What if I had stuck to my guns when Mircalla mentioned going to a bar? What if I had been true to myself? What if I had said, “Sorry, Mircalla, I don’t drink. Can we get coffee instead?” She would have understood. In retrospect, it seemed ridiculous that I had ever thought she wouldn’t. If I had just told her—if I had explained what it was like, who my father had been—she never would have forced me to go to a bar if I said that I didn’t want to. It was my fault we had gone there. If that was the place where Jonathan had first spotted me, then it was my fault that he had.
And even before any of that, what if I had sucked it up and gone to Jacob’s stupid parties? What if I had refused to let our friendship slip through my fingers? Would we still be as close as we had been in high school? Wo
