Even if Mr. Hoffman were the type to keep them on hand for transmasc Rumson residents and visiting girls—which he is absolutely not—I wouldn’t ask him for water if I were dying of thirst.

They do, at least, compromise by giving me a bag of about a thousand tampons from Lockwood, and in my desperation, I accept. I really don’t have any more time to fight, because we have Book Club tonight, and I’m still slogging through the pretentious nightmare that got voted our first pick.

It’s a good excuse to avoid the Beast for lunch, anyway, and every other social activity. At Book Club, I sit with Sabrina, and we squeeze each other’s hands every time someone talks about which scene made them cry or just, like, really made them want to live their lives to the fullest. On the way out, I tell her I need to avoid everyone possible, and she runs into the Beast and returns with takeout, which we eat picnic-style in my room. Afterward, we do our homework in the nice kind of silence, the one where you’re not acknowledging each other’s presence but you feel it like a hug all the same.

“This feels so much like hanging out with Claire,” I say without thinking, and immediately wish I could take it back. It does, though—we were always doing things side by side, not really together. I would play online poker or give myself terrible pedicures while she beaded bracelets or made little charms out of clay to look like penguins or watermelon slices. It always felt nice, like we were close enough to do that, without it ever striking me as weird how much time we spent in silence or not wanting to do the same thing.

In reality, it probably fell somewhere in the middle, but the silent times only got more frequent the closer Craig and I got, because she made it clear from the get-go she wasn’t interested in hearing about him, and I, admittedly, was way too interested in talking about him. Everything seemed interesting and special with him, and when he did nice things like bring me a soda at lunch without my having to ask for it, or brought over any handouts I missed when I was home sick, I was dying to talk about it with someone who understood how good that all felt. And that wasn’t Claire.