Secrets Between Friends

Simona has spent six years perfecting the lie.

At fifteen, she watched her stepbrother Dakota laugh in the passenger seat of his mother's Civic and knew-with the awful, sudden clarity of a girl who reads too many novels-that she was ruined. Six years later, she's still ruined. She just hides it better. Behind expensive lipstick. Behind unavailable boyfriends. Behind the acceptable version of herself that shows up to Sunday dinners and passes the mashed potatoes without her hand shaking.

Then ...