Page 10

A FTER ANOTHER ROUSING COMMUNITY SERVICE effort (recycling!) on Friday afternoon followed by a quick dinner and shower, I roll into Matt and Salem’s room with my own hamper in tow, because I haven’t exactly been on top of my laundry situation either. I imagine most of the students at Camden take advantage of the optional laundry service, but that is decidedly not in the Riley family budget.

I do, however, know how to do it myself, which I guess puts me a step above Salem… or maybe three steps, considering that when he opens the door to let me in that night, I see piles of dirty clothes all over the place. “Whaaaat is happening here?” I ask, dropping my hamper and surveying the black cotton landscape.

“I know there’s something about lights and darks, but I don’t really wear much light,” he says, scratching his head as he returns to the mess. “So I thought maybe the light er stuff?” He holds up a pair of jeans.

“Okay, no.” I rescue the jeans from his hands and flip them inside out before tossing them into his now-empty laundry bag. “Colors get washed in cold water, and that definitely includes jeans, unless you want them to shrink into doll clothes. Washing them inside out helps keep the color. White stuff gets washed in warm or hot water, but you can just throw everything in cold; that way you only need one machine for everything, and… I literally do not see a single white article of clothing here anyway. Now come on, get all this stuff back in the bag.”

While he scoops his pants, shirts, and shorts back into his big black laundry bag, I realize something. “Why don’t I hate this music?” I ask.

He grins. “ Someone told me to try new things. This is M?neskin—one of Sabs’s favorites. She has a massive crush on their bassist.”

“Finally, someone in the Grayson family with taste.”

“Are you referring to the music or the bassist?” he asks with a waggle of his brows, and I roll my eyes even though I am definitely going to Google her later. But the music really is catchy, and as Salem walks around the room, yanking stray socks and boxers off the floor and stuffing them into his laundry bag, I can’t resist moving a little to the beat. It could be a fun song to do some cardistry to…

“It’s not terrible,” he concedes, “but I stand by my personal taste being supreme. Have you ever even listened to Nirvana? Or Garbage? Or the Pixies?”

“I think you already know the answer.”

“Yeah, well, you should try, at least.”

I roll my eyes again and he goes back to picking up his clothes while I start taking notes on my phone of which tricks I wanna do now that I’ve heard potential musical accompaniment. But I’m not typing long before the door swings open and Matt stands in the doorway, surveying the scene in front of him. “This is adorably domestic,” he observes, earning himself a scowl from Salem. “I could definitely use a hand with my laundry, if you’re offering. I couldn’t tell you what that stain is on the pants I wore last night, or, well, I could, but—”

“You’re on your own,” Salem and I tell him simultaneously, then exchange a glance before Salem stuffs in the last pair of shorts. “Come on, Skeevy.”

“Uh, you may wanna wash those sheets, bro,” Matt tells him with a nod at the bed. “And that gnarly towel of yours.”

“Okay, yes, you should definitely wash those,” I confirm. “Where are your towels?”

“I have one towel. It’s hanging on a hook in the bathroom, and it’s wet.”

“Good news—it’s going to stay wet in the wash, so you can go ahead and get it. I’ll even strip your bed for you.” I immediately throw a glare Matt’s way. “No stripping jokes.”

He holds up his hands innocently. “It was too easy anyway.”

“I thought ‘too easy’ was exactly how you like it,” I shoot back as Salem heads to the communal bathroom and I yank his sheet from the mattress.

“That’s my girl,” Matt says with a grin.

It strikes me then that I am in the presence of the one person who is the genuine male equivalent of what everyone thinks I am, and he doesn’t seem to give a shit about his reputation one bit. Matt could probably give me some decent tips for how to handle it, and for all he loves to joke around about everything, I also know he’ll take me seriously.

“Hey, can I ask you for some advice?” I glance at the door. “Later, I guess.”

“My door is always open to you, dormie. And yeah, later’s good; I’ve gotta go meet my study group at the library now anyway.”

“Is that a euphemism?”

“I wish.” He stuffs a few books in his bag. “That sounds a lot more fun than AP Bio.”

