Char shrugged. “Guys don’t think that way.”

I didn’t know if he was right about that or not. I didn’t know how guys thought about anything.

“Is Pippa coming tonight?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer from Vicky.

“No idea.” Char put on his headphones.

I waited until he had transitioned into the next song, but when he still didn’t take off his headphones, I tugged at his arm.

“What’s up?” he asked, taking off one earphone. “I’m working.”

“I can see that,” I said. “I wanted to tell you my big news from last week.”

Things were weird between me and Char right now. Things were weird because Pippa was back. But when I told him my news, he would be proud of me. He would remember how much we had in common. Things would be good again.

Right?

I felt like a cat bringing home a dead bird to her master. “You’ll like it, won’t you? I killed it all by myself. You must like it.”

Did bird-murdering house cats get this fluttery feeling in their stomachs, too?

“I’m going to be DJing Friday nights!” I told Char, a smile erupting across my face. I couldn’t not smile whenever I thought about it. “Starting next week. I can do whatever I want with it, Pete said. It’s going to be the best.”

Char took off his other earphone. He stared at me. “You’re DJing Friday nights,” he repeated, and I thought that maybe the loud music had garbled my words. “Here?”

“Right!” I shouted, to make sure he could hear me this time.

But his expression was still confused. “Pete gave you a Friday night party? Just you, no one else?”

“Just me,” I confirmed.

Now Char’s expression was more than just confused. It was mad. He responded with only one word. “Why?”

“Because he thought I’d be good at it.”

“Why?” Char asked again, and I felt the ground slant ever so slightly underneath me.

“He said … I have a lot of natural talent, and—”

“Do you have any idea what a big deal it is to get a weekend party at one of Pete’s venues?” Char interrupted. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve asked him to move me to Friday, so no one has school or work the next day and can really go out? And then he just gives it to you? You, a sixteen-year-old girl who started DJing all of two months ago?”

I didn’t speak for a moment. Then, quietly, I said, “It’s not my fault that I’m only sixteen. And it’s not my fault that I only started DJing now.”

Char lowered his voice, too. He sounded gentle, helpful. “Why don’t you just tell Pete that you don’t feel ready? Tell him you need more practice. Tell him you’re worried about what will happen if you have technical problems and you don’t know how to fix them. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

“Because,” I said, “I do feel ready.” I cleared my throat. “This is so silly, but I guess I expected that you would be happy for me.”

Char tapped on his computer keyboard and was silent for a minute. If I were someone else, I might have been impressed. But I knew enough about DJing to know that he wasn’t actually doing anything.

“Listen, Elise,” Char said at last. “I hadn’t wanted to get into this tonight. But I think we should … stop.”

“Stop?” I repeated.

“Yeah. Like, break up.”

And the world tilted again, harder. “How can we break up?” I asked. “Were we even together?”

“I think the age gap is too much for us,” Char said. “We’re at different stages in our lives, and we’re looking for different things.”

“Now?” I said. “Now this bothers you?” I felt my breathing coming funny, like I had to gasp to get enough air. “What did I do, Char? What is it? Are you breaking up with me because Pippa’s mad at you? Are you breaking up with me because”—my breath caught in my throat and I almost couldn’t go on—“because I got offered a stupid Friday night party and you didn’t?”

“You said you didn’t love me,” Char said quietly, looking at his computer screen, not me.

“When?”

“Last week. When Pippa asked you. You said no. You almost laughed, and you said no.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. And then I said, “No—I’m not sorry. You don’t love me either. You never said you did. You never once called me, or hung out with me in daylight. How could you love me? Do you?”

My body tensed. Part of me hoped that he might say yes. That he would say, “Yes, I love you, and that’s why I’m breaking up with you—because it kills me that you don’t feel the same.”

Because that would be it, then. The ultimate proof that I was lovable.

But what Char actually said was, “That’s not the point.”

“How the hell is it not the point?” I was almost screaming by now.

“You don’t need me,” Char said. “That is the point.”

He put his headphones back on.

When do you want me to take over? I wrote on a Post-it and stuck it to his computer screen.

