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THIRTEEN

ROSE

Eleanor holds us hostage in her bedroom to provide feedback on her Macbeth monologue until it falls dangerously close to dinnertime. We’re rescued only by Danni’s fifteen-minute warning alarm, which explodes into sound right as Eleanor’s in the middle of her four-hundredth or so run-through. The three of us scramble to our feet before Eleanor can beg us to stay for just one more scene.

When we arrive at the B-floor landing, I stop Danni by touching her shoulder. She turns to look at me, and I’m about to speak, but I find myself distracted. For the first time, I’ve noticed the color of her eyes. They’re a remarkable shade of hazel. How is it that I’ve never noted her eye color before?

“Your tag is hanging out,” I say, gesturing to her collar. She nods and lifts her hair, automatically assuming I mean to help her tuck it back inside. It is not what I meant, but I certainly can’t refuse now, can I? After all, what kind of girl hesitates to touch another girl so innocently? There’s nothing intimate about this gesture, is there? Yet, when my fingers brush against the back of her neck as I tuck her tag back in, I realize with horror that my face has heated. I whirl to face my room at once, hoping Danni didn’t catch sight of the color of my cheeks. “We’ll come grab you for dinner?” I ask the wall, which is an entirely normal way to speak to somebody.

“Yeah, see you in a few minutes,” she says. Well, she said nothing about meeting her at Harriet’s room, which I presume to mean she ran out of time to visit. Suddenly, Eleanor’s impromptu rehearsal feels like the best way we could have spent an afternoon. I watch after Danni for a second, even as all there is to look at is the back of her caramel crown as she descends, before I realize I’m alone with Molly.

For the first time in a long time.

Molly darts ahead of me toward her room, but I quicken my step and fall just behind her. “So,” I say in a low voice, aware that we are in a hallway right now. “Are you coming to Mum’s birthday?”

She’s never missed it. Never. And yet, I predict the reply before it’s left her lips.

“I’m actually busy that night. Sorry.”

She has to pause to unlock her door, which gives me the chance to draw closer. “Which night?”

“The night of the party.” She fumbles with the key card, and the lock flashes red. She shifts her cape, which is lying in the crook of her right arm, to her left.

“And which night is that?” I ask. I didn’t, after all, tell them the date.

Molly tries her door again, and, getting another red, hits her card against the sensor in frustration. “All of them. I’m really busy these days, okay?”

“I’ve noticed,” I say wryly, and finally, she manages to unlock her door. “Molly, wait.”

Her shoulders stiffen, and she stops, facing into her bedroom, holding the door ajar. “Rose, I don’t want to do this.”

“Well, I do.”

“And as difficult as it might be for you to believe, the world doesn’t revolve around how you feel.”

She doesn’t close the door, though. I grasp at her hesitation as though it’s a life raft. “Just tell me what I did,” I whisper in a rush. “If it was… that night, I would understand, but you weren’t upset with me then. This is newer. I’ve clearly done something, and I want to make it right, but I can’t, because I don’t know what I’m apologizing for. I’ve been trying to give you space—”

“Oh, yeah, I’m really appreciating the amount of space I have right now,” Molly snaps. I take a step back, though it’s clearly not quite what she means.

“I gave you space,” I say. “But it seems to me as though you’ve decided our friendship is over. You can’t just end a ten-year friendship without at least telling me why, Molly. You owe me that much.”

“Actually, I don’t owe you anything.” Molly turns back and gives me an icy look, one that makes me regret confronting her at all. I thought nothing could be worse than the growing distance, but this? The contempt she’s surveying me with right now? This is undoubtedly worse.

“Please?” I ask.

She stands perfectly still, and I’m struck with the distinct impression that she’s preparing to run or react. Is she afraid of me? Or should I be afraid of her right now?

“Come in,” she says finally, and I follow her inside, where she closes the door so we can converse in private. It’s the first time we’ve been alone together—truly alone—in months. It used to be an almost daily event.