“You’re in AP Bio ?” I immediately feel bad for how incredulous I sound, but the way he smirks, he’s clearly used to it.

“Me and pretty much all the other kids planning to go premed.” He says it casually, as if the guy best known at Camden for his bedroom skills planning to become a doctor is no big deal. And, technically, I guess it isn’t. I mean, he certainly knows human anatomy. “I’ll see you later, Skeevy.”

“Oh my God, don’t you dare start calling me that!” I yell after him, his laughter carrying over his shoulder as he heads out to campus.

Shaking my head, I return to the task of Salem’s sheets, pulling off his top pillowcase and then the bottom one. As I pick up the latter, I see something black underneath, and I pinch it between two fingers, figuring it’s another piece of Salem’s laundry left behind.

But unless Salem’s got a hobby I don’t know about, that is definitely not his underwear.

In fact, I know that underwear, or at least that brand; I’ve got a pair in the very laundry at my feet.

My pair, however, is pink.

Because the person who wears black?

Is Jenna London.

“Hey.” Salem peeks his head inside and I immediately shove the underwear in with the pile of sheets. “Got my towel. You ready?”

I think I nod. I know I stand. But am I ready to have a casual conversation about detergents and water temperatures with Salem when I just found out he’s hooking up with Jenna London?

Not so much.

Being unable to leave Rumson for the next two hours until my laundry was done ended up being the perfect excuse to avoid the world while I turned this newfound information over and over in my head, especially when Salem got a text and bailed. He promised that if I just moved his clothes over, he’d be back to grab them from the dryer, but I had no desire to see him when he returned from his booty call; I said I’d handle it all. And though he may have been suspicious of my sudden act of kindness, he clearly knew it was better to just take me up on the offer than waste time asking questions. Which left me entirely alone.

I text Sabrina.

Evie

Are you doing anything? I’m doing laundry and I’m bored.

Her reply comes a few minutes later.

Sabrina

Sorry, @ services @ Jewish Students’ Club. Promised mom we’d go for her mother’s yahrzeit.

Huh. So that’s where Salem is, I guess. I mentally apologize for the booty-call assumption.

Evie

I didn’t know you guys were Jewish.

Sabrina

Surprise! *jazz hands*

I start to ask what a yahrzeit is, and then I remember that Google is free.

Evie

Ah, well, happy deathiversary to your grandma

Sabrina

Thx, I’ll pass that along

I don’t know what else to do with my night. I’m not going to a movie by myself, especially if Heather and Lucas might be there. I don’t wanna go upstairs to the lounge, in case some of the more dickish Rumson guys are there, the ones who like to either loudly remind me that the communal bathrooms are off-limits to me or invite me to join them inside. I have no interest in the open gym or open art room or even the open kitchen; if I bake something, it’ll just mean getting stuck waiting in the Student Center after I’ve already been stuck waiting in the laundry room.

With a sigh, I open up the laptop I’d tossed on top of my hamper and get started on the APUSH reading. I more than anyone can’t leave my laundry behind; God only knows where my underwear would end up if I left it unattended in here for even a minute.

Studying: just what all the cool girls do on Friday nights.

I read until the washing machines cease their rumbling and then I move everything over into the dryers and sit and wait again. I’d assumed there’d be at least a few people in and out of the laundry room tonight, but no, turns out no one else is uncool enough to spend their Friday night doing laundry.

I wonder what Isabel and her friends are doing, especially if Jenna’s not as otherwise occupied as I thought she was. Probably something totally beyond me, like taking Ashleigh’s car into town and going to a bar or whatever. Even though we have plans to get together tomorrow to talk about our talent-show routine, I still don’t feel like Izzy and I are at the point where I can just text her and say yo what up.

( You will never be at the point where you should be tex ting anyone and saying “yo what up,” Salem would tell me, I know.)

Then again, would a cool girl be second-guessing whether it’s uncool to text a friend and see what she’s up to? No, a cool girl would not. A badass definitely would not. I’m still not sure which of those things I aspire to be, because in my mind, they go hand in hand, but either way, it’s a status I have not achieved.

