“Oh yeah, I love it, really. It’s my best subject. My only one that I score above average for,” Tina smiled. Bette could hear how passionate she was about in the tone of her voice.

Bette looked into the blonde’s amazing hazel eyes, reassuring herself that Tina wasn’t playing games here.

“Is something wrong?” she asked the popular girl eventually, starting to feel really uncomfortable.

“No, why? Should I be worried about something?” Tina asked, genuinely surprised. She made a small movement with her head to get the hair out of her face, offering Bette a quick sight of her disturbingly inviting neck.

“Oh – I don’t know, it’s just that your boyfriend and all your friends are over there.”

“And I’m not allowed to talk to anyone else?”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Bette knew she was digging a hole here and that she had to stop it before she got in any deeper, but somehow she couldn’t. She wondered why the hell she had agreed to join the other juniors to this day on the beach, it wasn’t like she had any friends. The only problem was that her mother had heard from a colleague of hers and she had been so enthusiastic about it that Bette couldn’t refuse. Of course she could still have gone somewhere else, but she wanted her story to match a little with the one her mom would hear. She had never told Maxine Porter that she had no friends at school, she didn’t want her to worry, which she would surely do. The weather was nice and she had brought her book – well, to be honest, she had brought three books, in case she got sick of one.

“Helena told me that you have to read ‘Mrs Dalloway’ if you take AP Lit. You reading it in advance?”

“No, I didn’t know.” Because there was nobody who would tell her. “I just… Virginia Woolf interests me, I mean, when you read about her life, she seems to be this intriguing woman and this is her most famous work so I thought I’d read it. You must think I’m such a dork, bringing a book on a day out at the beach.” It was out of her mouth before she realised it.