Page 52 of Dear Love, I Hate You (Easton High)

I’m already gone.

* * *

Aveena

I’ve always prided myself in knowing my best friend. I mean, duh. What best friend doesn’t? Diamond Mitchell has been my non-biological sister since we met at the town’s annual carnival the summer before freshman year.

Dia’s family had just relocated to Silver Springs for her dad’s work, and I’d gotten a new job monitoring the children’s games for the weekend. And by “monitoring” I mean making sure kids didn’t get trampled in the bouncy house.

I spent my high school years considering Dia a part of me. Scratch that, a reflection of me. A different, more confident version, but a reflection nonetheless.

But lately?

The reflection’s become foggy.

Distorted.

And the girl I’m looking at now? The one who’s doing shots with the cheer captain and inhaling weed gummies? She’s a reflection I don’t recognize. A picture I’m not sure I want to keep.

I wasn’t looking to get peer pressured tonight—I wasn’t looking to get peer pressured ever, but somehow, I was stupid enough to believe Dia needed me for moral support.

I let her talk me into attending this drug fest, lied to my mom so she’d let me go, and now I’m considering never saying yes to anything ever again.

I stopped counting the times Dia’s new bestie tried pressuring me to “live a little.” Come on, just one gummy, Lacey urged. You’ll feel amazing. I bet she didn’t think I’d hear her call me a “Prudy Trudy” under her breath either.

Who am I kidding?

Dia doesn’t need me to tend to her wounds. She found her cure at the bottom of a red cup just fine. I thought that, with Finn’s bad influence out of her life, she’d stop chasing the next high, cut back a little, slow down. I was wrong. If anything, it’s been worse since she and Finn called it quits. It’s like she’s on a marathon to destruction.

Desperate to outrun the pain.

Too bad you can’t run in heels.

Spread across Theo’s leather couch with the girls, I examine Theo’s living room and the drunk basketball players wrecking it. There are drugs everywhere. On the living room table. In the kitchen. Oh, and I’m pretty sure the cheer squad is snorting lines in the bathroom.

I fall back down to earth at the sound of Xavier’s name, my focus shifting to the conversation I’ve been ignoring for twenty minutes.

“Xavier? Really?” Dia cringes. “Didn’t he just dump Brie?”

Lacey rolls her eyes. “Oh, give me a break. They weren’t together when we did it.”

My eyes bulge out of their sockets.

Wait… Xavier slept with Lacey?

His ex’s best friend?

So much for him being the “nice” jock, huh?

“When did you even have time to screw him?” Dia questions.

“That night at Theo’s,” Lacey admits.

Shit… He’d literally just dumped Brie a few hours prior.

Lacey winces at Dia’s sheer disapproval. “Don’t look at me like that, D. We were both wasted, and I was sad, and… I don’t know, I kissed him, and things escalated.”

“Girl, you are so dead if Brie finds out.” Dia speaks my mind.