Friends. What a rich word. I’m not sure I have any friends at all anymore.
* * *
—
I arrive at the journalism lab ten minutes late. We’re on an exam day schedule, so newspaper is before lunch. Or so I thought. The classroom is empty. I stand in the doorway, blink heavily, in case this is one of those dreams where you show up for an exam to find an empty classroom and then, whoops, you’re also naked. But I’m fully clothed, and I didn’t fall asleep.
“Olivia, hey.”
My gaze snaps to the back of the classroom, where Ethan is half-hidden behind his computer screen.
“Where is everyone?” I unzip my coat and start to unravel my scarf, and as I draw nearer to him, I try to slow my ragged breaths.
“Everyone turned in their stuff, and all that’s left is layout, so Vasquez let them go.”
“Where is Vasquez?”
“Early lunch.”
I slide into my chair and turn on my monitor.
“Listen, I did some work on it yesterday,” Ethan says. “It’s almost done, so we’ll definitely be able to traffic it tomorrow.”
I bristle. “Ethan, you know that the print layout is my job.”
He ducks his head, plays with the dark curls at the nape of his neck. “I know, but with everything that happened, I didn’t want you to worry about making a stupid deadline.”
Shit, he’s really thoughtful. “Sorry,” I say. “I’m just a bit sensitive with the division of roles. They won’t need me if you can do my job.” I’m only half joking.
“Hey, you could do my job with your eyes closed, so the feeling is mutual.”
Then Ethan sighs deeply and leans across me. My breath catches as his arm grazes mine, and warmth spreads through me. Ethan grabs ahold of my computer mouse and focuses intently on the monitor, so he doesn’t catch the flush that has surely deepened in my cheeks.
Ethan clicks open InDesign. “I also didn’t want you to see this, or at least have to deal with it for too long.” He clicks over to a new inside spread. On the left is a giant image of Emma with her full name, her birthday, and Wednesday’s date.
Always in our hearts is written in a saccharine cursive font. To the right of it is an obituary.
“It was Tyler’s idea, and Ms. Vasquez ran with it,” Ethan explains. “He sent it to me yesterday. She’s already approved the layout, so you don’t have to bother with it.” Now Ethan is the one with spots of color on his cheeks.
“Thanks, Ethan. It looks great.” The compliment is genuine, though it comes out hollow. For a minute I get lost between Emma’s dimpled smile and Tyler’s byline. I skim the first paragraph. It strikes the balance between florid and factual, overflowing with Tyler’s apparent affection. Looks like he got his eulogy. I wonder if he knows it’s for a girl who cheated on him. I force myself to look away. I don’t want to cry in front of Ethan.
Ethan clears his throat. “Mr. Tipton sent me the current ED list. We can update it with any last-minute additions tomorrow, but I figure we’ll lay it in now so it’s ready. Congrats, by the way. I was surprised but also not surprised, you know.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Harvard. I thought you were applying to Penn. I mean, I’m not shocked by the acceptance. You’re brill—”
“Fuck! Please tell me that Tipton did not email that to you. Has anyone else seen it?”
“Whoa, whoa.” He presses his palms against the air as if I’m a bull about to charge. “He sent it to the editor email account. Only I’ve seen it, as far as I know. What’s the matter?”
Panic and grief overwhelm me, and I burst like a dam, fat, ugly tears spilling down my cheeks as my breath pushes past my lips in a staccato rhythm.
I’ve transformed from charging animal to porcelain doll before Ethan’s eyes. It takes him a moment to shift gears, but once he does, he performs effortless emotional triage. A solid warmth engulfs me, a hug I never would have admitted I needed, but now that I have it, it’s a miracle elixir. And Ethan’s soothing voice tells me everything’s going to be okay, and I believe him.
“But please don’t ruin my sweater with your snot.”
I choke on a laugh through the tears. And then a fresh wave of embarrassment crashes over me, and I break away.
“Thanks. I’m fine now.” I wipe dribble from my nose on the back of my sweater sleeve. “I don’t want you to think I’m weak because I cried in front of you.”
“Crying doesn’t make you weak.” Ethan grabs ahold of my hand. The gesture is intimate and unexpected, more so than the hug, and it jolts electricity through me. “I don’t think you’re weak. Most days you’re pretty intimidating, if I’m honest. So for you to cry…Tell me what’s wrong.”
Ethan’s eyes swirl with emerald and amber, glint with care. And as long as—
“You weren’t hooking up with Emma, were you?” I blurt. My stomach turns sick at the thought. Stupidly, I think of him as mine. But Emma hooked up with someone that night, and Ethan told me that he was investigating. Was it for more than just a news piece?
“What? No! Why would you think that?”
And I can breathe again. Then it all comes tumbling out: how I applied to Harvard when I shouldn’t have, Emma’s and my twin acceptances, but our very different decisions about telling the truth. Ethan’s eyes go wider as I continue, into my post-dream middle-of-the-night walk, discovering Emma’s body, my chat with Cataldo, the security cameras being out. That I’m a suspect.
“And, I don’t know, Avery and Emma got in that huge fight, and now she’s dead. Who knows what she could do to me? And I’m sure everyone is lying to me!”
Ethan gestures for me to stop. “This is a lot. Let’s put a pin in the ‘your friend’s murder’ part for now. Let me get this straight: you and the Ivies have spent the last few years sabotaging your classmates, but it turns out that your friends did even worse things than you thought they did?”
“Yeah, I thought we were just tracking class ranks and working the system, but now they’re lying about the night Emma died. I don’t know who to trust.”
Ethan reclines his ergonomic chair, steeples his fingers in front of his mouth. Thinking. Processing. And I realize what I’ve done. He knows the deep underbelly of who I am now. Backstabbing boarding-school bitch. What if he finds out what I did to him to try to get editor in chief? Though after Rebecca’s hint, I’m not even entirely clear on what Avery did on my behalf. Bribery or blackmail? Who cares that it didn’t even work in the end. If Ethan finds out I targeted him, he’ll hate me.