Yet.

Deep breath. Find Isabel McEvoy in contacts. Type words. Go.

Evie

We still on for tomorrow?

Five minutes of no response later, I’ve just about given up when suddenly, incoming text.

Isabel

Yep! But can we make it 11? I’m def gonna need to sleep in.

Ah, yes, I too will require recovery time from this night of debauchery.

Evie

Sounds good!

So much for that.

People always want to know why I love playing cards so much, and the reason I always give is that it’s something my dad and I did a ton when I was a kid. And it’s true—that is definitely the number one reason. When Sierra and my mom would go out and do the special mother-daughter things that mothers and daughters who actually have things in common do, my dad and I would kick back with cans of fruity seltzer and play.

When I was little, it was war and go fish, then spit and casino. Gin rummy came next, while I learned the very basics of blackjack and poker. On the rare occasions we played as a family, hearts or spades often came out, or Pres, which Sierra gleefully told me was actually called Asshole. As I got older, I learned everything I could—bridge, canasta, even whist. But in truth, my favorite thing about cards is that solitaire is and always has been a perfectly legit solo activity, and it’s kept me company on more occasions than I can count.

It sounds pathetic when I put it that way, which is why I never do. But it’s also why I carry a deck in my pocket the way other people carry fidgets or pens. And I guess this is the perfect time to put it to good use.

I play solitaire until the buzzer goes off, and then I empty both dryers, and text Salem to let him know his hamper is waiting in the laundry room. After, I bring my stuff upstairs, get ready for bed, and lie staring at the ceiling for far, far too many hours until sleep finally comes.

“Do it slower,” Isabel insists, her big green eyes like saucers as I finish the same card trick—my favorite one—for the third time in a row. “I’m going to figure it out.”

“If you can figure it out, it’s not going to be a very impressive talent-show display,” I point out as I intertwine my fingers and flip my hands inside out to stretch them. “The point is to dazzle everyone with my skills.”

“Well, your skills and my legs,” she says with a grin, holding the bodysuit she’ll be wearing as my assistant up against her torso again. I don’t know why she owns such a thing, but then again, if I had her body, I’d probably have it in twelve colors.

She showed me the outfit the minute I showed up in her room for practice, after a morning spent over waffles and math homework, and suggested I wear something similar. But even the new and improved version of me can’t fathom wearing something quite so… so. Seeing as I’ll be playing the role of magician, I figure I can just put together an all-black outfit that works.

“I also had a thought about music,” I tell her, searching for the song in my phone I listened to in Salem’s room yesterday. “Thought it might be fun to have this in the background. What do you think?”

She listens while I put on M?neskin’s cover (Salem made sure I knew this) of “Beggin’,” and when her body starts moving to the music after the first ten seconds or so, I know I’ve got her, and I’m strangely proud. “I like this,” she says with a smile. “Yeah, let’s do this. Where’d you hear it?”

I’m certainly not telling Jenna London’s best friend that I heard it from Salem, so I tell her someone was blasting it in Rumson.

“God, I still can’t believe you live there. What’s it like?”

“Loud.” I shuffle the cards once, twice, three times. “Guys yell a lot of shit to each other. And they stink. They come back from sports and smell rancid, and then they take showers and smell like too much body spray. They leave their shit all over the place. I wish I could tell you it’s as glamorous as it sounds, but it’s mostly just gross.”

“Oh, I believe it,” says Isabel. “But I don’t mean the boys. What’s it like for you, having no girls around?”

My hands freeze on the cards. “You know, you’re the first person to ask me that. Everyone always just wants to know stuff like whether Matt wears boxers or briefs.”

“I’d put money on boxers.”

“You’d be correct. And it’s hard, not having girls around.” I exhale slowly, my fingers starting to flip through the cards again. “I had a best friend at home. And a sister. And the girls I sat with at lunch or hung out with after school”—mostly girlfriends of Craig’s friends, which seems sad now that I think about it—“and I was really looking forward to having a roommate. I know most people love their privacy, but. I don’t know. I didn’t even realize how much I was looking forward to it until I opened my door and saw my roommate was Archibald freaking Buchanan.”

