Marjorie Dean, High School Sophomore

The summer before sophomore year should feel like freedom, but for Marjorie Dean, even the beach holds tension. When her childhood friend Mary Raymond returns after months away, the reunion Marjorie imagined curdles into something more complicated: Mary brings new confidence, new opinions, and an unsettling closeness with Constance Stevens, the friend Marjorie thought was hers alone. As the girls navigate beach days, swimming lessons, and the approaching first day of school, small slights accumulate into real hurt. Chase captures the particular agony of adolescent friendship, the way a new presence in a circle feels like betrayal, the way a friend's laugh at someone else's joke can wound like a blade. This is a story about the terror of being displaced, of realizing that love is not zero-sum but feels absolutely zero-sum when you're sixteen.