No, I miss her: present tense. I miss following her brain down whatever rant or path she’s currently on and then realizing that it’s already been three hours. She doesn’t think so, but no one’s easier to talk to than Corinne.

Columbia nearly KO’d me, but seeing her around school and watching her turn around and bolt and catching a glimpse of her running up the stairs with Palm Tree at my very sight back at the building have been a series of slow bamboo sticks carefully pushed up under all my fingernails all at once over these past weeks.

I’ve apologized so much recently that the word “sorry” started to sound like a phonetic bit of French I picked up in Montreal. Auto-Root. Vwa-turr. Soh-ree. But I need to say it again.

“I’m sorry, Corinne. For all of it. I wasn’t using you—I swear. You have to know that.”

She looks at me for a long moment.

“I know,” she finally says. “I didn’t at first. But then I talked to my mom. And I thought about what I would have done in your shoes.” She gives me a small smile. “Okay, I wouldn’t have done that. But I wrote thirty-seven different versions of my Princeton application essay. I’d be a hypocrite if I said I didn’t get why you did what you did. Heck, I would probably still be under the covers with the blinds pulled down if I hadn’t gotten in.”

“So . . . can you ever forgive me?” I ask desperately.

“Maybe,” she says.

One benefit of Corinne always saying exactly what’s on her mind is that there’s no doubt that she means it.

“So, what happens now? Did we have a fight, or did we break up?” I then ask, scared of what her answer will be. I had assumed the latter, considering the complete lack of contact, but maybe Ming was right.

“According to Teen Vogue, we broke up. Podcast-wise, according to Dan Savage, I should dump you immediately, but Girls Gotta Eat allows more flexibility when it comes to . . .”

“Fuckboy behavior?”

“Exactly.”

We stay quiet for a little while longer, and eventually I feel her hand rest on my shoulder.

“If that was, in fact, a breakup . . . then I don’t think we should get back together,” she finally says.

“Oh,” I say. “Okay.” Even if I already knew it, it stings.

At some point in this hustle, things got turned around. It’s pretty clear here who is the sun and who is the hapless, rotating planet with vague signs of intelligent life. Beyond Chantale or the letter or college, a part of me was always worried that at some point she would eventually see that. That I was just Marvyn 2.0, after all.

“Halti, listen to me. . . .”