Chapter 3
Three
“Welcome, everyone,” a waitress greets us.
Murphey’s isn’t a fancy restaurant, but it’s still nice.
The atmosphere is lively, and there’s hip music playing in the background over the buzz of conversation.
The lighting is dim, giving the space a casual vibe, but it’s still a popular family restaurant.
Because we signed up for trivia tonight, we’re led past the dining area to the all-ages bar section, where couples have gathered at tables and booths around a makeshift little stage where I’m assuming the trivia leader will stand.
My friends and I squeeze into a booth that was clearly designed for four people.
The waitress sets menus and waters down on the table as she says, “Trivia starts in thirty, so feel free to check out the menu, and I’ll be back in a few to take your orders. ”
“How great is this,” Emmett says once she leaves.
He’s sitting beside Kalani on the bench across from me, but thankfully she’s the one directly in my line of sight.
That should help me avoid getting caught up in his ocean-blue eyes every time I look up.
“I’m so glad you came, Carina,” he adds with a brilliant smile that has butterflies erupting in my stomach.
“I wouldn’t have felt good about excluding you. ”
He wants me here! “Yeah, I, um . . .” I take a sip of water and pray my face isn’t beet-red. “I just feel bad I ruined Emi and Daphne’s chances for that gift card.”
Beside me, Emi waves my concerns away. “Please, we were going to lose anyway. I’m really here to order two tons of nachos and watch Emmett panic every time someone pulls out a phone.”
“It’s not allowed!” Emmett says, defending his strict rule-abiding. “You can’t use a phone during trivia because searching for answers defeats the purpose and takes away the integrity of the game.”
Emi grins and exchanges a sly look with her girlfriend on her other side, one that says she proved her point.
Kalani lays a supporting hand on Emmett’s arm. “We’ll all play according to the rules,” she assures him, looking at Emi when she emphasizes her point. “But maybe we should’ve invited Wyatt along for you, Carina. That way we would all be coupled up.”
They brought up inviting Emmett’s friend multiple times, all of which I shot down.
He transferred to Oakwoods this year and shares homeroom with Emmett, but our school is so big I have no idea who he is, and I don’t want to be set up with a random guy.
It would already be awkward enough going on a triple date with my best friend and her boyfriend—my secret crush whom I know I can never be with—so I don’t need the added pressure of trying to get to know a guy I have no interest in.
All I want to do is have fun with my friends.
“Again, that’s very kind of you,” I start, “but I don’t need help dating.”
Kalani snorts a laugh. “We all know you need a little help when it comes to boys. Remember what happened with Kenji in third grade? Or Andre in fifth grade? Or Josh in seventh grade?”
I sink deeper into the booth, my stomach churning with the remnants of shame. “All you’re doing is proving I have a thing for jerks, not a problem with dating.”
“Wait, what happened?” Daphne asks innocently, her curious eyes bouncing between us.
Kalani doesn’t wait for further prompting.
“They’re all boys she had crushes on. And she went up to them and told them about her crush, and they all essentially very loudly went ‘Ew!’ and ran away.
Josh even shoved her into the mud trying to get away.
” Kalani leans in like she’s sharing something juicy, not dragging up some of my most mortifying childhood memories.
“She was the talk of the school each time. That’s why it took her two years after each one to gather the courage to talk to her new crush. ”
“I’m sitting right here, you know,” I grumble, only slightly annoyed. I don’t care if my friends know about my past—it’s something I’d share with them anyway. But the way she tells it makes me sound like I’m unlovable or something.
Emmett sends me a soft, pitying smile. “Boys are idiots at that age, Carina. Don’t let it get to you.”
He’s trying to be helpful, but it only makes me wish the table would swallow me whole.
Three different boys. Three times I worked up the nerve to talk to them.
And three times I was horribly and embarrassingly rejected.
It took three cataclysmic crash-and-burns for me to finally learn my lesson: keep my crushes to myself, hope they feel the same way, and wait for them to make the first move.
It’s the only way I’ve found to protect both my heart and my pride, and so far, it’s worked.
