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Jude

Jude lay in bed all morning, trying not to move.

Yes, Jude shouldn’t have stomped on that guy’s phone. But had Kat seriously picked a fight with Madelyn and then run away, leaving Jude to deal with the consequences?

And what had Madelyn been talking about? Does your little girlfriend know why you’re dating her? Jude wanted to dismiss the comment as nothing, but Kat had looked horrified. What did Madelyn know that Jude didn’t?

The question had haunted her all night, keeping her from sleeping.

Finally, around nine a.m. , Jude grabbed her laptop and got back in bed.

She googled Katrina Kelly and started reading through the news articles about last night’s event.

They were horrible. And most of them included Jude’s full name, along with a shaky video clip of her stomping down on the phone.

It made Jude’s heart race at a panic-attack pace to watch the videos, but she couldn’t help herself.

What had she been thinking? She’d never done anything like that.

She’d never been impulsive or destructive or violent before. What was wrong with her?

She’d just wanted to protect Kat. She’d been trying to help. But she had made everything so much worse.

What had Kat been thinking, confronting Madelyn in public like that? And then she had totally abandoned Jude and couldn’t even be bothered to pick up her phone. Which was seriously messed up.

Jude tried calling her again, but it went straight to voicemail.

Looking for something to keep her mind from spiraling, she scrolled deeper into the Google results.

Past all the articles about Katrina Kelly coming out and into photos from before.

A younger Kat with a younger Madelyn, sticking their tongues out backstage.

Teenage Kat posing on a red carpet in a hideous purple leather beret.

Tween Kat in a wetsuit, riding a jet ski in some movie still.

An even younger Kat, holding a baby pig while on a late-night talk show.

Thousands of images of Kat at every stage of her life.

Jude clicked on a video called “P.R.O.M.—Lily Carlson’s Greatest Hits.

” It opened with a clip of a heavily made-up Kat in a cheerleading uniform, shaking two red pom-poms. Then a clip of her putting on lipstick as she ran to fight some monster.

“Just because we’re saving the world doesn’t mean we can’t look our best,” she quipped, passing the lipstick to Madelyn.

Then Kat, standing on a football field with tears in her eyes, reaching for the hands of some boy with long, greasy hair.

It was unsettling to see how truly in love with him she looked.

“I asked you to stay because I felt like our story wasn’t over yet. I could tell that—”

Jude’s phone vibrated with an incoming call, and she paused the video, flailing around her bed until she untangled her phone from the sheets.

“Kat?”

“Hi, Jude. This is Nina Maguire from Gala Literary.”

Jude sat up, her heart thumping. Shit. She was not ready to talk to her future boss right now. “Hi. How are you doing?”

“You’ve put us in a really difficult position here, Jude.” Nina sounded tense.

Jude’s stomach cramped with dread. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that the head of our board checked the news this morning and saw a video of you destroying someone’s phone in a restaurant.”

Fuck.

“I didn’t—” She cut off, then tried again.

“You’re right. I’m so embarrassed about what happened.

It was totally out of character for me. I would normally never do something like that.

But you see, my girlfriend is a public figure, and she was having a tough day and this guy started taking a video and—”

“I’m sure that’s very hard to deal with,” Nina said. “But I’m sure you can also understand why we have to rescind your job offer.”

Jude felt a pulling sensation, as if a vacuum had opened up underneath her and was slowly suctioning all of her organs out through the bottoms of her feet.

“What?” she said.

“Our organization relies on donors. Our reputation is everything. We just can’t have this kind of scrutiny.”

“It won’t happen again. I promise. I’ll do anything to—”

“I’m sorry, Jude,” Nina interrupted. “Good luck.”

Jude lowered her phone and looked at the screen. Nina had hung up.

Oh no. Oh no. Oh fuck. Was this really happening? Had everything gone wrong in one night? Had she quit the bookstore and left her friends for nothing?

Jude’s chest tightened. Her wrists were tingling, and she was having trouble breathing.

Desperate for something else to focus on, she pushed play on the video again.

Kat stared into the greasy boy’s eyes as if she loved him.

“I could tell that underneath that bad boy exterior, there was something else, longing to come out. From the moment I saw you, something about your soul just hooked into mine.”

Jude sucked in a breath. She moved the video cursor back and replayed the scene. Watched Kat reach for the boy’s hand. Heard her say those exact same words.

Something about your soul just hooked into mine.