I look up at the ceiling. When my projector isn’t on it’s just an expanse of black. “Um, my dad had this whole episode thing and we thought he was having a heart attack and yeah.”

“Oh, Cham, I’m so sorry. That must’ve been terrible.”

“It was a lot,” I say, recalling how steely his eyes were when he said I was a disappointment. “But how was Friday night? What did I miss? Was it fun?”

“So fun! I mean not so fun,” she adds quickly. “It’s not like you missed anything big, and there’ll be plenty of other fun nights, like prom and stuff, so don’t worry about it, but, yeah, it was good.”

“I saw the video. You broke it down as usual.”

She laughs. “Thanks.”

I open up my senior year time capsule and move the items around. “Did anyone even sleep? I saw the mats getting set up in the gym and people getting sleeping bags but—”

“Hardly. I mean, it was probably four AM when that started.”

“And how did superlatives go?”

She pauses. For a second I wonder if we have a bad connection. “Hilary and I won Class Friendship,” she says finally.

“Oh,” I stammer. “Congratulations.”

“It’s just ’cause we’ve been friends so long, you know? It’s not that we’re closer than anyone else.”

“Yeah, totally, one sec.” I stuff the time capsule box back under my bed and cough a little, not knowing what to say.

After a few seconds she says, “So have you talked to Gene? It must kinda suck that you didn’t get to your special night?”

“Not yet. I feel really awkward about kicking him out of my house and kind of disappearing on the night we were supposed to do it.”

“It was a family emergency, though.” Not when I kicked him out. “True. Hey, I saw like eight pictures with him and Helga together. It’s stupid to be jealous, right?”

“Yeah… they were having some long talk ’cause they’re in this group project and—”

She goes on and on about how security has to come from “inside oneself.” Then she catches me up on everything I missed. Doug hooked up with Jared. Danika snuck booze in and almost got caught ’cause she was too drunk again.

It’s too much. I need a shuttle back to that world to comprehend that it exists. I just don’t know if there’s a vehicle that can move fast through dark space.

After Abigail and I hang up, I torture myself by looking through more pictures of the night. I know I have an e-mail from Evelyn about my essay, but I just don’t see how I can focus on that when there’s this picture of Abigail and Hilary receiving their big BFF hearts. Oh, and Gene with Helga again. Speaking of, why the hell is Gene being so distant? I know it wasn’t cool to keep him out of my house, but Abigail’s right. Family emergencies should be a free pass to be an impolite hostess, secretive girlfriend, and whatever else I need to be to keep my worlds separate.