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see clearly that he was comforting a little girl the way I had comforted little Ramon a few hours earlier.
    The parallels were too hideous.
    The idea of Oliver loving me like I had been loving toward Ramon shot me off the bench toward the living room door.
    “So, thanks,” I said quickly. “Sorry about the…lack of notice, or whatever. Hope it doesn’t mess you up, or—”
    “No worries,” Oliver replied. “I just…Quinn. If you want to talk…”
    “I’m not a baby!” I couldn’t look at him. “I’m fine. Okay?”
    I left without saying good-bye or walking him to the door. I ran up the stairs. He was the first person other than Jelly—oh, well, and Adriana—I had told we were in financial trouble; Mom had asked us to keep family business in the family, which meant secret. Don’t tell anybody. I broke her trust, broke my word, traded my reliability for an embrace. And a lopsided embrace at that.
    And also for what, in the case of Adriana? To seem cool and casual, to try out saying it? It was bad enough to have told Jelly. Why tell Adriana, whom I don’t even know, and Oliver, whom I love in an embarrassing little-schoolgirl-crush kind of way, which I am much too old to continue indulging when he is all brilliant and perfect and off at college and having probably dozens of girlfriends, while I sit home in my little-girl world imagining whether I could ever be good enough, brilliant and beautiful and perfect enough, to make him really notice me? Ew!
    Could I please finally accept that he is just way, way out of my league, that I will never be worthy of the kind of love I have to stop wanting from him?
    I slammed my door and flopped down on my bed, waiting for tears that didn’t come. Big mouth , I berated myself. I’d made such a big deal to my sisters about keeping Mom’s privacy and now I’d sold it out for a cheap, one-sided, nonthrilling thrill.
    Why?
    Just for attention?
    To get him, and them, to like me? For pity?
    That was just too pathetic to contemplate.
    Since I wasn’t crying, I knelt to peek out my window, to watch Oliver leave. He didn’t turn back to look at me.
    I took it, as always, as a sign, proof that he felt, could feel, nothing for me.
    But that night was the first time he texted me:
    I know you’re not a baby.

6
    I DIDN’T TEXT BACK, not right away, and I didn’t call him.
    The next afternoon, instead of the romantic tryst I was forcing myself not to imagine, I failed my driver’s test.
    I had never failed a test before in my life. I’d gotten 100 percent on my permit test seven months earlier; the lady at the DMV couldn’t believe it. She said she’d never seen a perfect score before, in twelve years of working at the Department of Motor Vehicles. She called a colleague over to see it. The guy, who looked like he’d never said no to a Twinkie, asked me, mockingly, if I’d studied for the test.
    “Yes,” I admitted, thinking, Did I study? It was a test .
    I don’t always get a perfect score on every test, obviously, but when I get something wrong it tortures me. Teachers held me up as an example starting in kindergarten, but, really, it isn’t that I’m so brilliant the answers come easily to me or so diligent I would never shirk a responsibility as much as I am neurotic, and the pain of red Xs on my paperis so much worse than the pleasure (if there is pleasure in it) of not studying, there’s barely a choice. Did I study? It was a test. Of course I studied.
    Mom drove me to the driving test.
    Dad used to drive us everywhere, do the stuff with us that most people’s mothers did, make the little decisions that had to be handled every day, especially since Mom’s work got so intense a few years ago. Allison was resentful of Mom’s business busyness, but not me—I liked it that she was the money of our family, that the world took her so seriously and rewarded her so richly (literally) for her hard work and brilliance at what she did.
    Huh. Maybe it was just the