Not Here to Stay Friends

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Text copyright © 2023 by Kaitlyn Hill Cover art copyright © 2023 by Monique Aimee All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC. Visit us on the Web! GetUnderlined.com Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request. ISBN 9780593483701 (trade pbk.) — ebook ISBN 9780593483725 Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read. Penguin Random House LLC supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to publish books for every reader. ep_prh_6.0_143000293_c0_r0 For Brianna Hill, who has always been there. I still can’t make you un-my sister, and I’d never want to try. CHAPTER ONE Life is all about beginnings. Every day you get a new one…until one day, you don’t. —The Cove, Season 2, Episode 6 Sloane Pop music legend has it that when fellow Tennessean Miley Cyrus arrived at LAX many years ago, she had naught with her but a dream and a cardigan. As I, Sloane McKinney, stand in the baggage claim area of the same airport waiting for my luggage to appear, I have only a backpack and a zit on my chin that I swear I could feel getting larger and angrier with each minute spent in recycled plane air. It’s not exactly what I would consider a “Party in the U.S.A.,” but that’s the song my brain has chosen to play on repeat since the pilot announced we were preparing for landing. If my life was a TV show, this would be the opening scene of the pilot episode. Fade-in: the camera pans over the masses of people rolling suitcases, talking on phones, hugging the person who came to pick them up. Cut to our plucky heroine standing in the middle of it all, watching with naive hope on her zitty face (note—clear up her skin in post?). Music playing softly in the background until now grows louder, slows down for dramatic effect. Camera zooms in on heroine to the sound of It’s definitely not a Nashville party…. Yeah, I should stop. While I wait for my bags, I scan the room again for a recognizable head of blond hair and, finding none, pull my phone out of my pocket to see if he’s texted an update. Nothing since he left his house. That’s fine. NBD. My hands are just shaking from fatigue, or low blood sugar after the only food provided on my two flights to get here was pretzels and peanuts. Definitely not because in a matter of minutes I’ll be reunited with my best friend, Liam Daniels, for the first time in over two years. Nor the fact that we’ll spend the whole summer together. Oh, and absolutely not because he lives in my dream city, which I desperately hope I’ll love as much as I think I will, because all my hopes and aspirations are pinned on moving here after high school. In a lot of ways, this really does feel like the pilot episode of The Rest of Sloane’s Life. No pressure. I cut off my mental sing-along for the twenty-seventh time and slam my tapping foot flat to the ground. The sound draws the attention of a few fellow passengers waiting for their own luggage, and I smile in a way that I hope conveys harmlessness, maybe even charm. No one smiles back. In my head, Miley taunts, “She’s gotta be from out of town.” Somebody get this girl a nap. Anyway, it wouldn’t make sense to be nervous about seeing Liam. For the first twelve years of our lives, we were next-door neighbors in our hometown of Knoxville and hung out every day. Even after his dad’s local TV production company went national and the Daniels family moved to LA, we stayed in touch via texts and video calls better than I keep up with any of the friends I see in person. He used to visit once or twice a year, to see his extended family around the holidays, and it was never weird to be around each other then. But those visits fizzled out in the wake of his parents’ divorce a couple years back, and something about Liam has been different ever since, too. Not a super-obvious something, as he’s good at keeping his emotions in check, but I get the impression that his life out here isn’t as rosy as he’d like me to believe. I want to have fun together, but I also want to be here for him, in real life rather than through a screen. Which is only part of the reason I jumped at the chance to (and begged and pleaded for my parents to agree to let me) visit for the summer when Liam extended the invitation. I tuck my phone back into my pocket, thinking of the other reasons. Even though I haven’t left the airport yet, this city already feels so much bigger, more fast-paced and vibrant than anything I’m used to. It’s like it’s brimming with creative inspiration, with stories to be told. I hope my story starts here. My people-watching is interrupted when someone jostles my shoulder, trying to get past me to the baggage carousel. “Oh, sorry,” I say on instinct, even though I’m