Page 49 of Home Field Advantage

This is the first time I can remember him leaving me on read.

Yeah, sometimes he’s unreachable when he and Malcolm get a little… caught up, and I know never to try him at practice, but otherwise, Miguel is always, always there when I need him.

Except right now.

When he’s leaving me on read.

No one fucking leaves me on read.

“You’re missing the entire movie,” Cara complains, prodding at the goopy pink mask on her face. “If I knew you were gonna text your boyfriend the whole time, I would’ve at least dragged Kelsey here with me.”

“Sorry, sorry,” I mutter, turning my phone upside down so that the sparkly pink-and-purple ombre case looks back up at me instead of the glaringly quiet screen. Normally I’d snap at Cara to justgoto Kelsey’s stupid house, then, but she’s right—I’m being a shitty host and Ididtell her we could have a sleepover the night before Books and Balls Day so she could be at her freshest instead of rolling in with the special kind of sleep deprivation that comes from sharing a room with two sisters who both snore. “Do you want more sorbet?”

“I can’t eat anything with this stuff on. How long do I have to leave it to give me perfect pores?”

I check the tube. “It says fifteen minutes, but do you want me to point out that you already have perfect pores or nah?”

“Feel free,” she says with a smug smile before turning her attention to the TV, where Vanessa Hudgens is twirling around in a tiara.

Five minutes after our masks are washed off and our pores are more perfect than a Hadid sister’s, it’s Cara’s phone that starts beeping like mad. “Is thatyourboyfriend?” I tease before I can think better of it.

If my stupid joke brings Robbie to mind, it doesn’t show on her face. “Just some cheer stuff,” she says.

“Uh, if it’s cheer stuff, why isn’tmyphone lighting up?” I ask, holding it so she can see its dismally dark screen.

The thing about Cara is she’s never been a fast enough thinker to be a great liar, but it never stops her from trying. “It’s just Kelsey and Claire, uh, talking about how we’re all getting to the game.”

“It’s Kelsey and Claire texting you—you, a person who does not have a car—about how you’re all getting to the game. When everyone knows I drive you everywhere.”

I know she’s going to bite her lip and her cheeks will turn pink before it even happens. It’s Cara’s standard “Oh darn, I was caught in a lie” move, and she does it all the time because, again, bad but compulsive liar.

For the millionth time, I wonder how she got away with keeping Robbie a secret for so long, but that’s a question best left for another day.

“Cara.”

She huffs out a breath. “Fine. They’re talking about how funny and awkward it’s gonna be when we cheer for guys who are throwing the game. Are you happy?”

“What do you mean? Who’s throwing what game?” And then it clicks. Jack. The scout. Not even homecoming—alumni swarming the bleachers to watch the game, especially with news of Atherton’s first female quarterback—is sacred. “You mean the football team is gonna throw thehomecominggame? Seriously?”

“See, this is why you’re not on the texts,” she says, more than a little bitchily. “Between Midnight Breakfast and that whole little cheer at the pep rally, people think you’re, like, Team Jack. And as your best friend, I’ve told them a hundred times that you’re not, you’re loyal to the team and to us and to Robbie.” There’s a little flash of pain in her eyes, blink-and-you-miss-it quick but present all the same. “It’s not true, though, is it? You’re supposed to be our leader next year, but for some reason, you support her. You don’t even care who it hurts.”

“It shouldn’t hurtanyone!” It’s not the right thing to say to Cara, but it needs to be said. “She stepped in. She lifts up the whole team. Theywinnow. And it’s our job to cheer them on whether they win or lose, but itmattersthat they’re finally winning and that it’s a girl helping them do that. We’re a fucking cheerleading squad of girls, Cara—how are we not behind the girl we should be cheering on the most?”

“God, you don’t get it, do you?” I’ve never seen the look of disgust on Cara Whelan’s face right now, not when Sara’s pit bull peed on her tennis shoes or when we got food poisoning the first and only time we tried oysters or when Matt Devlin wore an all-denim suit to the Sophomore Swing dance on a dare. “She’s not one of us! She’s never gonna be one of us! And you’re acting like you have some big gay crush on her and it’s pathetic.”

The blood goes cold as ice in my veins, and I’m so not usedto this version of Cara that I don’t know how to read whether she’s trying to insult me or she’s genuinely calling me out. Which means there’s only one thing I can do, and that’s go harder.

“Is it more pathetic than bullying the new girl because you’re hanging on to a dead boy?”

Unlike Cara, I don’t mask whether I’m calling her out. I see the exact moment she realizes I know, because all the color drains from her face.

“I don’t want to talk about him,” she tries to bite out, but it emerges in a whisper, as her lies often do. And I realize then that all of this has been her talking about him without actually talking about him, about what he meant to her—what they meant to each other—the only way she can. And even though I’m still angry and sad and frustrated, it takes the fire out of me to see her shoulders fall, her gaze drop, her fingers start twisting around each other like if they break free, they might strangle something or someone.

“I think you do.”

Her eyes flash, wet with angry unshed tears. “What do you know about it anyway? You have no idea what I’m going through, with your perfect boyfriend and perfect relationship and perfect mom.”

There’s so much irony in there, I don’t even know where to begin, except that, oh yes, I do. “Oh, so now my mom is perfect? That’s interesting, considering how many timesyou’ve tried to get me to pray for her because she’s queer and unwed.”

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