Chapter 5
Melly
We are crammed in here.
Six girls, six laptops, takeout from the Thai place downstairs.
Me and Mila on the couch with our thighs touching.
Gianna and Mara on the rug. Lucy and Penelope at the small round table by the window, more upright, quieter.
It clicks for me almost immediately that there are two halves of this friend group.
There is the loud half — Gianna, Mara, Mila — and there is the quieter half — Lucy, Penelope, me.
The friend group is balanced because of it.
The conversation never lulls because the loud half will not allow it to, and the quiet half does not get drowned because the loud half loves us and remembers to include us.
It’s the type of friend group that’s exactly perfect, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
We work for twenty minutes in companionable silence.
I get more done than I have in days. There’s something about being in a room full of other people working that makes me work too, the way a yawning person makes a room yawn.
My research methods notes start to feel less like hieroglyphs and more like sentences I might actually be able to recite back to a TA next week.
Penelope’s timer goes off. “First break,” she announces.
Mara is on her feet before the timer has finished chirping. “Okay. Okay. We need to talk about last night.”
The girls all groan and laugh and put their laptops aside. I feel Mila lean forward beside me.
“I went home with Drew Faulkner,” Mara announces, with the air of a girl who is excited about this. “And he was —”
“What happened to the freshman?” Penelope interrupts from her chair, calmly turning a page in her notebook.
Mara waves a hand dismissively. “That was two weeks ago, Pen. Please.”
Penelope makes a face.
“Don’t give me your judgy eyes.” Mara points at her. “I have always had a thing for Drew. Always.”
“You have a thing for everyone,” Gianna says with a laugh.
Mara rolls her eyes. Me and Mila start to giggle. Lucy is smiling behind her hand.
Gianna twists around to face us. “Mara falls in love on sight.”
“Anyway,” Mara plows on, “I had a fun night. I don’t know about any of you. Maybe Lucy knows, because Reeve could not keep his hands off you, girl. I saw.”
Lucy turns the color of a rose.
“He’s hot,” Mara says serenely. “I’m sorry, but Benson is just hot. Lucy, you’ve got him wrapped around your finger. I am not threatening anything, he is yours, but he is still fun to look at —”
Gianna smacks Mara on the ass. “Don’t talk about them like that! He’s my brother, and her boyfriend, you absolute sicko —”
Mila and I are laughing so hard our laptops slide off to each other. When they fall together, we quickly grab them.
Then Mara swivels her whole body toward me.
“And you,” she says, with great satisfaction. “Miss I-Have-A-Boyfriend-Of-Two-Years. I bet he could not keep his hands off you either.”
I open my mouth. I don’t get a word out before Mila has already answered for me.
“Actually,” she says, sharp as a knife, “I slept over. And Chase took the floor.”
The entire room makes a single, identical face.
Mara drops her jaw open. “You’re a cockblocker? Oh my God. I cannot handle two cockblockers in this friend group.”
“He’s my brother,” Gianna says again, exasperated. “That is the only reason there has ever been any cockblocking, Mara.”
Lucy goes back to her laptop.
Penelope’s timer goes off again. She claps her hands once. “Alright. Break’s over. Back to studying.”
“I am going to fail this midterm,” Mara says, sliding down the front of the couch.
“It’s all the cocks you’re not blocking,” Gianna shoots back without looking up.
Mila chokes on her water. Mara laughs at that too, and we are off again, hands over our mouths, shoulders shaking, until Penelope finally clears her throat from the dining table, and we settle, one by one, back into our studying.
The next sprint is thirty minutes.
I get more done.
By the time our laptops are closed and the takeout containers are mostly empty, Mara is sprawled across Gianna’s lap like a cat declaring victory.
“Whose idea was this?” she demands. “This was great. We should do this often.”
Penelope, without looking up from her bag, says, “Melly’s.”
Mara turns and beams at me. “I’m not surprised. Honestly, Lucy, it’s a good thing you didn’t move in with Pen. Look what the universe gave us instead.”
My chest fills with warmth. Lucy looks up. She’s small, brown-eyed, and quiet, and when she smiles, the whole room softens. “I’m happy it worked out.”
“Now we have two more girls in the friend group,” Gianna says, looking at me and Mila.
Mara sits up straighter, and her face lights with dangerous excitement. I’m not going to lie, I’m a little afraid of what she’s about to say.
“Okay. So. Next Hawthorne House party. We have to get ready together. We have to get dolled up. The full thing.”
Mila nods so hard her hair bounces.
“Like —” I clear my throat. “Like, dolled up how?”
