Chapter Nine
Nine
IT’S PAINFULLY CLEAR AS WE head into week two of the APM that no amount of faking it can disguise that I’m the straggler.
Even following Jamie’s advice about surviving module one, improvement comes like painstakingly chiseled stone, each strike jarring and precise, and each mistake requiring twice as much time and effort to correct.
My classmates clearly sense I’m the weakest in the pack and the first they must kill if they want to survive the winter.
Professor Douse is the first teacher in history to ever dislike me, a soul-crushing experience that makes me strive for his approval even more earnestly.
I think this makes him hate me more, but I can’t stop.
Renee makes it a point to never be near me.
She slips into crowded rows, finding middle seats I can’t reach as though she’s afraid I’ll follow her home like a stray dog.
Now that she’s earned our classmates’ respect by selling me out on our first day, she has no interest in me, and the feeling is mutual.
Gabi, I’d love to study under a microscope.
I don’t know how she did on her first assessment, but most of the guys in class orbit around her like moons caught in the gravitational pull of her extra-large messy bun.
She’ll likely never have to deal with their snickers or smirks, even if she were to make such a public mistake as I did.
Being on the outside like this is a surreal experience for me, and the worst part is, I have no idea how to fix it on my own.
Normally I’d unpack something like this with Starr and Leni.
Starr would say, “Fuck them, Blair! Who cares if a bunch of mouth-breathing, pimple-popping, anime-girl-cardboard-cutout-owning computer science nerds like you? You’re probably one of four living, breathing girls they’ll ever get to speak to up close.
” And Leni would look them all up on social media and pass haughty, hilarious judgment.
They’d find a way to make me not care about the APM, at least for a little bit.
Missing them feels like an open wound; I don’t even need to press it to feel the sting.
It’s a yawning void that whispers to me, late at night, that I must have deserved it.
That there must be something wrong with me.
I had such great friends who clearly cared about me, and I chased them away. I’m unbearable.
Which is why, when I see them on campus for the first time, I’m primed to get hurt.
I’m fresh out of another mortifying day in the APM and in the middle of a stare-off with a particularly brave (possibly rabid) squirrel outside the Student Union.
We’ve both got eyes on the chicken sandwich I bought for lunch, and as I shift to put my back to the squirrel, blocking it from my corner of the table, I hear Leni’s unmistakable laugh.
It sends a pang through me that’s as acute as a knife wound; I feel it all the way through.
My chicken sandwich drops from my hands, and the squirrel strikes, practically snatching it from midair and dragging it off into the brush.
It’s an unseasonably pleasant day for June—as in, I didn’t even need a Zyrtec this morning, despite it being the height of my allergy season—and the wooded deck behind the Union is packed with people, so it takes me a moment to spot them.
Then Leni laughs again, the high-pitched squeal of an engine that won’t start, and it’s like a homing signal.
I swivel and spot Starr’s hair glinting in the sun, bright as a polished bar of gold.
Leni is beside her, eating a cup of froyo.
And ahead of them is Izzy, leaning on the back of a guy’s chair as she talks to him, her long black ponytail falling over one shoulder. He straightens up to kiss her, pulling her down into his lap, and she shrieks in delight.
Leni and Starr fall into the remaining empty chairs, and the pang is back, prolonged and intense, burying itself behind my sternum like I’ve been staked. The fun-sucking vampire they thought would simply be dusted when the sun came up.
I avert my gaze, not wanting them to feel my attention. I don’t want to be seen like this—alone, yearning, sad. It’s embarrassing to be the one left behind, but it would feel worse to be witnessed. For them to think I haven’t moved on, because I haven’t moved on. I’ve barely taken a step.
I quickly get to my feet and dump my trash.
“Shut up,” I hear Starr shout. “Do my eyes deceive me, or is that—”
My stomach clenches.
“—Jamie Atwater?”
I spin, my heart dropping like a steel anvil.
Jamie is crossing the deck in the matching black ARMY T-shirt and shorts he wears on physical training days for ROTC, backpack slung over one shoulder. He glances in Starr’s direction, and I see him silently weigh his options before he shifts toward their table.
