What else is new? he sent back pretty much immediately. I kind of grinned. He was right. She was late almost every night these days. My phone buzzed again with another message from my dad.
DADDY-DAUGHTER PIZZA PARTY?
I sent him a dozen pizza emojis as a yes.
Instead of walking back over, I sent a message to Layla:
I’m kinda bored. Can we leave soon?
When she didn’t text back right away, I went looking for a bathroom. I normally would have never gone to the public restroom at a park, but after chugging that milkshake, desperate times called for desperate measures.
I pushed my way into the bathroom and it wasn’t as awful as I expected. The floor was inexplicably wet, but it didn’t smell too bad and most of the toilets were functional. As soon as I was done, still hovering over the seat and being extra careful not to touch anything, I heard the door creak open.
“Cady, this place is gross.” It really wasn’t. “You’re not actually going to go in here, are you?”
“Ew, no. I just had to ask you something.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, followed closely by the thought: Crap. It was Cadence and Melody. I didn’t want them to know I’d just taken a pee in the bathroom they’d deemed unfit for human use, so I froze where I was, toilet-tissue wad in hand.
“What do you think of Layla? Like, honestly.”
“Honestly? She’s cute and cool. And her voice is amazeballs. But her friend is kinda a hanger-on.”
“Oh my God, right? That’s what I thought too! Stalker-vibes, almost.”
“Totally,” Melody said. “Like, why’s she even still here? It’s obviously not her scene.”
“Sloane’s not into the friend either,” Cadence confirmed.
I have a damn name was what I wanted to shout. I’m not some throwaway person. But I stayed hidden; I stayed quiet. I couldn’t react to their words because if I did, it would be all over school in a nanosecond. I knew Melody’s reputation for not being able to keep her mouth shut—and if Cadence knew anything, you could assume Melody would within the hour, which was basically like buying a billboard or shouting the information from a rooftop. So I waited, and once they were gone I cleaned myself up, washed my hands, and headed back toward the fountain.
When I found Layla, I leaned in close. “How long do you want to hang out?” I whispered. I didn’t mention what Cadence and Melody had said, because they were all standing so close.
“I d-d-don’t know,” she whispered back. She was still huddled between Sloane and Valeria. “I think everyone’s g-g-g-going to go g-g-get food in a little bit.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to hide the instant disappointment I felt. “Well…can I tell you something?”
“Layla,” Sloane said, like she didn’t see me talking to her. “Have you ever thought about straightening your hair?”
“Oh yeah,” Layla said. “I straighten it sssometimes, but it t-takes forever.”
Sloane fingered a strand of Layla’s fat waves. I wanted to slap her hand away. “Oh,” she said, but I’d never heard an Oh that said as much as that one did.
For a tiny second, Layla looked a little unsure of herself, maybe even hurt, but she recovered quickly. “I mean, it d-d-doesn’t take that long,” she said. Sloane shrugged, and I tugged at Layla’s arm.
“Bathroom,” I whispered, and she finally peeled away from them to go with me.
“Where does Sloane get off telling you how to do your own hair?” I said once we were back inside the restroom. Layla was standing in front of the sink and mirrors.
“I don’t know,” she said softly. Layla was tugging at a few strands of her hair where they fell to loosely frame her face. She pulled two wide tendrils straight, let them bounce back into place, then pulled them straight again.
“You two are sooo different,” I said nasally. “What was that about?”
Layla shrugged. A second later she said, “Do you think it looks b-b-better straight?” On any other occasion I would have given her my honest opinion: that it looks good either way. That I like it best when she braids it into cool crowns and stuff because I don’t know how to do complicated styles. But because of Sloane’s comment, I said, “It looks perfect just the way it is, Lay.”
Her reflection smiled at me in the mirror, but she didn’t turn around. I stepped up to the sink, careful not to touch it.
“I heard Melody and Cadence saying they don’t like me,” I told her.
Layla frowned. “Really?”
“Yeah. So can we just go?”
Layla had been watching my eyes in the mirror, looking at me without really looking at me. But after I finished speaking she turned to face me. She tugged at a few tufts of her hair again.
“I’m sure they d-d-didn’t mean it, C-Cleo. I mean, they asked us to c-c-c-come meet them, right?” Layla looked back at the mirror version of me. “That has to count for something.”
But they didn’t invite me, and maybe that was what Layla was forgetting. They invited her. I felt it in my ribs, the pain of her refusal to immediately write off someone who was hurting me, to protect me the way she always had in the past. It fractured something inside me—her choice to be loyal to them instead.
I didn’t know what to say next, so I pushed open the bathroom door. When we got a little closer to the fountain she looked down at me, then over at everyone else. For a second she went all breathless, her stutter catching the words in her throat before they could creep past her lips, and it felt like a sign; a warning that I wouldn’t like what she said next.
“You mmmind if I stay here a little longer?” she asked.
“I guess I don’t,” I said, lying to myself and to her. “Maybe I’ll see you later?”
I said it like a question, but Layla didn’t answer. She just smiled. And as I walked away alone, past the other girls, I waved goodbye, but my heart wasn’t in it.
“Bye, Chloe!” Sage said enthusiastically. And someone else said, “OMG, Sage. It’s Cleo,” but I didn’t look back to see who.
“I didn’t even invite her,” I heard one of them say when they thought I was too far away to hear. I didn’t turn my head for that either. I knew in my bones it was Sloane. A second later, I got a text from Layla.
Y.O.E.
For the first time, I wasn’t sure I believed her.