The loss of Shola, though, would be a septic wound. She is my person.

Who knew first loves could be platonic? How did I not see that?

I allow myself to picture it, for a moment. An alternative future. One day making new friends, maybe not at SCC or even at college, but somewhere, a future me telling the story of me and Shola, my first real friend, my first true partner. I hope it ends better than I fear. I hope it doesn’t end at all. That it’s the story I tell before she comes to visit me in my new, wholly theoretical one day grown-up life so I can say to my new friends, I can’t wait for you to meet her.

“I miss you,” I say, the tears falling again, because I already know where this is going. I am being broken up with. I can tell by the way her eyes keep slipping to the floor. I can tell by the way my heart feels sliced right down the middle, a clean incision.

“Chloe, you pretended to be half Latina on your application.” I close my eyes because I can no longer look at her face. It’s too painful.

This, it turns out, is the only thing we’ve been accused of that is technically not illegal. Immoral, grounds for rescinding my acceptance, disgusting, wrong, shameful—all of these things, yes, despite my father’s belief that he’s part Argentinian. But it’s not the charge that will put my mother or me in prison. The bribery will.

But with Shola standing here, I realize it will be the charge that makes me lose my best friend.

I don’t blame her.

There’s no bouncing back from the dirty truth, no way to spin my way out of this one. I cannot morph back into the person Shola thought I was. Who she’d hoped I’d be. The one who laughed but understood when she wouldn’t let me copy her homework before class.

I refuse to say I didn’t know. I will not keep beating that meaningless drum.

“I can’t do this to myself anymore. Can’t keep doing this. Being friends with you, it’s not…it’s not okay for me.”

“Shol,” I say, my eyes still closed.

I hear but don’t see her get off the stool and walk away from me.

“Shol!” I call again, but she keeps walking.

All the way out the front door, which she closes behind her, gently.

I picture her on the other side, resting her back against it.

Instead of keeping out the zombies, though, Shola’s keeping them in.

And then I think about sneaky side doors, how the zombies will always get out anyway.

With the soft click of the latch, it’s official.

I have lost my best friend.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Then