“Big BTS fan?” Izzy asks, eyeing his outfit with a smile. The guy whose lap she occupies digs his fingers into her ribs, and she squeals, kicking her legs and laughing.
“Yep,” Jamie replies, utterly deadpan, and Izzy shoots a sidelong look at Starr and Leni. She clearly doesn’t know what to make of Jamie.
“We went to high school together,” Leni says to Izzy, and I realize I can hear them so well because I’ve crept closer without meaning to.
I’m lucky Izzy is preoccupied with nuzzling her face into her guy’s neck, and luckier that Starr and Leni have their backs to me.
The only one who could catch me right now is Jamie, and that seems unlikely.
Jamie has never had much of a radar for my presence.
I step behind a campus map posted at the nearest path, hoping it will hide me from view. I’m not strong enough to walk away without knowing how the rest of this interaction goes.
“And he’s Blair’s new roommate,” Starr adds. Something in me jolts at the sound of my name. “How’d that happen anyway?”
“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Jamie says, flicking his gaze from Starr to Leni.
I have to grip the sign to not fall over from the instant stress-induced head rush.
Never an earthquake or an Earth-destroying comet when you need one. It takes all I have in me not to stomp over and drag him away by force before they all start exchanging information.
“We figured Sawyer asked you to let her move in,” Starr says, resting her chin in her hand.
I’m almost sick hearing it. Sawyer, doing me a favor like that? Starr should know better. Starr does know better, actually, which must mean she’s fishing for information. Things she could ask me if we were really still friends. If she’d taken that promise seriously at all.
Jamie shrugs. “My roommates worked the whole thing out. She got lucky, actually. It was pretty last-minute.”
I’m not dumb enough to imagine this vague version of the truth is for my benefit. It’s about keeping Sawyer out of it so that Jamie doesn’t get himself in trouble.
I should’ve just told him what happened when I had the chance. Then he could do his Jamie thing of standing there, stoic and silent, while they try to pump him for information.
The others at the table have moved on—Izzy, the guy she’s with, his friends. But Jamie holds Starr and Leni’s attention like it’s only the three of them.
“We feel really bad about how everything happened,” Leni says to him, her posture soft and her voice sad, as though this has hurt them as much as it’s hurt me.
“Rooming with your friends is complicated. I had a lot of talks with my therapist about it before we brought it up to her, because it was such a hard conversation to broach.”
Hard conversation? She didn’t even speak to me!
“We just knew we would’ve been impossible to live with, like, absolute torture for her. But I’m sorry it came back on you,” Leni continues. “We didn’t want to make our mess anyone else’s problem.”
She’s sorry to Jamie? That he might be uncomfortable? And what does she mean, our mess? Why is she making it seem like she and Starr were the ones pushed out, not the other way around? As though I chose to leave them?
Jamie’s eyebrow quirks, the barest movement. “Why would it be a problem?”
I can almost hear the glance Starr and Leni exchange.
I can picture it perfectly—sideways, knowing, as direct as a pinch on the thigh, not even having to move their heads.
The way you can look at your best friend and know exactly what they’re thinking by the barest twitch of a facial muscle.
Something all three of us have been doing for years, now a club of two I’m no longer allowed in.
“You know how Blair can be,” Starr says. “She likes everything a certain way. That’s why things didn’t work out with us living together. We’re just such a mess, you know?”
“And it’s not like you guys have ever gotten along. I’m sure it’s uncomfortable,” says Leni.
Jamie smiles like he’s heard a private joke. “Yeah, Blair’s definitely got her bad habits.”
I flush, backing away until I collide with someone coming down the path.
I bounce off them with an apology and careen straight into someone else like an out-of-control pinball.
When I’m finally spit out of the crowd, I’m standing breathless at the other end of the path, the sounds of the deck far behind me.
I start walking without real direction, hot with embarrassment—the aftereffects of being read so completely.
“Hey.”
I yelp, spinning. Jamie stands at my shoulder.