When she turns to face me, the contempt is gone, replaced by a steely resolution. “Look,” she says. “I haven’t told you what you did, because there’s nothing you did, exactly. It’s you.”

“Me?” I repeat. Until recently, she seemed to be an avid fan of me, just as I am. Nothing’s changed about me—at least, nothing of significance I can pinpoint. So why on earth has she suddenly decided that who I am is a problem? Something worth unceremoniously disposing of?

She hangs her cape in her wardrobe, her movements slow and methodical. “I feel like I’ve learned a lot about you over the last few months, and I don’t like it.”

“Such as?”

“Like… just… you come first, okay? You obviously come first. In everything. And in most things, the rest of us have to just accept that. But you do not have the ability to care about your friends, or prioritize them, the way a normal person does. It’s like you have this… role to fill, and that’s the only thing that matters, and you turn into this soulless void… thing whenever you have to choose between us or it.”

Her words are English, yet they leave me completely baffled. “Of course I have a role,” I say. “That’s hardly new information, is it?”

Molly shrugs. “I don’t think it used to feel so toxic. Or maybe I just never noticed it before, I don’t know.”

“What did I do, exactly, that was so toxic?”

“How long have you got?” Molly asks. I want to reply “all night,” but I’m fully aware it’s rhetorical. “Like I said, it’s not one thing. It’s everything, every chance you get. You don’t care, about—about anything else. Definitely not about any of us. If something has nothing to do with the crown, it’s either all a big joke, or it doesn’t exist. It’s like you have no real fucking emotions. Nothing else matters to you.”

“Of course I care,” I say. “I especially care about you.”

“I believe you think you do,” she says. “But your eyes are empty. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.”

And at this, I’m left speechless. Her words claw at my chest, squeezing and choking, until the center of me feels hollowed out. I knew Molly was furious with me—of course I did—but I thought, I really, truly supposed, that if I simply gave her the space she so obviously wanted, she would simmer down and we would discuss whatever was bothering her. It hadn’t occurred to me, not even for a moment, that the person I considered my best friend could hate me, sans hyperbole.

She hates me. Even right now, she can barely stand to look at me. And for a moment, I’m unraveling where I stand, thread by thread.

But only for a moment. Then I clench my fists, and my jaw, and take several steady breaths, until I feel the ground beneath my feet again. My heart rate slows, and the edges of the world stop blurring.

So, Molly hates me. It’s a loss, but I suppose it’s also her prerogative. Friendships fade, sometimes, don’t they? Often, even. We evolve, and we grow, and we form new attachments, and we let go of old ones. If Molly truly believes I’m that terrible—that unsalvageable—then what point is there in arguing back? She clearly doesn’t want an apology from me, and furthermore, very patently feels that whatever is defective in me runs so deep I can’t begin to remediate it.

So, what’s left?

“I understand,” I say, soft and measured. “Well, then. What should we do about our mutual friends? Can you bear to be around me, for them?”

She has that look again. Contempt. Disgust. She even shakes her head at me a little for emphasis.

If even this version of me, my most calm, measured, and rational self, is reprehensible to her, there is certainly no point in attempting to glue the shards of this back together.

“Danni was meant to be my friend,” she says, rather petulantly. “I met her first.”

I refuse to engage with that. When I simply wait, my eyebrows raised a little, Molly has the decency to look embarrassed with herself.

“I’ll think about it,” she says, and I’m struck by the sudden image of a separating couple dividing their assets. Who and what will we each inherit in the great divorce? Who will lay claim to our lunch table? Our second-row desks in the classroom? The thought is so ludicrous, it almost makes me giggle, and Molly frowns at my lightened expression.

“I have stuff to do,” she says in dismissal, and I realize with a start I’ve overstayed my tenuous-to-begin-with welcome.

I suppose it’s over, then. Just like that. A lifetime with her, done.

She doesn’t even glance up as I leave.