“Well, then I’m glad you have me,” she says with a grin, wrapping an arm around my neck.

“I am too,” I say, and I mean it. I don’t know why on earth Isabel McEvoy chose me for a friend, but I am extremely grateful every day that she did.

“And what about Matt’s roommate? You guys seem tight.”

“Do we?” I snort, knowing that Salem would probably mime an act of violence on himself at the very thought. “Don’t tell him that.”

Her mouth curves into a smile. “Why’s that?”

“There are prickly jerks, and then there’s Salem Grayson—an entire other level. I don’t think there’s a single person on earth he likes as much as he likes dead musicians.”

“So you guys have never…”

“Never…?” Then the meaning of her question hits, and I laugh for real. “God no. Me and Salem ? In what world?”

“I had to ask!” She twirls her long strawberry hair into a bun on top of her head and stretches out her limbs. “I suspected we were doing this routine to impress someone, and I was afraid it might be him.”

“It’s not,” I assure her. “But wait, why ‘afraid’?” All at once, everything registers. “You know.” It’s not a question.

“Evie—”

I jump up from where I’ve been sitting on the floor. “You know about Salem and Jenna. You’ve always known. And you’re trying to get dirt for her.” I think back to the day at the mall, and how they teased me about him then, too. At the time, it’d felt like an induction into their glorious group, but now I see it for what it was: a fact-finding mission. “God, I should’ve known.”

“Evie, no, come on. You’re making it sound like this evil plot. We are friends—”

“Really, Isabel? Because using me to make sure I’m not getting in the way of the guy your friend wants is not what friends do. Making me a stepping stone to someone else—getting an invite from me to his room…” I can’t even continue. It’s all so pathetic. I am right back where I was a few months ago, a tool in the quest for two people to find each other while I lose everything.

How am I back here?

“I gotta go.” I stumble out of her room to the sound of her calling my name, the cards fluttering from my hands to the plush carpet below.

It’s a relief to make it to Rumson without bumping into anyone, and when I get back to my room, I do something I never do and lock the door. There isn’t a soul on earth I want to see right now, or for the rest of the day. All I can think about is who’s using me, and am I ever going to be someone who just gets to have a life and friends and a boyfriend without there being an asterisk on it all?

Okay, you’re going to make yourself crazy. I can’t be alone with my thoughts. I need some noise to drown them out. I flip open my laptop and open up a music app.

I’m about to put on one of my usual comfort choices like Taylor Swift when I decide I need a change of pace. What were those bands Salem mentioned again? After all, he gave newer music a shot when I suggested it; it seems only fair that I try his.

I look up Nirvana, thinking of the shirt he wore on the first day, and he’s right: a lot of this isn’t bad. From there, I follow “If you like this, you may like that” suggestions that take me from Hole to Veruca Salt to Letters to Cleo. I explore Foo Fighters and Soundgarden and Mad Season. I take a quick break to pick up food from the Beast and bring it back to my room so I can listen some more.

Some of the music is good. Some of it is awful. Some of it reminds me of sitting in Craig’s basement and watching him maneuver soldiers and elves through virtual battlefields while barely acknowledging my existence. Some of it makes me think of Sierra for no reason at all other than that it feels like her vibe and apparently my brain and this shit with Isabel are determined to pull me back into the past.

And finally, after I don’t even know how many songs have passed, I do the thing I’ve been determined not to do.

I go online to look up all the people I left behind, starting with my sister.

Sierra’s pictures always make it look like she’s having the best time in the room, and if any part of me had thought maybe that would change in my absence, that’s now squashed. It’s just like it’s always been for her—cracking up at a party, clutching the arms of her usual partners in crime, Jace and Levi. Lying out on the grass and lifting her face to the sun. Showing off an outfit in shades of neon, her fingers raised in a peace sign. Not one thing about her life has changed.

Including the fact that Craig and Claire are nowhere to be found.

