Page 118 of Intermission

“Maybe.” She shrugs. “Or maybe you’ve just convinced yourself that’s what happened. Blocked it out or something. Maybe you feel guilty, and you’re in denial.”

“You think I could justforget itif I had sex? If I got pregnant and—”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” She crosses her arms and blows a puff of air up toward her bangs. “Or maybe you’re more like your sister than I thought you were.”

Jenna could have punched me in the gut and shocked me less. Inthe throat, and I could more easily breathe. But this?

Anger, disbelief, and betrayal dot my vision. “You know, my sister might be a lot of things, but at least she’s loyal.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk about loyalty.”

“Fine. But explain to me exactly how you getting caught with Cole became about me and Noah? How can you just sit there, acting all offended, making accusations against me, when you’re the only one of us actually doing the deed?”

“Mademoiselle Prescott. Mademoiselle Slade.”

We look to the front of the classroom.

“Do you two have something you’d like to share with the rest of the class?”

“No.” Jenna’s response sounds like it’s coming through two rows of teeth.

“No, Madame Danforth,” I answer, but by the shocked, slightly predatory looks on my classmates’ faces, it seems I already have.

A cold rush of dread paints a line across my neck.

“Jenna,” I whisper later, when we’re told to partner off for dialogue. “Jenna, I’m—”

“I’m partnering with Paige. Right, Paige?”

“Uhhh...” Paige looks back and forth between us. “I guess?”

“Jenna, I just—”

“Don’t talk to me.”

For the rest of the class period, my eyes keep straying toward the clock.

When the buzzer rings, I try to catch Jenna so we can talk, so I can apologize, but she shoves by me and won’t let me get a word out.

After I get my phone back, she doesn’t answer my calls.

She won’t respond to my texts.

She’s blocked me on all the socials.

We’ve more than drifted apart. After what she said and what I said and how it was overheard... I’m not sure our friendship can be saved.

I’m not sure I want it to be.

Gossip has always moved through our school halls like wildfire. What I said too loudly was both match and gasoline. Still, I don’t expect the extent of the fall-out from my overheard words—which isbut a spark, eclipsed by Jenna’s quite successful attempt to smokescreen my unintended announcement with lies—and carefully tainted truths—about me.

Like a virus dancing across a world without soap, the rumors involving me and a women’s clinic mutate as they spread, killing what little of my friendship with Jenna might have been salvageable, as well as my reputation as one of “the good girls” in the small town of Kanton, Iowa.

My life constricts.

And yet... two words flutter like whispers in my soul, sustaining me through the spring.

Hold.