Page 14

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

Emma lies motionless on her bed.

Knock knock.

“Emma?”

Emma turns her face toward the door but otherwise doesn’t move.

“Emma, I know you’re in there. Olivia told me. It’s Jade.”

“And Celia.”

Knock.

Knock.

Emma watches as the doorknob turns and the door swings inward to reveal two girls who are still trying to be her friends.

They’re in their pajamas, with dewy, fresh-scrubbed faces.

Celia is tall and stocky and blond. Jade is tiny and thin and raven-haired.

Celia stands nervously on the lavender shag rug that Olivia brought back after winter break—claiming that all the influencers had one now—but Jade just glides right in, smelling like skin cream and toothpaste.

“Hey you,” she says in her charming accent. She’s London born and raised, but her mother is an American Ridgemont alum. “God, this rug is minging, don’t you think? It looks like unicorn vomit.”

“I like it,” Celia says, digging a toe into it. “It’s soft.”

She looks like she’d like to hide under it, Emma thinks. Like she’d rather look at unicorn vomit than at Emma’s face. Which, given the length of time since Emma’s bathed, might be understandable.

Jade flips her glossy black hair over her shoulder. “Celia’s rank taste aside,” she says, “we’re sorry to barge in. You weren’t asleep, were you?”

Sleep, what is sleep? “No,” Emma says. “I was just, uh, resting.”

Staring at the ceiling and checking the Doomsday Clock.

She tries to smile at them, but her face feels stiff and weird.

She’s touched they came to check in on her, but she wishes they hadn’t bothered.

They’re going to do the same thing Lori did—ask her if she wants to talk, then press her into talking, then redirect the conversation to all the wrong things.

If it were her birthday and she had a cake with seventeen candles on it, she’d blow them out and wish for everyone to leave her the hell alone.

“Can we sit?” Jade says, but she’s already pulling out Emma’s desk chair. Celia sinks into Olivia’s.

“Make yourself at home,” Emma says. Then she says what her mother used to say whenever one of her friends came to the house. “Can I offer you a snack?”

“What do you have?” Celia asks, but Jade shoots her a look, and Celia flushes pink. “Sorry, forget it.”

Emma’s mother, Sarah, used to keep homemade biscuits or banana bread on hand.

There’s no dorm oven, even if Emma knew how to bake, but at least Olivia knows how to buy snack food at Target.

More than once, Emma has watched Olivia shoot a reel about how important a healthy diet is for good skin, only to open up a bag of Fritos afterward.

“Pringles,” Emma says, pulling open Olivia’s snack drawer. “L?rabars, gummy bears, ramen…”

“We’ll pass, thanks,” says Jade, tossing her hair to the other shoulder. Then she leans forward, puts her elbows on her knees, and says, “Emma, we just wanted to come see if you’re okay.” Her brow furrows prettily. “Not to be too blunt, but it sounds like you’ve been acting a bit nutters lately—”

“Jade,” Celia squeals, flushing. “Have some tact. ”

“What I meant is that it sounds like things are hard for you right now, and I just want to say, we know what it’s like to feel a little shit and alone—and we’re here for you, okay? You’re not alone.”

Emma gives her a tiny nod. Of course she’s not technically alone; she’s got a roommate who says one thing and does the other; there are eight hundred students at Ridgemont, only 10 percent of whom she can’t stand; and two of her friends are right here in the room.

But ever since she came back after winter break—after Claire’s funeral—there’s been an invisible wall between Emma and everyone else.

On one side of the wall is the normal world, with classes and friends and crushes and gossip.

And on the other side is the grief world, where none of that matters at all.

Emma lives there now. And that’s where she’s alone.

In a place no one else can cross over to.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Celia asks.

Emma stiffens. “Do you remember when I tried to talk about it, but no one wanted to listen?”

Celia says, “Do you mean the thing you wanted to publish in the paper?”

“The thing ?” Emma repeats bitterly.

Celia flushes again. “Sorry. I mean, the piece about your sister.”

“Yes,” Emma says. “That’s exactly what I mean. Did you read it?”

“I never saw it. I just heard you arguing with Ms. Hofmann about it.”

Emma reaches into her drawer and pulls out a coffee-stained page. “Here,” she says. “This is something I actually want to talk about, and what Ms. Hofmann didn’t want you to see.”