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says. Definitely not a come-on. “Not that I’m complaining. I’ve been with the same foster family forever. Like Nick got Steve. We were the girls who ended up with different parents than we started out with.”
    How did this go from me trying to pump her about Nicolette to her pouring her heart out?
    “Don’t look so upset,” Olivia says. “Mine are pretty great. I’m staying with them after I age out.”
    How did this solid girl end up with a bloodthirsty BFF like Nicolette?
    I say, “Listen, when does your shift end?” Because this interrogation is not going well, and I need another shot.
    “Like, ten minutes ago. We close three to five.”
    “You want to get coffee somewhere that doesn’t smell like a grease fire?”
    “Watch it, mister. Someday I’m going to grow up and own Cotter’s Mill Shake Shack. It’s my dream .”
    I look at her.
    “Don’t even!” she says. “You’re so gullible. Nick must have had you twisted around her pinkie like a rubber band. My dream is tobe a microbiologist. Someplace warm. Like Florida. Nick can be my accountant.”
    Nicolette Holland is planning to be an accountant ?
    Olivia finally gives me a full smile. “Wait for me while I lock up in back.”
    Her book and bag are on the counter right next to me as if I were the kind of trustworthy guy you could leave alone with your things for five long minutes.
    I do what has to be done.
    There are two phones in Olivia’s bag. The good one’s in the pocket where I think phones are supposed to go. The burner’s in the change compartment of her massive five-pound wallet. There’s only one number in this burner. I memorize it, put the phone back in the wallet, the wallet back in the bag, and the bag back on the counter before the door swings back open.
    I look at my phone, and I lie. “I’m sorry! I’ve gotta head out. Family calls. I obey. Next time?”
    She looks disappointed. I did good. “Well, nice to meet you.” Then she reaches for my phone and writes herself into my contacts. She says, “Call me if you get back here. I’ll tell Nick to call you if I get the chance. If she’s up for a drunk rich boy.”
    “Very sober, very rich,” I say—both true. “You do that. Give me your e-mail, too.”

20
Cat
    I cup my hand over the burner. “Liv, I’m on a bus.” I lower my voice. “Somebody saw me.”
    “I know . Piper Carmichael tagged you. And this boy from Ann Arbor wants to know why you stopped talking to him. You should let me call you!”
    Oh God, oh God, oh God.
    I don’t know if I say, This is worse than I thought, or if I think it. “What did he look like?”
    “Super prep. Brown hair. Nice eyes. Knows you from Fiji parties.”
    It’s as if everyone I’ve ever met is fanning out across the lower forty-eight waving sticks in front of themselves like volunteers forming a grid to find lost hikers.
    “I told Summer it was probably your doppelganger,” Olivia says. “But she didn’t know what that was. So then I said your body double, and she said why would you have a body double, and I said—”
    She rattles on. I know she’s trying to be helpful, but I can’t take it in.
    “What was Piper Carmichael doing at South Texas Tech? Why would it even occur to her it was me?”
    Olivia snorts. “Well, apparently, with red hair, you look exactly like yourself with red hair. And were you wearing aqua eye shadow?”
    I’m pressed up against the window, curled into my best approximation of not existing, eight rows behind anyone else so they can’t hear me coming apart.
    “I said it wasn’t you,” Olivia says. “I said, really, would Nick be caught six feet under and rotting with aqua eyelids?”
    “Lovely image.”
    “I said even if it was you—which it wasn’t —she should tell Piper to take it down because you’re supposed to be in rehab and Steve will pitch a fit.” She sighs. “But you know Summer. If it’s not about her, she won’t remember.”
    I’m undone by my signature