So they didn’t end up managing to worm their way into her orbit for real, then. He slept with his girlfriend’s sister, and she kept their secret, and for what?

Craig’s only social media use is limited to stuff like gamer Discords, so I don’t bother with that; instead, I click over to Claire, expecting the usual brightly colored squares of her art. She’s never been big on posting pictures of her face, and she absolutely hates all photographs of her body.

Or at least she used to.

It’s only been a couple of weeks since I left Greentree, and a few months since I’ve seen or spoken to Claire, but I swear I don’t know who this person is smiling hugely with her arm around two girls with similarly dark-brown skin, her meticulous braids dip-dyed lilac. I have never seen the camo-print romper she’s wearing in this picture at the Dunkin’ Donuts we used to go to every Sunday morning, cheesing around the hot pink straw emerging from her iced matcha latte. (At least her usual order hasn’t changed.) And there is no way that the girl wearing a bathing suit—a bathing suit —in this picture clearly taken at the town pool is my old best friend ClaireBear.

And even though there’s no sign of Craig, or Sierra, or… any of our old friends, actually, in any of these pictures, it’s too much.

I turn off my phone, throw it on my bed, and turn the music all the way up.

The last morning of the world’s most depressing weekend, I get myself to the library bright and early. I’ve developed an affinity for a particular seat, and showing up while everyone else is still chowing down on bagels in the Beast is the best way to get it, even if I do miss Sunday Dunkin’ runs with Claire now more than ever.

I didn’t get a thing done last night except make playlists of the songs I actually liked and have one quick catch-up phone call with my parents, during which we told each other approximately nothing and pretended we were looking forward to Parents’ Weekend next month. Once they confirmed grades, food, and room were good, I set them free to watch whatever show about international spies they were currently fixated on and treated myself to a luxuriously long shower.

But today… today is lab report and math homework and APUSH reading and story writing and studying for my Spanish quiz.

And it starts now.

I start with chem—my least favorite—and spread out my stuff, taking advantage of the library being nearly empty. But of course, I’m all of ten seconds into my lab report when someone else gets the same idea.

And I know without even looking up exactly who that someone else is.

“What are you doing here?”

“Listening to you hum ‘Heart-Shaped Box,’ apparently.” Salem’s voice drips with smugness as he slides his stuff onto the table next to mine. “I thought I heard some good stuff coming up through the floor last night. Glad to see you took my advice.”

He sounds uncharacteristically friendly and cheerful, and when I finally look up at him, I see it’s more than just his voice. He looks… happy. Together. Some might even say “good.” He’s wearing the jeans he wore to the movies the night he went as my “date,” and he’s managed to scrounge up a T-shirt that doesn’t have a shredded collar. He looks way cleaner and more clear-eyed than he did a week ago, and he smells like he just came out of the shower.

He looks like a well-adjusted basketball player with a hot girlfriend and a 5.0 GPA and in that moment I absolutely hate him.

Doesn’t he know that he wasn’t supposed to succeed so well while I failed so hard?

Which I can’t say, so I just grunt, hoping he’ll take the hint.

Of course, for the first time in his life, Salem doesn’t take advantage of an excuse to leave. Instead, he starts grilling me on what I listened to and what I liked as if we were two fangirls bonding over our favorite ship. Under other circumstances, it might’ve been fun, but right now I just want Salem to go the hell away—back into the arms of his perfect girlfriend, maybe.

“Okaaay, I see you’re not in a chitchat mood,” he finally observes. “Well then, do you wanna split up the history reading?”

“I’m working on chem.”

“Doesn’t have to be right now,” he says, unbothered. Why, today of all days, is Salem just… chill? And like in an “I have all the patience in the world for you” kind of way, as opposed to a “none of this shit matters” kind of way?

Oh, right, he probably woke up under Jenna London. That’d put most guys in a great mood, I imagine.

“I can do my own reading, thank you,” I spit. “I’m not a child.”

Well, that seems to do it. “What the fuck, Evie? Is this just PMS or did I do something to you?”

