for you, I guess."

I looked at the two of them. "You think I'm a bin for whatever Lila throws out?"

They glared. Lila tugged them both back by the sleeve, gentle, peacemaking.

"Don't be mad at her. She'll understand someday that we did this for her." She checked the time. "The movie's starting. Come on."

They followed her up the escalator without looking back.

I stood there holding my phone, the sent message still glowing on the screen.

I drove home. My parents were at the kitchen table when I walked in, and the second they looked up at me, the calm I'd been holding all afternoon cracked. My voice came out wrong when I told them.

My dad's hand came down flat on the table. "That girl. We've paid her tuition for two years. This is how she thanks us?"

"They sent it from Margot's own account," my mom said, already half out of her chair. "Can that even be undone?"

My dad was already on his feet, phone to his ear, asking the coach if a pulled commitment ever came back.