I’d planned to hide in the library during the lunch period because I couldn’t imagine going back to eating alone after weeks of Dom and Sydney sitting with me. But the cafeteria is prime real estate if one wants to hear the latest gossip. Everyone talks about everyone else on a nearly endless loop in there.
So I head to the cafeteria, thinking about where I should sit. I want to pick the most strategic table, but I have no idea where Layla will be today since she and Sloane are in the middle of a fight. I still haven’t decided when I get to the lunchroom and see Sydney sitting across from Willa at my normal table. Sydney spots me and shouts my name across the whole cafeteria. I immediately turn to leave, reverting to my original plan of hiding out in the library, but she comes over and stops me, grabbing my hand.
“I need you to at least listen to me, okay? If you still hate me after you’ve heard me out, then you can ignore me forever. But I’m not letting you avoid me just because you’re scared. I’m not letting you lose out on potentially great friends because you got burned once. And believe me, I’m a great friend.”
“Sydney,” I whisper, looking around and behind her at the dozens of people watching us. “I don’t hate you.” I know she’d be a great friend; she already has been. What I’m worried about is her disappearing. Her finding out the worst of it—the worst of me—and realizing I don’t deserve friends. Especially not friends like her.
But I don’t argue because too many people are staring. I follow her slowly across the room.
Willa is tossing fries into the air and catching them in her mouth. Her short black hair is in what I guess could be called a ponytail, but it looks more like a tiny sprout surrounded by a million colorful bobby pins growing out of the back of her head. She’s wearing her signature bangles—dozens on both wrists—and they jingle as she throws food in the air and dives for it.
“Hey,” I say a little coolly to her. But when she looks up, she gives me the warmest smile, despite my chilly greeting. It sends Layla’s words from weeks ago rushing through my head again: You think you own places, Cleo. Just like you think you own people.
And I hate to admit it, but maybe she’s right.
I clear my throat and work hard to smile at girls with whom I haven’t yet ruined everything.
“Yo, you like jazz, right? Sydney was telling me that you’re like, obsessed with jazz.”
This is the first thing Willa Bae says to me. Her voice is raspy and deep, and it’s strange to hear a voice like that coming out of such a small girl. She looks at me expectantly, eyebrows raised. She leans back in her seat, tosses her arm across the back of the chair beside her, and nods like she’s listening to music no one else can hear. She reminds me of Ellen Page, if Ellen Page were Korean and had a cool haircut. And dammit, I think I like her already.
“Yeah,” I say. “I do love jazz.” I sit down slowly, forgetting about Layla and Sloane and whatever their drama might entail, feeling cautiously open, hopeful and terrified and unsure of what she’ll say next.
“Sweeeeet,” Willa says, dragging out the e sound and reaching for a pair of chunky purple headphones. She fits them over my ears like it’s her job, then picks up her phone and starts typing, searching for a song, I guess. I look over at Sydney with wide eyes. What is happening? I mouth.
“Ugh, Will. I told you I needed to talk to her.”
“And you can talk as much as you want as soon as Cleo has heard this one song.” Willa looks up at me, shaking her bangs away from her narrow eyes. “You have to hear this one song,” she reiterates.
She presses play and what I hear kind of blows me away.
It’s a cover of “Fly Me to the Moon,” and the voice is clear and light, full of the kind of passion that only comes from being fully and deeply in love. I close my eyes so I can shut out the rest of the world as I listen, and when I hear Willa’s voice again it seems to be coming from somewhere farther away than the three feet between us.
“See,” she’s saying from underwater, from a galaxy away. Her bangles sing—an added percussion to the song I’m listening to—so she must be gesturing at me wildly. “That’s the reaction you were supposed to have!”
When I open my eyes, Sydney is rolling hers.
“Who is this?” I ask Willa once the song is over. I hand her headphones back though I really want to keep listening.
“It’s this jazz cover band called the Cover Girls. This girl I used to see, her older sister is the singer. I’ve been obsessed with them ever since the first time I saw one of their shows. I was telling Syd that we should go to one.”
“Oh my God,” Sydney says. “Are you really trying to use Cleo to guilt me into going? She doesn’t even know you!”
Willa is unbothered. She turns to me like Sydney isn’t even at the table with us.
“But you want to go, don’t you?” Willa says, smirking and wiggling her eyebrows. “Don’t you?”
I toss Sydney an apologetic look. “Kinda?”
Willa punches the air. “Yes! I knew you would! We’re going!”
Sydney covers her face. “Oh my God,” she says again.
* * *
—
“She’s cool,” I say to Sydney when Willa goes to grab a coffee. “Confident in a scary kind of way.”
“Oh, I know. That’s just Willa. She is like, totally cool with who she is and she doesn’t hide it.”
I nod, watching as across the room, Willa fills a coffee cup and then starts talking to someone in line behind her more with her hands than her voice. She reaches out and squeezes the girl’s hand. She fingers a strand of her hair.
“I really do want to go see that band, though,” I say. “You really didn’t like that song?”
Sydney looks serious all of a sudden. “It’s not that,” she says without further explanation. When she starts talking again, it’s not about the music.
“Look,” she says. “What I wanted to talk to you about before Willa derailed my whole plan was us.”
I swallow hard and take a sip of water. I haven’t touched my lunch yet, and this conversation is making my stomach squeeze with tension, so I don’t think I will. Besides, lately all food seems subpar, and only reminds me of my weirdness with Dom. I sit further back in my seat.
“It’s kinda messed up that you just wrote me off the way you did. That you just decided to stop talking to me. And I know you had a rough time with Layla, but don’t assume things about me just because of stuff that happened with her.”