But I had a secret: they were the first real friends I’d ever had.

That was a secret I meant to keep. Which was why I was sitting here in an apartment across the tennis courts from ours, an apartment that belonged to a twenty-eight-year-old bank branch manager named Gordon Johnson, who drove a red BMW and had told us to call him Gojo and offered us Cokes a week ago Sunday, when Charlotte started talking to him at the pool late in the afternoon.

That day he’d invited us up to his place and given us sodas from the fridge, and we’d played blackjack. Today-another lazy Sunday afternoon that stretched into evening, all three of us calling home to say we were at each other’s places, lies that weren’t questioned by Charlotte’s or Jess’s mom-Gojo had put frozen pizzas in the oven, scooped guacamole from a jar and poured our Cokes into tall glasses, then topped them off with whiskey.

It wasn’t very good whiskey. In fact, it was dirt cheap. I knew that because my grandmother used to serve it to her customers, and if there was one thing you could say about Gram, it was that she’d been as cheap as they come.

I’d poured my drink out in the sink and filled my glass with straight-up Coke. That was at six o’clock, when we’d first arrived. I’d kept doing it all night, whenever Gojo topped our drinks off. But now it was nearly eleven, half an hour past when I’d said I’d be home, and I had a decision to make.

Should I leave and earn the derision of Jess and Charlotte, the first and only friends I’d ever made?

Or should I stay and give my aunt something to worry herself sick over?

A missed curfew didn’t mean the same thing to me as it did to other kids. If I didn’t come home when I’d said I would, Prairie would immediately think that they had found us.

And that we were as good as dead.

“Sorry, guys,” I said, standing up and faking a yawn. “I’d love to stay, but I’ve got a driving lesson first thing tomorrow.”