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after that, boys aren’t allowed. Since there aren’t any good private schools for boys around here, Liam goes to public school, but my mom insisted I finish out my education at Annie Wright.
    So this is our fourth year apart, and every year, I swear, it’s like Liam and I grow a little more in opposite directions.
    He used to be more like me, kinda preppy or whatever, but now he’s hanging out with all these skater kids and going to the skate park, and he downloads all this weird music I’ve never even heard of. If you saw us standing next to one another, you’d never think we were related, with the way he dresses.
    I don’t know if it’s because I don’t fit in with his new group of friends, but I’m not automatically invited to stuff anymore. He has this entire life outside me now, and it freaks me out.
    I pass his school, with its enormous turrets and gothic lines, all made famous in the movie 10 Things I Hate About You . It looks more like a castle than a public high school.
    It’s quiet. If my brother decided to hang around after class with his buddies, he’s gone now.
    So I get to walk home.
    Alone.

ZOEY
    I’m in the kitchen, my arms covered in bubbles as I scrub the last dirty pan, when the door flies open and Carolyn bursts in. I twist around to yell at her—there’s already a hole in the drywall from the door knob—but when I see her, I freeze.
    Tears are streaming down her face, her nose is bright red and snotty, and she’s got a black eye.
    Someone gave my ten-year-old sister a fucking black eye.
    I rush over, water and soap creating a trail behind me, and reach out to touch her cheek. She flinches away, but I follow her and wrap her up in a hug. “Oh Carolyn, what happened?”
    “T-t-t-t,” she stutters, choking through the tears.
    “Take a deep breath,” I say, rubbing her back.
    She obliges, raking in big lungfuls of air as her trembling shoulders calm. I wait in silence, my arms still wrapped around her, until she’s ready to talk, and then I lean back and rest on my heels.
    “Talia hit me,” she says.
    Talia. Of course it was Talia. The girl has been bullying my sister since the first day of class, when Carolyn showed up in her favorite Littlest Pet Shop T-shirt, which apparently is so not cool at ten years old. Every day, there’s another story of Talia hurling insults at Carolyn.
    And no one seems to give a shit.
    “At school? Why didn’t a teacher call me or Mom right away? Or help?”
    “It was after. When I was waiting for the bus.”
    “She just ran over and punched you?”
    “She was bothering me all day,” Carolyn says, her words coming out in hiccups of breath. “She kept calling me a baby, telling me I cry like one too. I told Mrs. Bryant, but she never does anything!”
    My heart twists and my stomach clenches and I want to kick something or punch someone or scream at the lousy teachers at my sister’s school.
    If we didn’t live in the Hilltop neighborhood—or if only Carolyn could get a scholarship to Annie Wright like I did—she wouldn’t be stuck at such a crappy school. Or if we could just move about a half mile away, to where the assigned school is anything but Hilltop …
    If only, if only, if only.
    This is why I haven’t committed to a college yet, haven’t even started the applications. Because when it comes down to it, I’m probably going to end up getting some kind of full-time job after graduation, just so I can kick in a little more toward rent and get us the hell out of here before something even worse happens to Carolyn.
    I can’t leave her like this.
    I won’t.
    “At least it’s Friday,” I say, wiping away her tears. “You don’t have to deal with her for a couple of days. We’ll figure something out, okay? I promise.”
    “I don’t want to go back,” my sister says, the desperation in her voice mirroring the emotions swirling in my stomach. “Don’t make me go back.”
    The lump in my throat grows a mile wide, but I muster the