I have no current interest in the evil witch of my youthful desires. I get that being someone who only talks to mirrors that are forced to be complimentary to you, and plotting to destroy your stepchildren with apples are terrible (criminal) qualities.

I don’t want to like people who are not good people.

I feel like I’ve said this already, but really what I want is my true true. Okay? I want someone I like who gets me, and who likes me back and gets me. All of it.

I was almost 100 percent certain that wasn’t going to happen in Greenville.

Or with Gilly.

Consider the evidence for the prosecution. Gilly was best friends with people who had been actively, like, racist and sexist against me. Like her friends had basically, in her presence, gone out of their way to do and say really shitty things to me. Things that she had helped make happen (see exhibit A of her coming up to me on the soccer field and encouraging me to sign up for auditions)!

Evidence for the defense? I thought it was possible that when she was giving her Romeo and Juliet audition monologue, she looked at me in the audience. Like I was her Romeo. And she said something nice to me after her friend tripped me.

But (the prosecution butts in rudely) she didn’t speak up and tell Mr. Davidson that it was Tanner who tripped me when he clearly did.

The prosecution rests.

So of course, the first person I walk right into on my way into school the next day is Gilly. Like I opened the door and started looking left and right to avoid Gilly and then I literally slammed right into her so hard I knocked her down like a tree. It must have looked on purpose because Gilly looked at me from the ground like I’d KO’d her in a boxing ring.

“Um, OW.” She frowned, pulling herself up.

“HOLY CRAP I’M SO SORRY!” I gushed.

Gilly’s face turned beet red. “It’s okay,” she mumbled, grabbing her bag and unfolding herself so she could stand.

I wasn’t sure if that meant, like, “help me up” or “go away,” so I just stood there like a true Romeo and watched her get to her feet, at which point she jetted off like a rocket just in time for Berry to walk up behind me and scare the crap out of me.

“Anne—”

“AH!”

“AH!” Berry tensed up in a coil. “What’s going on?”

“I just hit Gilly. I mean,” I sputtered. “Gilly was here and I rammed her. I mean. Bumped. Into her. By accident. I walked up—I mean into. Gilly.”

“Oh.” Berry pulled her knapsack up on her shoulder. “Okay. Um. Well. Is she okay?”

“She is! I think.” I looked down the hallway. “It was an accident.”