If I had said something to Emmett about my feelings, he would’ve had to turn me down and awkwardly explain that he was into my best friend.
Then once they started dating, I’d be the last person he’d want around.
He wouldn’t want to hang out with his girlfriend and the girl who spilled her guts about being hopelessly in love with him.
If I had put myself out there and told Emmett how I felt, I wouldn’t only have embarrassed myself and made things super uncomfortable for everyone, I’d also have lost my friend.
My voice comes out strong when I say, “And then Kalani called Kenji a poopy butthead and threw his lunch bag out the window, beat Andre so badly at one-on-one basketball during recess that he didn’t step foot on the court for the rest of the year even though that was his favorite sport, and made Josh grovel to get an invite to her birthday party, which the whole grade was constantly talking about, just to turn around and say it was a ‘no jerks allowed’ party and he wouldn’t be allowed in.
” I smile as I remember how mad he was when he got up from his kneeling, groveling position and stormed away.
“I don’t need guys when my best friend has my back like no one ever will. ”
Emi gives Kalani an appraising look, as if begrudgingly impressed.
“That’s cool of you. I would’ve kicked them all right in the balls.
Do they go to Oakwoods? I can still do it.
They won’t even see it coming. They’d be all, ‘Oh hey, Emi,’ and I’d be like bam!
‘That’s what you get for being a dick to my best friend! ’”
I laugh, knowing that she’s not just joking to lighten the mood, it’s a real offer.
Of the three of us, Emi is the too-cool-to-care edgy girl.
Her hair and piercings break school uniform policies and she has more decorative pins tacked onto her backpack than books in it, but she still makes honor roll and will call you out in front of the entire class if she hears you talking badly about one of her friends.
In fact, she did exactly that at our welcome assembly in ninth grade when one of the assholes on the lacrosse team called Kalani fat.
Emi didn’t even know Kalani, and yet she stood up right on the bleachers and embarrassed that jerk so badly he hasn’t so much as looked in Kalani’s direction in the last four years.
“There is no need to kick anyone in the balls,” I tell Emi with a laugh. “I’m not focusing on boys right now. I just want to get through exam season and hang out with my friends as much as I can before we start university in September.”
Kalani and Emi are both incredible and could’ve been friends with anyone, but they’re friends with me.
I didn’t even have to try hard to get them to be my friends—fate intervened for me.
Kalani was assigned the seat next to me at snack time on her first day of school, and when she pulled out her container of delicious-looking fried dough balls—panikeke, I later learned—she set one in front of me.
I offered her one of the pizzelle my dad had packed for me, and it started a tradition of splitting our snacks that lasted until high school ended snack time.
At that ninth-grade assembly, when Emi stepped down from the bleachers, I turned in my seat and told her she was the coolest girl I’d ever seen.
Then I noticed her Aerosmith pin, and she immediately added me to a joint Spotify playlist so we could swap song recommendations.
“There’s no reason you can’t do both,” Kalani starts, her eyes drifting over my head to something behind me.
She gives a surprised gasp. “That’s Jamie and Alonso.
We had English lit together last semester—don’t turn around!
” Emi, Daphne, and I freeze, all caught mid-turn.
Kalani holds up her phone and uses the camera function to check her makeup and smooth out her hair.
“I’m going to go over and say hello. If I can get their vote for prom queen, the drama club is basically locked up.
Come on, Emmett.” She drops her phone onto the table and grabs her boyfriend, hauling him up before he even has time to register who Kalani’s talking about.
“I don’t know why she cares so badly about being prom queen,” Emi comments, tugging on a wild piece of Daphne’s long hair.
“It doesn’t even mean anything. A bunch of kids you’ll never talk to again check off a box on a list of names a week before prom, and if you’re the one with the most checked boxes, you get a cheap plastic crown and get to awkwardly dance with your guy counterpart.
It’s not worth all this campaigning she’s doing. ”
“You know how Kalani is,” I answer with a shrug. “This kind of stuff is important to her.”
