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ago, I would have said it was impossible that Nate knew about it.
    “What did you do today?” Dad asked.
    I thought about Kaleb and me making out on his uncle’s boat, and my embarrassment deepened. I looked down, afraid I was blushing. “Lake” was all I answered.
    “With Vonnie?”
    I shook my head. “With Kaleb.”
    “Ah,” Dad said from behind his wall of newspaper. “And when does Loverboy leave for college, again?”
    “A few weeks.”
    “I’ll try not to cry,” Dad intoned. Dad had never been particularly fond of Kaleb. He didn’t have any real reason for disliking him—only that he’d thought Kaleb had “a certain prevaricatory countenance about him” that he didn’t quite trust. Mom said it was also because Dad was afraid that Kaleb would take his little girl’s innocence away, because that was what boys liked to do. If only Dad knew…
    “Stop it, Roy,” Mom said from the stove, then tried redirecting. “Make the salad, Ash?”
    “Sure,” I mumbled, glad to lean into the cold air of the fridge. I lingered there, pretending I was looking for ingredients.
    And as I fixed my portion of the dinner, listening to Mom and Dad chat, talking to them about school and cross-country and Kaleb, the sameness of our nightly family ritual made my fear over Nate and the photo worsen rather than get better. What if Nate really had seen it? What if it got around and Mom and Dad found out I had sent it?
What if it got out?
    By the time Vonnie called, asking if I wanted to take a quick spin around the mall, I was a frazzle of nerves, itching to find something to do to take my mind off everything.
    “School starts in a week. You can’t show up in your old sophomore clothes,” Vonnie said as soon as I got into hercar, her giant flower ring catching the sun and practically blinding me as she backed out of my driveway. “We’re upperclassmen now. It’s my duty to make sure you look hot.”
    I felt dread at the thought of going to school. I hadn’t told Vonnie yet about Sarah’s email. I didn’t want to look hot. Not with Nate and his buddies walking around knowing I’d sent Kaleb that photo. I wished I hadn’t ever sent it. If I could have taken it back, I would have.
    “I guess,” I said, and cranked up the radio all the way to the mall so I wouldn’t have to listen to her talk about how she was going to make me sexy.
    We wandered around the stores, Vonnie squealing and hopping every time we ran into a “long-lost classmate” we hadn’t seen since school let out in May. I stood behind her, chewing on a strand of my hair and thinking about Kaleb. I barely said hello to anyone.
    “What’s wrong with you?” Vonnie finally asked as she pawed through a rack of cardigans. “You’re being really quiet today. And you haven’t bought anything.”
    “Not true,” I said, holding up the tiny bag that was looped around my wrist. “Earrings, remember?”
    “What, you’re going to show up in earrings and your pajamas on the first day? So glam.”
    I slid some hangers across the rack to look busy. Everything was too dressy or too casual or too bare or too prudish for me. “I’ll find something. I’m just not in the mood for shopping.”
    She peered at me as if I were a stranger, her hand hoveringin midair over a hanger. “I have never known you to not be in the mood for shopping.”
    I shrugged. “First time for everything, I guess.”
    “Uh-uh,” she said, wagging her finger at me like a schoolteacher, her bangles clanking on her arm. “Something is up. Spill.”
    I took a deep breath, rubbed my palm over my forehead, then sat down on the nubby carpet.
    “I think Nate Chisolm might have seen the picture.”
    Vonnie looked confused. “What picture?”
    “You know.
The picture.
Of me.” She still looked confused. “At your party.”
    Her eyes went wide. She held her hand over her mouth as she sucked in a breath, all of her bangles slamming with a clatter to her elbow. “The nude picture? I