“Yes, please, add a spoonful of misogyny,” I growl. “That’ll help your cause.”

“I don’t have a fucking cause; I thought I was sitting down with a friend and working together, like we’ve done, oh, I don’t know, about fifty times since we got here. But I didn’t even see you yesterday, so I really don’t know what the hell I could’ve done between hanging out in my room on Friday and now.” Salem’s eyes flash what in warm brown eyes might’ve been fire, but in his cool gray is just plain lightning. “Is this about the laundry? You said it was fine, and Sabrina said she told you where I was.”

“She did.”

“Well then did I get a red sock into your whites or something?”

“Do you even own a red sock?”

“No, I don’t, which makes this even more confusing.”

Sitting down with a friend. It’s the first time he’s ever called me that, and it’d probably warm my heart a little if not for all the strings that seem attached to it right now. Which is why I have to ask. “ Are we friends, Salem? Or were you always using me to get to Jenna?”

“What?” If the library were busier, the entire room would probably break into angry shushes right now, but as it is, there are only three other students milling about, and no staff, so we get only a few shushes. Still, Salem lowers his voice to regular volume. “We started hanging out before Jenna came into the picture. She doesn’t have anything to do with anything.”

“Then why did you lie about her?”

“I didn’t lie,” he says, though the defiant set his jaw gets when he believes what he’s saying a hundred percent is conspicuously lacking. “I just didn’t mention it.”

“ Why? Why not tell me you were hooking up?”

He flutters his ungodly long lashes. “A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell?”

“I cannot begin to tell you the number of things wrong with that sentence coming out of your mouth.” Starting with the fact that it’s a confirmation. I didn’t even know a part of me was holding on to the thought that he might tell me this was a total misunderstanding and it was actually Matt she was fooling around with, or the underwear under his pillow was some weird prank. But there it is. Confirmed.

Okay then. That’s fine. I’m fine. What’s there not to be fine about? Salem is hooking up with Jenna, and he’s happy, and they’re happy, and Salem and I aren’t as close as I thought. Cool cool cool.

“What do you want me to say, Skeevy? I gave Matt shit for being a slut and now here I am, doing the same thing. It’s embarrassing.”

“You have to know hooking up with a single girl doesn’t make you a slut, but even if you were, so what?” I demand. “Matt’s not hurting anybody. He’s not pretending to be anything he isn’t. He doesn’t have a girlfriend, or an almost-girlfriend, and he isn’t telling girls he loves them and then sleeping with their sisters. Every girl at this school who hooks up with Matt Haley knows what she’s getting and she doesn’t care, because she wants the same thing. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Those are some awfully specific examples.”

God, of course he would pick up on that. “I’m just trying to make a point. There’s nothing inherently slutty about hooking up, and there’s nothing inherently evil in being slutty anyway, so maybe you could ease the hell up and realize your roommate is actually a pretty freaking nice guy.” Frankly, I’d kill to have a roommate who cared as much about me as Matt clearly cares about Salem.

Salem narrows his eyes. “Please tell me you are not hooking up with Matt.”

“ Jesus, Salem, no, I’m not, and you are missing the point.” I open my mouth to continue the tirade, but Salem holds up a hand.

“I know, I know. You’re not wrong. He has been… nice,” Salem admits grudgingly. “And relatively considerate, considering our room—or at least our window—is a revolving door.”

“And?”

“And… you may have a point about the rest. I don’t know. I didn’t exactly come here with a ton of experience.” His eyes drop to the desk, an unfurled paper clip I hadn’t even noticed in his hand scratching out an S in the scarred wood. “I might’ve been… jealous. A little. Of Matt.”

My eyebrows shoot to the sky. “I’ll be honest, I thought it would take at least six hours of physical torture to get that out of you.”

“It should’ve,” he mutters. “Anyway, feel better now?”

