37 Sophie
Sophie
Sophie tucks her hands into the pocket of her sweatshirt and wants more than anything to cinch the hood tight around her face.
Elena just said that Quinn was in love with her.
It makes no sense. They were friends. They were always just friends.
“How do you know?” she asks. She can hear the desperation in her voice, and she hates it.
“She told me.” Elena’s face says, “Don’t even try to deny it,” but Sophie doesn’t know what, exactly, to deny.
The bar around them is growing noisier every minute.
This already feels like the longest day ever.
She thinks about River, about the journal, about her dad and Barbara, about Leah’s fever.
Her thoughts flutter around like a bird trapped in the rafters.
Elena interrupts. “You don’t have to lie, Soph. I saw the pictures.”
This makes the frantic bird stop dead. “What pictures?”
Elena juts her head forward in a show of disbelief. “The naked pictures. Of you.”
Joey inhales sharply. “Wait, Quinn had naked pictures of you?” She looks hurt, as if this is something that was done to her.
Sophie feels the world blur around the edges of her vision. She tries to respond, but Elena cuts her off. “Just admit that you were in love with her too and save us all some time.” She picks at tiny balls of wet napkin that have accumulated on the table.
Joey brings a hand to her chin, like she needs the extra support.
“I wasn’t in love with her.” Intensifying heat inside Sophie’s clouds any rational thought. She pushes her cocktail away.
“Well, I found pictures of you with your tits out on her phone.”
“Those weren’t—”
“What the hell, Soph?” It’s Joey now, coming at her with an aggrieved tone. “You didn’t think this was pertinent information to share with us? This whole time we’ve been thinking Quinn and River… But it was you all along.”
“It’s not—”
“Honestly, there’s no use lying,” interrupts Elena. “Quinn told me everything.”
Sophie tries to speak, but Elena cuts her off again. “It’s not a big deal. It was a lifetime ago.”
Not a big deal? Sophie knows what pictures Elena is talking about, and the thought of them being witnessed by someone else makes her feel violently sick.
Quinn showed Elena? Why would she do that?
Sophie has shut out that night with Tanner for so long.
It feels impossible that it’s being thrown in her face again after a decade and a half.
By people she thought she could trust. Starting with Quinn, who told her she got Tanner’s phone and deleted the photos that day.
But instead, what? She kept them on her own phone and showed them to Elena, making up some story about the two of them hooking up?
Betrayal tears through her. Not only did Quinn lie to Sophie, but she also used Sophie’s sexuality as a cover story.
Or maybe the whole thing was just a sick, twisted joke, and Quinn just never got around to telling Sophie the punchline.
She tries to bring Quinn’s face to mind so she can ask her, “What the fuck?” but she can’t. For once, she can’t.
“Listen—” she starts, but she’s interrupted again.
“I have a theory,” Elena says to Joey, completely ignoring Sophie. “What if River saw those pictures? What if he realized what was going on between Quinn and Sophie and he didn’t like it? What if he and Quinn had a fight…”
“What, so he pushed her because he was jealous of Sophie?” asks Joey. Sophie can’t believe this. They are speaking about her like she’s not here, totally oblivious to her rising fury.
Elena shrugs. “The pictures could have triggered him—”
Sophie jumps to her feet, and her chair falls backward from the sudden movement. “Oh my god, stop. Both of you.”
They blink at her, silently.
She’s seething now, and it makes her feel like she’s outside her own body.
A fleeting thought about nervous system regulation floats through her mind.
She can feel her cortisol spiking, adrenaline bouncing through every fingertip.
But she doesn’t back down. “Did you even think to ask me what I think? No. Of course you didn’t.
And because you didn’t ask, you’ll never know how fucking terrible it was to have my picture taken like that.
You think I wanted to have naked pictures of me on anyone’s phone?
You think I wanted it? Well, that’s a big fuck-you-very-much.
” She doesn’t pick up her chair. She just yanks her bag free and steps over it.
The thought of those pictures being seen by anyone when she thought they were destroyed is making her feel unhinged.
“Soph, please calm down,” says Joey, like she’s placating a horse. “Let’s talk.”
But she rounds on Joey. “You know, back then, I sometimes used to wonder if any of you really cared about me or if I was always just the butt of the joke. Ultimately I decided that, no, those thoughts were just my own insecurities. But now, you guys dredge this up, and it fucking hurts that you haven’t even asked me anything about it.
You just informed me what your theories about my life are.
So no, I don’t want to calm down. And I don’t want to talk about it.
” She’s breathing heavily, too heavily. She needs to stop, but she can’t.
It’s all coming up now, and, honestly, it’s a relief to say some of this out loud.
“Maybe the three of us have been apart for too long,” she says.
“Other than the memory of our dead friend, what else do we have? Nothing. We’re strangers. ”
“That’s not true,” says Joey.
“Oh please, Joey. You haven’t done a single thing since Quinn died. You refuse to even try to be happy. Why do you think that is?”
Joey looks hurt, and Sophie wants to cry, but maybe just this once, she is done trying to pretend they’re still friends when their friendship shattered a decade and a half ago. She is tired of trying to piece together this irreparable thing.
“Whoa,” says Elena with a laugh that turns Sophie’s blood up to a boil.
Sophie turns to her, spite moving through her. “Oh Elena, I know not giving a shit is your thing, but you take it too far. Do you even know where your kid is right now? Do you even care?” Sophie reels back slightly, surprised by herself.
Elena’s eyes widen with something—disbelief. It was an awful thing to say, but for once, Sophie doesn’t apologize. Instead, she inhales a single, shuddering breath before pushing her way toward the exit.
Outside, there’s still a sliver of daylight, but everything is blurred by tears. She clatters into someone who steadies themself with a grip on her arm. Startled, Sophie wrenches away.
“Everything alright?” It’s Marissa Berg. Sophie has the primal urge to get in her face. Don’t fucking touch me. But she drops to her knees to scoop up her phone and old tissues and baby binkies that have spilled all over the ground. The journal has escaped too, and she slips it back inside.
She pushes herself to her feet, ignoring whatever Marissa is saying to her, and wipes at her face.
She feels the journal practically throbbing from inside her bag.
She was just beginning to wonder if there was a reason she found it.
Like she was meant to find it, like it was a clue.
But now Sophie thinks of Quinn in her room that day, assuring her she was going to take care of the photos.
Did Sophie misread their closeness all those years ago?
Did any of them, even Quinn, ever have her best interest at heart?
She honestly has no idea.