Mila nudges my knee under the table. She knows what I’m asking and why. I’m an embarrassment, I realize.
“I don’t know,” Mara says. “We need a theme.”
“I bet the next party falls on Halloween,” Gianna says, scrolling on her phone. “Wait. Wait, no, they might have an away game.” She turns to Lucy. “Lucy. Do they have an away game?”
Lucy leans over and squints at the phone screen. “Is Halloween this weekend? God.” She thinks for a second. “I think they have two away games. Thursday and Friday. I’m not sure about Saturday.”
“Wait,” Mara says, sitting up straighter. “Wait. Does everybody know what they’re going to be for Halloween?”
I glance at Mila. Mila glances at me. We talked about it months ago, in a half-baked way, the way you talk about Halloween costumes in July when it doesn’t feel real. Nothing decided.
Mara perks. “We should do something with all six of us.”
“I was going to be an angel,” Penelope says.
Mila’s eyes go round. I can see her practically vibrate beside me.
Mara nearly levitates. “Oh my God. Should we all be angels? Should we all? Wait, is that okay? I don’t want to steal your thunder, Pen —”
“I always wanted to be an angel,” Penelope says, smiling. “This is the year for it. The more, the merrier.”
“Okay. Okay. Send us the link. Whatever site you got the wings from. Quickly. Quickly, before it’s too late —”
Penelope is already on her phone.
“Should we split into two teams?” Mila offers, leaning forward, lit up. “Half good angels, half bad angels?”
Mara hits her own knee. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Pen — what color did you buy?”
“White,” Penelope says. “Obviously.”
Lucy smiles softly. “I could be white.”
Mila turns to Mara. “Black or red for the bad ones?”
Mara considers. She looks at Gianna. “G, what are you? Are you good or bad?”
Gianna squints at me. “You don’t look like you’d be on the bad team, honestly, Melly. It’s the eyes.”
Mara nods. “It’s your eyes, girl. You’re a good angel.”
Gianna continues, “So I’ll be bad. Unless you want to be bad?”
Mila pats my knee with a sort of bossy fondness. “She’s definitely innocent. She should be white.”
“Yeah,” I say, laughing. “Yeah, white. I’d love to be a white angel.”
Gianna grins at Mila and Mara. “Let’s do black.”
The three of them nod, in unison, like a tiny secret coven.
Penelope tosses her phone underhand to Mara, who catches it. Mara’s eyes glitter when she sees the outfit on the screen. She shows it to Gianna and Lucy first, and Gianna lets out a low, impressed sigh. Lucy actually grins. Then Mara turns the phone toward me and Mila.
“We are going to look so good,” she says, slow and dangerous, “that hockey team is not going to know what hit them.”
The whole room cheers.
And I —
I laugh along.
I laugh, and I nod, and I smile at exactly the right moments. I clutch my flask of water with both hands.
Because the hockey team — the hockey team includes Blue Golding, who cannot stand being in the same room as me.
He will think I dressed up for him. Oh, God, I can’t have that.
I imagine myself in that costume at his house, and I almost melt into a puddle of nothingness.
Now, I’m not so sure having this many friends is a good thing.
Gianna’s brother is the captain of the Wolves for crying out loud.
I never intended to come to Camden and be this close to Blue.
It all seems intentional, and I hate it.
Then I remember.
I have Halloween plans with Chase.
The realization arrives like the sound of a glass tipping off a counter — first the slow, then the shatter.
I have Halloween plans with Chase.
We made them in August. He has a buddy whose roommate is throwing something. He bought a stupid costume. It’s already hanging in his closet in his bedroom. How did I forget about this? Is Chase so far gone in my mind that I can’t remember plans I made with him? Oh, this is bad. This is so bad.
I don’t bring it up, but I stay quiet for the rest of the time.
And then shortly after –– me, Mila, and Penelope are saying goodnight and walking out onto the sidewalk.
We start walking in the same direction, but up ahead, Mila will need to take a left instead of a right.
It’s cold now. I can see our breath in front of us.
“What’s wrong?” Mila asks right away.
She has known me too long.
I huff as I push my hands deeper into the pockets of my jacket. I whisper, “I have Halloween plans with Chase.”
She almost laughs. She does, in fact, laugh — just one short, surprised, of course you do kind of laugh — and she stops walking and turns to face me on the sidewalk.
“You’re going to cancel,” she says. “And you’re going to come with us.”
“Mila.”
“You are.”
“I don’t —”
“You’re going to.”
Penelope is quiet. She has tucked her hands into the sleeves of that camel coat.