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“Oh, we know,” Misty keeps teasing, but the look that crosses Sienna’s face makes me decide not to pile on.

“Why don’t you smile, Sienna? I’ve known you all my life, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen a real smile from you. Why?”

Sienna turns to stare out the window, resting her head against the seat.

“How can anyone smile in a world like this? Where children are neglected, starved, and abused. There’s nothing to smile about. Not in my world, at least.”

My heart pangs for my friend and the sliver of truth she just shared.

“Christ, S. You didn’t have to go all deep on us. We were just having fun. Chill out, why don’t you?” Misty says with a sideways glance.

My brows furrow at the coldness in her tone. Instead of arguing with Misty for her lack of empathy, I reach into the back seat and place a hand on Sienna’s knee.

“Hey,” I say softly. “It’s okay, Sienna. You don’t have to smile if you don’t want to.”

She turns to me then and gives me a grateful look. But a second later, she shakes her head as if trying to shake off whatever demons are haunting her.

“Are we close to Max’s house yet? I need to pee.”

“Can’t you hold it until we get to your house?” Misty asks as she takes a turn.

“Sure. I can hold it.” Sienna shrugs. “But do you really want to take the chance of me ruining the upholstery in your brand-new car?”

“Christ. Fine.” Misty presses harder on the gas.

Two minutes later, we pull up in front of my house, and Sienna is out of the car before Misty has even fully killed the engine.

“Come on!” she shouts, bouncing on her feet as Misty and I hurry to join her.

I unlock the door, and Sienna rushes upstairs to my room, even though there’s a perfectly working bathroom on the ground floor.

Misty and I follow her up, and once I enter the sanctuary that is my room, I drop my backpack and pull out the box from under my bed with all my notebooks.

“What are you doing?” Misty laughs as I pull out notebook after notebook until I find the one I’m looking for.

“Nothing.”

“Doesn’t look like nothing. It looks like you’re littering your bedroom with beat-up old notebooks.” She picks one up and flicks through the pages. “What are they?”

“Just some notebooks where I’ve written my stories over the years. It’s nothing.”

“You keep your stories in these? I thought you used that new laptop you got freshman year?” Misty asks, picking up another notebook while I continue searching for the one I want.

“I do. Well, sort of. I don’t know. I just got so used to writing with pen and paper that it’s become part of my process.”

“You should really upload those to the cloud,” Sienna says from the bathroom doorway, apparently having overheard the entire conversation.

“I know. I’ll get to it. Eventually,” I mutter. “It’s just hard to do when all these new stories keep popping into my head, demanding that I write them next.”

“Want me to do it for you?” Sienna asks, emerging from the bathroom after drying her hands on a towel. “Not like I have anything better to do at night.”

I lean back and sit on my heels, looking up at her.

“You’d do that?”

“Why not?” She shrugs, plucking five notebooks from my stash. “There has to be some software that can turn your chicken scratch into text. Worst case, I’ll only have to fix half of it manually. Still might take me a few weeks though.”

“That’s okay. You can take as long as you’d like. Thanks, Sienna!”