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had said no way, but who was he to boss her around? She could make her own decisions, and this was the one she’d made. Jazz would have no choice but to deal with it. It’s not like it was against the law for her to go to New York. He couldn’t stop her.
    Only her parents could do that.
    “I know there’s not much more I can do to stop you from seeing him,” her dad was saying, “because you’ll be eighteen soon and because I’ve always treated you like an adult. But I wish you would maybe cool it off a little.”
    “Dad has a point,” Mom said, jumping in before Connie could speak. “I know you feel strongly about Jasper, but you’re young. He’s your first real boyfriend. Maybe you should play the field a little. See what else is out there.”
    Connie sighed. What her parents said made sense.
If
you assumed she wasn’t in love with Jazz. Which she was. She didn’t know what the future might hold—she hadn’t given herself permission to think beyond the next couple of years—but she did know that she wanted to find out with him at her side.
    So what would Jazz do in this situation? Easy: He would manipulate. Which, of course, was a polite word for lie.
    And lying
, she realized,
is really just acting. And I’m good at acting.
    Almost without realizing what she was doing, she started speaking, putting down her fork and focusing intently on her father, the tough one to persuade.
    “Here’s the problem,” she said, the blanks in her plan filling themselves in as she spoke, her heart beating faster as she realized what she was doing. She was Billying her parents.
So this is what that feels like.
“Here’s the problem. We only have a few more days of break left, and I really want to spend them with Jazz”—she marked the tightening of her father’s expression, the deepening of the worry lines around her mother’s eyes—“but there’s a great orientation weekend at Columbia, too. I know it’s sort of early for me, but Columbia’s where I want to go and I could narrow down my application choices for the fall right now. But here’s the thing: I would have to leave tomorrow.” Before her parents could say anything, she rushed on. “Remember Larissa? She played Maria in that weird version of
West Side Story
I did that summer at drama camp in Charlotte? Well, she’s already in college at Columbia, and she’s the one who told me about it. It sounds
amazing
, and I could totally stay with her. But then”—she said it expertly, as though it were just occurring to her—“I wouldn’t see Jazz until school started up again.”
    Her parents exchanged a glance.
    “How much would this trip cost?” her father asked, and Connie knew she had them.
    “I can stay with Larissa for free. And you’ll always be able to reach me on my cell.” With a couple of texts, she could easily get Larissa to cover for her. And she figured Jazz would have a hotel room. Just the two of them… in a hotel room… The thought made her head spin and did things to her body she couldn’t enjoy right now. “I can probably fly standby since it’s last minute, and I can help pay for it—I have money from babysitting and Grampa’s Christmas check.”
    Her father stroked his jaw and exchanged another look with her mother.
    “She shouldn’t get to go to New York all on her own!” Whiz complained. “That’s not fair! I don’t get to go anywhere!”
    Dad rolled his eyes in exasperation, and Connie knew she had him.
    So this was how Jazz felt. All the time. Every day.
    Connie had to admit it was pretty spectacular.

CHAPTER 8
    “Can’t say as I like this idea,” G. William told Jazz, settling with a sigh into the chair behind his desk. The chair wheezed and squeaked with complaint, and Jazz wondered—as he always did—if he would be there on that inevitable day when the chair gave up entirely and dumped its occupant to the floor. Today was not that day, apparently.
    “Connie agrees with you,” Jazz told him. “She