Chapter 27: Something Real and Unguarded

By eleven, the party had thinned into its second, truer phase — the phase where the people who'd come for cake and congratulations had gone home, and the people who'd come because this was their real family were left standing in loose clumps near the good speakers, the ones who'd know each other for a decade and had nowhere better to be. Maddie had lost track of Ravi for a stretch — he was deep i...