Ben finally turned to me like it was paining him, and leaned his back against his locker dramatically like he was creating the maximum space between us.

“So, last night was crazy, huh?” I ventured.

“Yeah. I guess,” Ben said. “Is that, like, your norm?”

He didn’t seem worried for me or any of the usual friend things. He almost seemed annoyed, like I had somehow caught him and trapped him in this with me. “No, Ben, it isn’t the norm,” I said. Now I was annoyed. “It’s usually really fun. We, like, laugh a lot and stuff.” He wasn’t smiling at all, and I suddenly felt warm. “Is it hot in here?”

Normally he would have made a joke about me being hot, but instead he said, “Maybe you’re getting Covid.”

“Thanks.” I smirked. “That’s really helpful.” Then I couldn’t help myself. “What’s with you? I know it was a weird night, but it was weird for me too. It’s not my fault all the adults were acting like lunatics. And, if you’ll remember, it was kind of traumatic on my end. It’s not like I want to leave.”

“You don’t want to leave Merit,” he said like he didn’t care.

Fine. If he was going to be a jerk, then so was I. “No,” I said. “I don’t want to leave Merit. Or Emma. Or Brenna, Audrey, Jamie, Grace, Alice, or Julie.” I looked at him pointedly, raised my voice, and said, “And up until this moment, I didn’t want to leave you!”

Then I spun around and headed toward my history class, grateful that Ben and I didn’t have it together. But Lily was in my class. I’d had basically no opinion about Lily until five minutes ago. And now I loathed her and her hot pink braces and her little streaks of gold fairy hair.

“Hello, Miss Sitterly,” Mr. Baldwin, the history teacher, said. He was probably like my mom’s age, not that old, but he wore these sweaters with leather patches on the elbows and horn-rimmed glasses and had this accent like he had been born in a movie about the South in the early 1900s.

“Hello, Mr. Baldwin,” I said, dropping my heavy backpack with a thud and slumping down into a desk in the front row.

“Are you all right, Miss Sitterly?” he asked.

“Well, Ben said I looked like I was getting Covid, so maybe not.”

“Oh my God! You have Covid!” piped up Annabelle, this really annoying girl beside me who looked like she was ten.

I rolled my eyes. “No, Annabelle. I obviously wouldn’t come infect our entire class like some self-centered abomination.”

She looked relieved.

“If you need to visit the nurse or the counselor, you have my permission,” Mr. Baldwin said.