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just by divorcing him.”
    She asks me whether I think I’ll get into a good college, and I tell her I’m mostly considering art schools. She makes a face and says, “I had higher hopes for you than that.”
    Lizzie distracts her by saying, “Molly brought her girlfriend home for a visit,” and Mom says, “Girlfriend?” and Lizzie says, “Yes, didn’t you know? Molly’s a lesbian.” “Good for her,” Mom says, and Lizzie says casually, “I wonder if it has something to do with the absence of a maternal influence.”
    Mom just shrugs and says, “Sexual orientation is hardwired, Lizzie.”
    We’re stuck there for a while longer while Mom asks us questions about our lives and then seems uninterested—or at least unimpressed—with our answers.
    Dinner is endless—since we’re all three fidgety, I can’t figure out why Mom orders an after-dinner drink, which forces us to sit for another ten minutes—and it’s almost eleven by the time we say good-bye to her in the restaurant parking lot. I text Lucy from the car to say I’m coming , but she texts me back: Don’t bother. Cops already shut it down. Come to my house and I’ll give you the deets.
    When I get to Lucy’s house, the twins’ Audi is parked in front. Hilary and Lily Diamond came to Sterling Woods in tenth grade. I’ve gotten to be good friends with them over the last year or so. I’m probably closer to Hilary, who’s incredibly smart and in a lot of my classes, but it’s impossible not to like Lily. She’s the kind of girl who’ll start a conversation with the strangers at the table next to you in a restaurant, and by the end of the meal, you’re all exchanging phone numbers and life stories, and the strangers will be hugging Lily like she’s their long lost sister or granddaughter or whatever.
    They’re not identical twins, but they still look a lot alike: they both have stick-straight brown hair and the same pointy chins; dark eyes with a mildly exotic tilt to them (their mother was born in Korea); and small, straight noses. But Hilary’s hair is very long right now, and Lily cut hers last year, so it’s asymmetrical, chin-length on one side, midway up her cheek on the other. She changes the way she wears it every day—sometimes she pins it up at the sides; sometimes she lets it swing forward; sometimes she makes these tiny braids in front—and she changes her makeup to suit her hair, so you never know what she’s going to look like, only that she’s going to make everyone else look boring and predictable. Especially her own sister, who has pretty classic taste in general.
    Right now, though, all three of them are in their pajamas, because the twins are sleeping over at Lucy’s. I join them at the kitchen table, and Lucy offers me hot chocolate. They’ve already got three steaming mugs in front of them, each one blanketed with marshmallows. I’m still stuffed from dinner, so I pass on the cocoa and beg them to hurry up and tell me what I missed.
    “It was an amazing party,” Lily says. She’s wearing a pair of tiny plaid boxers and a tank top. She’s pulled her hair into a ridiculous, small ponytail on the crown of her head and it bobs while she talks. “There must have been, like, five hundred kids there before the cops came.”
    “More like seventy,” Hilary says.
    Her sister shakes her head. “Way more than that. And then the cops saw someone drinking out front—I don’t know the guy; he doesn’t go to our school—and they handcuffed him and arrested him—”
    “No, they didn’t,” her sister says.
    “Yes, they did! I heard they shoved him into the back of their car without even reading him his rights.”
    “I was there ,” Hilary says. “I saw the whole thing, and none of that’s true. They just made him pour out his drink and gave him a warning—they didn’t even call his parents. People exaggerate so much.” She tugs on the thick braid that’s hanging over her right shoulder. She’s wearing