“I’m just going to Von’s to buy . . .” I shrug. “Whatever. Nonvegetarian lasagna.”
“Please don’t buy premade lasagna,” the girl—Quinn—says. “My mom’s half-Italian. Microwave lasagna is an affront to our people.”
This is how I end up in Von’s with a dog hiding in my bag and Quinn loading a plastic grocery basket with lasagna ingredients. She shops with the confidence of an adult, decisively selecting meats and cheeses and pasta and asking me questions about my family’s spice cabinet.
We walk back to Quinn’s aunt’s house to drop off the dog, and then I lead Quinn back to my house. Dad looks understandably surprised to see so much activity in the kitchen, but Quinn has such a command of everything that it somehow normalizes the situation. I don’t really help, but I don’t think that it matters.
“I guess I should go,” Quinn says once she’s slid the lasagna into the oven. She turns and flashes me a smile. “Check on Buckley.”
“Who’s Buckley?” I ask, and she laughs.
“The beast from hell who ate your ChapStick,” she says, because that ended up being the only consequence of hiding the dog in my purse.
“Good luck,” I tell her. “And . . . thank you for helping me.”
“Tell me how it turns out,” she says with a nod to the oven.
I take out my phone to get her number. There are five new texts from Matty, and while a strong and brave person would delete them immediately, I know I’ll read them as soon as I have a moment alone.
“I like your friend,” Dad says once Quinn’s gone. “Why hasn’t she been around more?”
It suddenly seems silly to admit I’d never even spoken a word to Quinn before tonight, so I just smile and shrug.
I text Quinn until I fall asleep, and it’s not until I wake up the next morning with an imprint of my phone on my arm that I remember there were five texts from Matty I haven’t read yet.
I screencap them, all in a row, and text them to James, and for the first time I wish I would have talked to Quinn about Matty, because I can feel how funny she’d think these were. But knowing a new person is a special kind of magic, because they don’t have to see everything. Quinn doesn’t know my mom is dead or the intricacies of Matty and me. And even though I can imagine her laughter, especially at “drnuk miss yo,” it’s nice knowing that, for Quinn, I’m a new person, too.
CHAPTER THREE
June of Senior Year
JAMES
“This is pointless,” I mutter while pulling a hair elastic off my wrist so I can sweep my long hair off my neck. We’re practically high school graduates, and instead of sitting inside having to do relatively little in the air-conditioning, we’re outside in the suffocating Burbank heat rehearsing graduation.
“Why are you in such a crappy mood?” Mariana asks. She and Sofia are walking behind us. It’s a funny combination because all four of us have barely been together since very early in the school year, before Kat relocated the two of us to the other lunch table. Technically at this point they’re just walking behind me, though, because (unsurprisingly) Kat’s nowhere to be found.
“We just have to walk down the aisle and take seats,” I say. “I don’t know why we have to rehearse that.”
“Some people are really stupid and need the run-through,” Mariana says, in the most sugarcoated voice imaginable. I’ve missed her brand of salty and sweet. “This seems like a weird thing to get hung up on, James.”
I’d text Logan to find out how useless he thought graduation rehearsal was, but it could send the wrong message. It’s incredible how many things can be interpreted as I miss you and want you back and also deeply want to have sex with you when the recipient is desperately seeking that meaning.
“James, I feel like we haven’t hung out in so long,” Sofia says.
I shrug, instead of saying that it’s because that’s an accurate fact. Last year, a day didn’t go by that Mariana didn’t say something so snarky that we’d laugh until we cried, and Sofia had some overly heartfelt thing to share with us (that inevitably led to another snarky comment from Mariana). Our lunch table seemed like the center of Magnolia Park, and not the way that sort of thing went in stereotypical movies about high school. Sure, people like Matty & Co. could border on being assholes, but on the whole, we just weren’t like that. I can so clearly picture sitting right between Logan and Kat while laughing so hard at something that I couldn’t even eat my lunch. Senior year should have been more of the same; it was all I’d wanted. Everything felt straightforward and decided back then.
“Are you walking alone?” Mariana asks me.
“No one’s walking alone,” Sofia says. “If you’re a friendless loser, school admin will pair you up with another friendless loser.”
“Aw!” Kat bounces over, finally. “Maybe that’s how people fall in love.”
“The rom-com no one is waiting for,” Mariana says, and I grin.
“To answer your question,” I say, “I’m walking with Kat. At least, I signed up to walk with Kat.”
“OK, yes, true, but here’s the thing.” A giggle escapes her lips, and I wonder just how immoral it is to wish unhappiness on someone. Logan would probably have an answer for that, too.
I miss Logan too much for words. Is it possible that my fingers literally itch to text him? Maybe the truth is that a simple question about rehearsal or immorality would be a secret message about missing and wanting and loving. I hardly want to admit that, though. Not to Logan. Barely even to myself.
“So now that Raina and Gretchen are together, they really want to walk together. Raina was originally supposed to walk with Quinn, so now Quinn doesn’t have anyone, so I volunteered to walk with her. But some girl from T&F was supposed to walk with Gretchen, so I’m sure you guys know each other. That’ll be fine, right? Then, like, everyone’s got someone?”
“What girl?” I ask, instead of what I want to say, which is of fucking course it’s not fine.
“It’s Jill,” Gretchen says, walking over with Raina in tow. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Jill Pang is standing behind them, and she makes eye contact with me. We both roll our eyes, so I guess it’s fine. As fine as getting ditched at graduation by your supposed best friend can be.
“Are you OK?” Kat asks me while furiously texting.
“Sure.” I’d kept waiting for something, but at this point I’m not sure what we still have left to snap us back into place. School is nearly over, and shouldn’t something have done it by now? We haven’t talked much about prom or even, really, Disneyland, or the simple fact that I can’t remember the last time that I was the one Kat was furiously texting. While I miss plenty of things about last year, it’s less the lunch table—and maybe even Logan—and more Kat that I miss. I had no idea how you could stand right next to someone and yet have no clue how to get back to them. Though I guess that now it’s more that I’m standing behind someone.
“Students, remain in proper formation,” Vice Principal Benway says as she makes her way down the aisle. We aren’t even moving yet. “Miss Rydell, please put away your phone.”