“What do you think, ya weirdo? There’s an awful rumor going around about your dad. You locked yourself in the bathroom. And then you disappeared from school and you haven’t been answering any of our texts!”
“We sent a lot of texts,” Willa adds.
“You didn’t have to come,” I tell them, my voice getting a little shaky. Truth is, I’m touched. “Everything’s fine,” I lie.
“Oh my God, Cleo,” Sydney says. I can imagine her rolling her eyes. “I can’t with you.”
I look through my window, but I can’t see them. They must be right up against the door. “Yeah, sorry. That isn’t even remotely true. Everything’s a mess,” I say, leaning my head on the wall above the intercom.
Willa starts to chant. “Let us up, let us up, let us up!”
I let them up.
When I open the door, Willa immediately slips off her shoes and leaves them by the door. Her socks are covered in smiling avocados. She wraps me in a hug.
“Jeez, kid. We were worried about you,” she says.
Sydney doesn’t wait for her to let go before she wraps her arms around me too.
“You left school?” I say, my voice muffled by the wool of Sydney’s peacoat and the puff of Willa’s parka. “For me?”
“Duh,” Sydney says.
Willa coughs. “Syd, I can’t really breathe?”
Sydney lets us both go. “Sorry.”
They take off their coats, tossing them onto the couch, and I lead them down the short hallway to my room. Willa pads over to my shelf of snow globes and shakes one right after the other, so that by the time I settle beside Sydney on my bed, the fake flakes and glitter in all of them are swirling.
Willa sits cross-legged at my feet and leans her head against my knee, and Sydney scoots closer, slipping her arm around my shoulders. We watch the snow spin, and I don’t realize I’m crying again until Sydney uses the edge of her sweater sleeve to wipe my cheeks.
“I’m so glad you guys are here,” I whisper. And they both, somehow, move even closer to me.
I’m not ready to tell them what my mom told me about Ms. Novak, but I do tell them that the rumor isn’t true.
“We never thought it was,” Willa says softly.
I tell them what Valeria told me—that Sloane started the rumor about my family to get back at me for the email I sent months ago.
When Sydney says, “That email came from you? That…doesn’t seem like you,” I realize I never told her the whole story. And in that moment I decide to, because keeping secrets and telling lies is exactly how I ended up in this mess in the first place.
I start at the beginning of summer, at the Fourth of July party where Layla and I first met Sloane. And even though I’m terrified of what they might think of me once the truth is in this room sitting between us, I tell them everything.
“So,” I say, taking a deep breath after my whole ugly past has been revealed, “I decided I didn’t want to miss her anymore. She wasn’t worth the pain, or whatever, and I’d already ruined everything anyway. That’s why I started with the whole making-new-memories thing.”
“Damn,” Sydney says. “That’s…way worse than I thought things had been. It was fucked up for you to send that email, but also, I kinda totally get it. I’m so sorry, Cleo,” she says, reaching for my hand and squeezing it. She tosses her hair and then looks up at me. “So when are we going to murder Sloane?”
I laugh a little, but Willa doesn’t say anything. She’s picking at my carpet.
“There’s this Shakespeare quotation,” I continue. “Make not your thoughts your prisons. And I guess I was just trying to stop that from happening, you know? I was trying to think less about Layla and everything that happened. I’m always trying my hardest not to think about it. You’re actually the first people I’ve ever told the whole story to, and I’m terrified you’ll see me differently now.” I take a deep breath and steady my nerve. “Do you?” I ask.
Sydney shakes her head and smiles slowly. Willa just rolls her eyes.
“Nah,” Sydney says.
“You’re stuck with us now,” Willa agrees.
Sydney asks where the bathroom is a few minutes later, and I point her in the right direction. Once she’s gone, I slide onto the floor to sit beside Willa.
“You okay?” I ask her. She’s been quiet for a while now, and even though it feels like we’ve known each other forever, we haven’t really. I don’t know her moods or what they mean yet. She looks at me, shrugs, and then lies down and stares up at the ceiling. I follow suit, our heads side by side, our bodies pointing in opposite directions.
“You ever feel like you can’t miss someone without missing every person you’ve ever lost?” Willa asks. I twist my head to look at her. Because of the way we’re arranged on the floor I can’t see what her face looks like, only her profile—her messy, too-long bangs getting tangled in her straight eyelashes; her small nose and the pointed corners of her mouth. She keeps staring at the ceiling.
I think of Gigi. “That’s exactly what I feel like,” I finally say. “That’s exactly what I feel like all the time.”
“Shit’s dark,” she says. “So I get why you wanted to like, erase Layla, by going to all those places and doing more memorable stuff.”
I nod, my braids dragging a little on the carpet.
“Thing is,” Willa continues, “you kinda have to go through the dark to be sure you’re okay. And like, while I get the sentiment behind your project, why not just make brand-new memories instead of overwriting old ones? You don’t have to erase the bad things to be happy. Besides, the dark shit is important to remember too.”
I look at my snow globes. I blink away tears as I think of all that I’ve lost. Willa props herself up on her elbows and shakes her bangs out of her eyes.
“She hurt you bad. Let yourself feel it, and everything that comes with it.”
When I glance over at her, she puts her hand on my shoulder. I just nod.
“Oh my God, guys,” Sydney says, rushing back into my bedroom.
I sit up fast. “What?”
“Someone posted about the rumor!”
Willa hops up and snatches Sydney’s phone from her.
“Shit. This is bad. If anyone sees this…” Willa glances at me through her bangs.
“What?” I ask, my eyes flying from Sydney’s face to Willa’s and back again. “What would happen?”