Dad misses the joke. “Do you have a clean driving record?”

“Except for a few parking tickets, but everyone has some of those, right?” She flashes him the perfect smile that you only end up with after four years of braces.

“I don’t.” Dad walks over to the sliding glass door that leads to the balcony, and he looks down at the parking lot. “Is your Fiat a stick shift?”

“Automatic,” Lex says. “Frankie is the only person I know who can drive a stick.”

Because my dad suffers from undercover-cop paranoia and he forced me to learn in case of emergency.

“One day you might need to drive a vehicle that isn’t an automatic,” he says.

I know exactly where this conversation is going. “Enough, Dad.”

“What if you’re alone and some lunatic grabs you off the street, and he drives a stick shift?” Dad asks, like it’s a perfectly normal question. “If there’s an opportunity to get away, you won’t be able to take advantage of it.”

Lex stares at my father, dumbfounded. She has heard me recount enough of these stories to know he’s serious. Usually, he saves these questions for me.

“You should learn,” Dad says. “If Frankie’s license wasn’t suspended, she could teach you.”

My shoulders tense. I’m not letting him play his passive-aggressive games with me. “Is there something you want to say, Dad?”

“Just stating a fact.” He stands his ground.

“Why? So I won’t forget how badly I messed up my life?”

Dad sighs. “I’m trying to help you, Frankie.” He isn’t apologizing or admitting he’s wrong.

“I don’t want your help.” I push Lex toward the apartment door. Before I follow her out, I turn back to look him in the eye. “I’m sorry you lost your perfect daughter. But I’m the one you’re stuck with now.”

CHAPTER 3

LOT B

Lex waves at Dad as she pulls out of the parking lot. “I know we’re angry at your father, but can I just say that he is still off-the-charts gorgeous?”

“Are you serious right now?” I scrunch up my nose. “Because you’re one comment away from making me throw up in your car.”

“What are best friends for if they don’t crush on your dad?”

“Actually, I think your dad is pretty—”

She pretends to gag. “Stop. New rule. Referring to the Senator as anything other than old and boring is a violation of BFC.”

I’m surprised at how easily I fall back into my old routines with Lex. There’s something about knowing a person for most of your life that makes it impossible to un-know them. “You can’t pull Best Friend Code when you’re the one who brought up hot dads.”

“Hot dad … singular. As in yours.” She flashes a mischievous smile. “Remind me again why your mom left him?”

“Who knows why my mother does anything?”

“I still can’t believe she went through with it and made you move in with your dad. She’s usually so full of crap.”

Mom has always reigned supreme as the queen of empty threats … until now.

I prop my feet on the glove compartment and hug my knees. “She even carried my bags up to Dad’s apartment. And Mom hates carrying things almost as much as she hates him.” I packed my stuff in black trash bags instead of suitcases to make her feel guilty, or at least to force my mother to haul around what looked like garbage. But it didn’t faze her. I’m not sure she noticed.

I leave out that part of the story, and the lull in the conversation lasts too long.

“Enough with the silence. I get plenty of that at home,” Lex says. “Back to your mom. How did she pull this off so fast? It’s only been a week since your DUI. Even the Senator would be impressed.”

Fast is an understatement.

It’s Wednesday morning. Seven days after I walked out of the police station with my parents and King Richard. The minute we got home, Mom told me to pack, like she couldn’t wait to get rid of me, while my piece-of-crap stepfather hovered in the hallway.

Don’t get me wrong—I was happy to go. The Heights reminds me of Noah and my screwed-up memory.

But Mom doesn’t know I feel that way. That would require an actual conversation—something she left to the army of doctors, shrinks, and hypnotists she hired to bring back the old Frankie. Recovering my memories so I could identify Noah’s killer and move on was never the real goal. Once I figured that out, I stopped talking to the shrinks. I’ll find a way to remember without her help.

The next day, Mom drove me out of the Heights—our exclusive community in the Maryland suburbs outside Washington, DC—to Dad’s two-bedroom apartment in Westridge, a neighborhood full of townhouses and garden apartments, less than six miles away. But six miles feels like a hundred when a five-minute car ride can mean the difference between living in the Heights or in Section 8 housing.

Mom left me on his doorstep with the garbage bags full of my stuff—like she had finally taken out the trash.

“Frankie?” Lex sounds worried.

I force a smile. “Sorry, I spaced. Dad is all over Project Reform Frankie, and it’s stressing me out. If things had worked out the way he planned, I would’ve started school yesterday. But according to Dad, a Dolly Parton look-alike in the office at Monroe refused to call Woodley for my immunization records. She told him to drive over there and get them himself.”

“That’s Mrs. Lane. She doesn’t take crap from anybody. Couldn’t your dad get you out of community service?”

If hell froze over.

“In Dad’s universe, rules don’t bend. Everything is black or white. There is no gray.”

Lex glances at my hands locked tight around my legs. “Nervous about your first day?”

Anything is better than going back to Woodley. Not that it was an option. Mom met with the headmaster and begged him not to expel me and ruin my chance at getting into Stanford. But she wasn’t persuasive enough. Knowing Mom, she’s probably devastated.

I’m relieved.

The Stanford dream belonged to the old Frankie—a girl who learned how to spin the straw she was given into the gold everyone else wanted.

The old Frankie played up her cute features with makeup tricks, hunted for jeans that made her boyish figure appear curvier, and adopted the style of her favorite fashion bloggers because she didn’t trust her own. At parties, lots of fake giggling and bathroom trips to flush vodka shots down the toilet allowed her to act cool without doing anything that could jeopardize the Plan. A nothing-special-but-cute-enough girl who landed the captain of the lacrosse team because he’d had a crush on her since they were kids.