“It’s just me,” he says. “Why are you so jumpy?”
I clench my teeth and start walking again. “I’m not.” I shoot him a look as he falls into step beside me. “I guess I just wasn’t expecting you. You looked pretty busy. And so nice. I didn’t even know you could smile for more than four seconds at a time, but you sure proved me wrong.”
“Oh, you were watching that?” he asks, all feigned innocence. “Well, those are your friends, aren’t they? I figured you’d want me to be nice to them. Since, you know, they didn’t do anything to you, and I have nothing I should pity.”
The callback to our conversation at the tow yard is not lost on me. “Yeah, they really made it seem like that, didn’t they?”
“Were you spying on me?” He tilts his head, shooting me a look out of the corner of his eye.
“Must be one of my bad habits.”
At that he smiles. Pleased with himself, like this is fun for him.
“Maybe you should go back.” I can’t keep the irritation from my voice, and my grip on my bag tightens, my nails digging into my palms. “I’m sure you’ve all got a lot to commiserate about. My other bad habits. How awful I am.”
“I never said that. Don’t put that on me. I did not say you’re awful. And I know you know that, eavesdropper.”
“What makes you so sure I was eavesdropping, anyway?”
“Other than you admitting it just now?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, sighing and stretching his neck like he’s preparing for something difficult. “Because I was coming to sit with you.”
I whip my head around to stare at him. “What?”
“When Starr called me over. I saw you get up and hide, because I was on my way to you.”
I try not to tuck this small scrap of warmth into the pocket of my heart, that empty space that’s been yearning for company. Jamie is not my friend. “Why? I thought we weren’t allowed to speak.”
Jamie frowns, though he recovers quickly—of course he recovers quickly. He’s unflappable. “That’s at the apartment. This is on campus. We can run into each other on campus.” A single brow quirks. “Unless you’d rather we communicate exclusively by sticky note. I know how much you love those.”
“Just holding up my end of the deal. I figured Sawyer would have a full meltdown-freakout if you associated with me.” I give him a bland smile. It feels nice to get a subtle jab in at both Jamie and my brother simultaneously.
Jamie swings his backpack around, retrieves his phone, and starts typing. I’m thinking this is a dismissal and am about to walk off when he holds his phone out to me.
JAMIE
Ran into your sister on campus
Her friends suck
As he’s pulling the phone back, a response comes in from my brother.
SAWYER
Dude SHE sucks lol
I flush, shoving Jamie’s arm away. “Thanks for that.”
“Again,” Jamie says pointedly as he drops his phone back in his bag, “I didn’t say it.”
“Well, thank you for giving everyone a venue to vent about my terrible personality, then. You’re a real equal opportunist.”
He sighs. “Not sure how any of this is my fault.”
“You didn’t have to talk to them,” I say tightly. “You didn’t have to give them what they wanted.”
“I didn’t give them anything. You think I didn’t know why they were talking to me?
” He takes a few long strides ahead and turns, cutting me off.
“You think I haven’t figured out what happened by now?
That they kicked you out last-minute and you had nowhere else to go, and that’s how all this became my problem? ”
“Thank you for the reminder of what a problem I am for everyone.”
He blows out a frustrated breath. “I know you love to treat me like the bad guy, but last I checked, I’m the only one willing to help you.”
“Help me?” I bark out an incredulous laugh. “You’re rendering a service, and I’m paying a price. A steep one. In fact, most people would call this extortion.”
He scowls, turning away. “I should’ve pretended I didn’t see you.”
“I wish you would have! At least it would’ve been consistent.”
He wheels back around, but I’m already stalking off, ignoring his stare, feeling his attention on my back until I turn the corner out of sight.
I’m still riding the fury of our last argument; it takes no effort at all to get there again. I’m so angry I feel the press of tears. So mad, I can’t even stop myself from pulling out my phone and firing off a risky text.
ME
Your friend is a dick
SAWYER
Who is this?
It’s all I can do not to hurl my phone into the nearest body of water with a scream loud enough to split the sky.