Page 17 of Fade into You

“What are you talking about?”

“Ask Kayla. I’m done. And honestly, as long as you’re friends with her, I’m done with you too, so… sorry if that seems mean.”

And then she hung up.

I didn’t ask Kayla. Instead I called Brianne, the fourth and final person in our inner circle—we always called her Switzerland because she’d never take a side in any argument, debate, or fight. Just so she didn’t make anyone mad at her. Annoying us all with her endless “I’m neutral” mantra. I called and called and called. For a solid ninety minutes I got a busy signal. Someone must be online at her house, or else having an epic phone conversation. But I couldn’t keep waiting. So I walked there at dusk, twenty-five minutes away, and when I arrived, Little Miss Neutral wouldn’t even let me in.

She told me that she too is no longer talking to Kayla. Which means she’s not too motivated to talk to me, either, I guess.

“I don’t understand,” I said, as we stood on her front steps. “What happened with you guys this summer?”

“Dade,” she answered. Resolute. No back-and-forth, no middling. No Switzerland.

“What did he do?”

“It’s nothim-him. It’s herwithhim.” She shook her head and looked off at the trees and the setting sun. “You’ll see. She’s just been so mean ever since she got with him.”

“Okay, but can you give me something more concrete? An example?”

“You want an example?”

I nodded.

“When we complained about her constantly hanging out with him and talking about him and ditching us, she told Paige that she—and I—are bothfat asseswho, I quote, ‘have never even been kissed,’ so we have no right to lecture her about her relationship.”

I felt my face flush with embarrassment. For her, for me, I don’t know, but there was some shame mixed in too. I didn’t want to believe it. It had only been a couple of months, how could she have changed so much?

“I’m sure she didn’t say that—didPaigetell you that?”

“No, Kayla did! I was on the phone listening from the other room. She said it, Bird.” Her voice was shaking, and I could see her eyes glistening with tears before she scrubbed them away. “Me, I know what I look like and I know no one wants to kiss me, okay? I don’t care. But Paige—she knew—Kayla knew that was the cruelest thing she could’ve ever said to her.”

After I didn’t agree to cut Kayla out, they wouldn’t let me sit with them at lunch today. So I went to find Kayla instead. I wanted to sit her down and have a heart-to-heart. But I found Jessa first.

Now Jessa sits here next to me, staring, but not responding. Part of me starts to wonder if she’s high again. “Jessa?”

“Yeah?” she answers, her voice soft, wispy.

“I mean, don’t we?” I ask again. “Need to break them up?”Another part of me is wondering if she thinks I’m a terrible person for even suggesting it. Okay, maybe some small part of me is also wondering about her and Natalie—whose name I discovered after looking up her and Jessa, whose name is actuallyDelphine Jessamine, in last year’s yearbook. Wondering if they’re a couple, replaying that smoky kiss from the bathroom.

The bell rings, jolting me out of my thoughts. I start to stand up, but Jessa’s still sitting there. I follow her eyes over to our friends, who are reluctantly detangling their bodies. When I turn back to her, she’s looking up at me now.

“Count me in.”

She stands up too, and we don’t say anything as we start walking down the sidewalk toward the quad. We don’t say anything as we enter the double doors at the back entrance and pass through the brand-new metal detectors. We don’t say anything as we walk up the stairs and toward the technology wing.

Then, suddenly, we both stop in front of room 204.

“So,”we say at the same time.

“So…” she begins again. “Guess we’ll talk later?”

“Yeah,” I agree. “See you.”

But then we both attempt to enter the door and bump into each other.

“This is me,” I tell her.

“Journalism?” she asks. “With Rivera? Me too.”