Kalani is the effortlessly put-together girl who’s always sporting the best and hottest designer clothes and purses and never has so much as a hair out of place or a dark circle under her eyes, and she makes it her mission to know at least two personal facts about everyone at school.
She even joined almost every single extracurricular activity and is on a first-name basis with pretty much everyone, which is an impressive feat considering I barely know the names of everyone in our grade, never mind all of Oakwoods.
She likes being liked, likes feeling like everyone is her friend.
So I wasn’t surprised when she said she’d signed up to run for prom queen; I only asked how I could help.
Daphne nudges Emi. “Lay off. She doesn’t say all the video games you play are meaningless.”
“Yes, she does! Literally all the time!”
Daphne only giggles. “You’re cute when you’re hungry.” She opens the menu and holds it out to Emi. “Let’s figure out what to order so we’re ready when the waitress comes back. Obviously nachos, but what about the potato skins? We can split those, and then what main do you want to share?”
They debate which dish to share, since they’re the kind of adorable couple who love splitting their food.
I let them have their moment and quietly grab my own menu, trying not to feel like a total third wheel.
Kalani’s phone is resting on top of it, so I pick it up to move it.
Just as I do, it vibrates in my hand, and I glance at the screen out of habit.
It’s a text from Maleah, Kalani’s eleven-year-old sister.
They’re at it AGAIN! I’m putting on my headphones to block it out so don’t scare me when you come in.
I set the phone down so I don’t accidentally snoop anymore and focus on finding something to order.
“That went really well,” Kalani says as she returns, sliding into the booth after Emmett. “It totally helps that I got Emmett to tell them about the community cleanup he’s organizing next month since they’re both super into the ecosystem and climate change like he is.”
Emmett started a community cleanup last year where, at the beginning of each new season, he and a bunch of volunteers go out into the neighborhood and pick up all the trash that the wind has blown into our parks and trails. He’s so thoughtful and kind and good and—stop it, Carina!
Now settled into the seat, Kalani picks up her phone and reads the text on the lock screen, immediately tensing up before dropping the phone and checking out the menu, trying extra hard to appear nonchalant even though her shoulders never lose their stiffness.
I set my own menu down. “Hey, Kalani, do you want to sleep over tonight? I got a few new face masks we can do, and we can binge-watch that new reality dating show that just came out. Apparently, one of the girls in it is from Toronto.”
The tension immediately drains from her body, and her eyes flick to her phone resting face down on the table for a nanosecond before she smoothly says, “Only if you let me do your eyebrows. It’s been a while since I’ve tweezed them for you, and they’re starting to look a little uneven.
And I can braid your hair the way you like, that way it can be out of your face for when you paint tomorrow. ”
I do hate having my hair in my face when I’m painting.
Normally, I tie it up or put it in a bun.
But then it inevitably falls out, and I get paint all over my hair trying to fix it, which only makes more hair fall out of the elastic, and the cycle continues.
Kalani noticed how much time I waste fiddling with it and how it pulls me out of my creative flow.
Now, whenever she can, she makes me sit still so she can twist two tight French braids down either side of my head.
They stay put, keep my hair out of my face, and let me focus.
I’ve tried to learn how to do them myself, but I can never get it right.
Luckily, I have the greatest best friend who never complains about how many times she has to braid my hair, even if it’s twice in the same day.
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” I say, just as a high-pitched microphone screech cuts through the air, making everyone flinch.
“Hello, everyone,” says a man on the stage wearing a Murphey’s T-shirt, speaking into the mic. “We’ll be starting trivia in a few minutes, so please take this time to silence your phones and put them away in your bags or pockets.”
Emi makes a joke about secretly keeping her phone out, most likely just to see what Emmett would say, and because he’s so good and pure, he immediately takes the bait and lectures her about following the rules.
Kalani taps out a quick message on her phone, probably letting Maleah know she’s staying over at my house tonight, and her smile is light and unburdened when she slips her phone into her purse, ready to enjoy couples’ trivia night with her boyfriend and best friend.