“No,” I say honestly, because I still don’t know how to trust him. Because I still couldn’t trust Isabel. Because even if Jenna just tripped and fell into Salem’s lap, I’m the one who brought her to his room for poker night, and I’m the room she stopped by on the way to his, I guess, and I’m the idiot who thought I was helping him with a hopeless crush on someone else entirely. But mostly, because I’m the one sitting here in clothes barely a step up from pajamas and hair a mess and no clue what I’m doing or whether I’ll ever be able to trust my instincts with guys again, while he’s turned himself around in no time at all. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my lab report.”

“You’re kidding me.”

I refuse to dignify that with even a meeting of the eyes, choosing instead to focus on the work he interrupted. “Nope. Why don’t you head off and do something brilliant like break out a crack pipe in Headmaster Gibbons’s office? Seems like you’re losing your edge.”

Okay, that might’ve taken things a bit far, and the angry sweep of his books back into his bag confirms it. I wait for the sound of him storming off, but instead, a shadow looms over me and cool, minty breath dances over my cheek. “You wanna know something true, Skeevy? Something secret?” he whispers dangerously. “I got caught on purpose so I could give Sabrina an out because I could see she was dying being around Molly. Feel free to yank that one from your bitchy insult box.”

And then I get the storming off, but it’s not remotely satisfying.

In fact, I can’t even bring myself to let it stand. I jump up, leaving my books behind, and grab him by the wrist before he can leave the room, corded leather bracelets imprinting on my palm. “Wait, please. I’m sorry.”

He turns, slowly, but his mouth quirks up in the tiniest of smugly edged smiles, the kind you might see on a cat who’s spotted a mouse for dinner, and I know I’m forgiven. “Hold on, I wanna get that on a recording. Replay it a whole bunch of times on nights I’m having trouble sleeping.”

“Oh, shut up and accept the apology.”

The smile blooms into something slightly more whole, and he follows me to the table, spreading out his books. We work in much more (mostly) pleasant silence for a while, but by the time I finish my report, the feelings I buried for my apology have morphed into something that has me impatiently tapping my pen against the desk.

Finally, it clicks what I need. “I want a Bad Girl Day.”

He blinks in my direction, biting his lip against a laugh. “Excuse me?”

“Look at you.” I gesture at his cleaned-up appearance, his books splayed out in the library before 10:00 A.M. “You’ve already achieved Good Boy status. You’ve done the thing. You’ve got basketball and Jenna and you look and smell like an actual human. But I still feel like… me.”

“Being you is not a bad thing, Skeevy,” Salem says, more seriously than I expect.

“Yeah, it is, trust me.” I can’t bring myself to tell him that he might not have been using me, but the girls I thought were my friends sure were, and so were the ones before that. I don’t want to be the girl people feel like they can do that to. I sure as hell don’t wanna be a girl who cares if and when it happens. And right now, I still care way, way too much.

He sighs and puts down his pen. “Okay, so what does a ‘Bad Girl Day’ entail?”

“You tell me.” I fold my arms on the table and rest my chin on them so I’m looking up at his pale face with its slashes of dark eyebrows, surrounded by equally dark hair that’s starting to curl at the ends with overgrowth. It makes him look the tiniest bit softer, which I’m sure he’d hate to hear. “What kinds of things have you gotten in trouble for in the past? I wanna do those. Well, other than smoking in the headmaster’s office; I’m not gonna do that. Or smoke at all, I don’t think. I don’t know. I’m still on the fence.”

“What would you even smoke?” he asks, amused. “You don’t have any weed.”

“I have yours.”

“Oh, no, you don’t. I stole that back like five days ago.” My jaw drops open, and he laughs. “Don’t worry; I didn’t smoke it. But I did give it to Jenna, so she and her friends have probably obliterated that by now.”

The mention of Jenna and her friends twists something in my stomach, but I push past it. “Well, then, that answers that. What else?”

“Lots of destruction of property. You wanna destroy some property?” His eyes take on a twinkle that says he knows I won’t, and if I hadn’t seen it, he’d be right; I absolutely hate the idea of trashing someone else’s hard work, especially if someone else has to clean it up. But that’s Good Girl mentality, and this day’s got a purpose.

“I wanna destroy some property,” I say firmly. “Where do we begin?”