The corner of Char’s mouth twitched, and he pulled my note off his monitor. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, crumpling the paper in his fist. “You have a full night of DJing ahead of you next Friday. You deserve to take tonight off.”

It took me a minute more of standing there before I realized that I’d been dismissed. Before I realized that a relationship can end just like that.

Dazed, I left the booth and walked outside. I would have kept walking, too, I would have walked forever, except that Vicky, Harry, and Mel were standing right there.

“Hi, Elise!” Harry said. “Look, I’m here!” He went on to explain, “My parents are on a business trip, so Vicky’s quote-unquote ‘in charge.’”

I pasted a smile on my face and joined their circle. I don’t know why I bothered to act like everything was okay. Start is small, and news travels fast. Soon enough they were all going to find out that Char had dumped me. But I wanted, for as long as I could, to pretend like he hadn’t. I wanted not to be there when they heard the news and said, Well, of course he did. Boyfriends are for pretty girls, normal girls, girls who know what they’re doing. Everybody knows that.

nobody likes me, and i deserve it.

Shut up, Elise.

“The Beatles,” Vicky was saying to Mel.

“All quit,” Mel replied.

“Not John,” Vicky countered.

“Right, because he was murdered before he had the chance.”

“George never quit either,” Vicky said.

“And then he died from lung cancer,” Mel said.

“But when he was, like, sixty. I’ll quit before I’m sixty.”

“Sixty comes sooner than you think, honey,” Mel countered.

“We’re taking a poll,” Harry explained to me, “on whether or not Vicky should quit smoking. So far it’s two for quitting, one against. You want to even out the score?”

“No,” I said.

“Oh, come on,” Vicky whined. “This isn’t a majority-rule situation. It’s my body.”

Mel cleared his throat. “Well, maybe—”

“Hey,” I interrupted. “Were you guys popular in high school?”

They all stopped talking and stared at me.

“You know,” I said. “Friends. Did you have them? If so, how many?”

“Well, now,” Mel rubbed his bald head. “You’re asking me to remember back pretty far.”

“Oh my God, Mel,” Vicky said. “You are, like, one-eighth as old as you pretend to be.”

Mel scowled at her. Then he said to me, “Honey, I was a gay black teenager in Arkansas. How popular do you think I was?”

I tried to picture a younger Mel getting bullied by his own versions of Chuck Boening and Jordan DiCecca. But it didn’t work. If they had tried to steal his iPod, he would have stood up to them. He was Mel. Standing up to people was his job.

“I’m definitely very popular among the Dungeons & Dragons players at my school,” confided Harry. “Also, I rule at Settlers of Catan, and that has won me a devoted fan base of at least two or three classmates. Oh, and I shred on the drums. The girls go wild for that.”

“You can’t shred on drums, dipshit,” Vicky told him. “Only guitarists shred.”

Harry winked at me, then screwed up his face and mimed a very intense drum set. He stopped after a few seconds, when he noticed that I still wasn’t smiling.

“I don’t believe that anyone who is a legitimately interesting person can be popular as a teenager,” Mel went on. “Or ever, maybe. Popularity rewards the uninteresting.”

“I take offense,” Vicky cried, throwing her cigarette butt to the ground. “I am at least a somewhat interesting person, and I was popular in high school.”

Mel and I both gaped at her. I felt betrayed. “You were?” Mel asked.

“You don’t have to sound so shocked about it.” Vicky shook out her thick, wavy hair.

Mel said, “I just can’t picture you as a blond cheerleading girlfriend of the class president, that’s all.”

Vicky snorted. “Exactly how many teen movies have you watched? You know that’s a huge stereotype, right?”

Mel shrugged. “I’m a John Hughes fan.”

“Well, I was never blond, but I was a cheerleader sophomore year, and I never dated the class president, but I did once make out with the quarterback at a party.”

“And the wide receiver,” Harry added.

“And him,” Vicky conceded.

“And the tight end,” said Harry.

“I did not.”

Harry nodded at me and mouthed, She did.

“Anyway,” Vicky said, “I was popular. Well, for the first half of high school. I was a very popular fifteen-year-old.”

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“Well…” Vicky’s eyebrows knit together. “Don’t laugh or anything, but I used to be skinny.”