Scripted by Maya Rock

exactly your type.” She claps her hands.
    â€œNo, no, that . . .” I suddenly want to be honest with her, like I can cancel out my lie about not wanting to talk to Callen with this unrelated truth. I push my hair forward to block my mouth from the cameras on the mermaids. “Yeah, I went to see him, but there was no love stuff. I told him how the Patriots are doing publicity in Zenta, to cheer him up about Belle.” Lia’s jaw drops open, and I rush to reassure her. “But don’t worry—I didn’t tell him the information came from you or Bek.”
    She clamps her hands on her temples, aghast. “Nettie, that was a secret.”
    â€œWhat’s the harm?” I whisper back. “No one can trace it back to you. Besides, you were the one who said I should talk to him.”
    â€œI said
get his mind off it,
not
reveal what I swore you to secrecy about.
We could get in big trouble,” she hisses. She draws back, squinting at the night sky and thinking, before diving forward, pushing her hair in front of her face again to block the cameras. “The real problem is—why do you care so much?” she whispers. “You weren’t even friends with her. Let Scoop deal with it and move on, like everyone else on this island whose relatives get cut.”
    â€œI’m not caught up in—”
    Before I can finish, Lia grips my arm. “You know what? Never mind. Just don’t do it again, okay? And throw out that dirty bottle.” She leaps up and runs down the terrace steps before I can tell her I have no intention of throwing out the bottle.
    â€œThere’s a lot of work to be done here before the Double A,” she shouts over her shoulder to me, back on-mic. “You don’t know how slow the planning committee is. Sometimes I wish I could just run the whole ceremony on my own.” A squirrel pokes its head out of a trash can, then scampers off when it sees us. Lia frowns. “Gross. I wonder if we could get trash cans with lids for the ceremony.”
    â€œI’m sure you can,” I say, descending the terrace steps. “It’s going to be great, Lia. We’re lucky you’re in charge of so much of it.” I pause at the bottom step, imagining what it will feel like to be sitting here, listening to Mayor Cardinal’s opening remarks and the traditional poem about our futures, waiting for the apprenticeships to be called out.
    When mine is, I’ll march up to the podium and shake hands with the mayor as I receive my assignment and smile for the pictures. At last I’ll know. My future will be set. But the vision feels hazy and dissipates quickly. What’s left is a mostly empty plaza and my present, which is all uncertainty.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    We get back to the Arbor around eight. Lia seems to have regained her confidence. She walks me to my door, rolling her eyes at Callen’s house while I scrounge in my pockets for the keys.
    â€œGrowing a real jungle over there,” she sneers.
    I actually think the Herrons’ yard is plus ten—it’s cool they’re not scared to distinguish themselves from the tame lawns around them. “Yeah,” I say, shrugging. “The mosquitoes go wild in the summer.”
    â€œIck,” she says and falls silent. I find the key and make a point of taking it out slowly, not wanting her to feel like I’m eager to leave.
    She spends a while retying a ribbon at the neckline of her dress, glancing up twice, before saying, “At least my next boyfriend won’t be scared of closing up. Or holding me.”
    â€œYou’re so better off.
Onward through the turmoil,
” I say, quoting a line from a Drama Club play that we always mock, about a girl cheating on a biology test with tragic results. It was that mediocre play that convinced Lia she could write her own.
    â€œ
Tomorrow beckons,
” she quotes back. “Speaking of