“Hey,” I say to Gene when I reach the table where he always sits.

“Hi,” he says, hands in his pockets.

“How are you?”

“Um, you know, okay.” He sits down and I pull a chair toward his. We’re on the outskirts of the cafeteria, but I feel like we’re on the outskirts of two separate universes.

“So what happened?” he asks. “You kicked me out of your house and pretty much disappeared all weekend. I had no idea—”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“Like that was really shitty.”

“I know, but please, just listen.” I reach for his hand, but he pulls away. The lines on my palm don’t get a chance to cross the lines on his. “I promise it wasn’t just me screwing with you. My dad has this health issue that’s really hard to talk about, so I had to go home and be with him, but then we ended up having to go to the hospital and—”

“I don’t get it, though,” he says. “You still could have told me something instead of pushing me out.”

“No, I really couldn’t, at least not then, but everything’s okay now, well not okay, but—”

I drift off, he picks at some foreign object on the table between us. “Well, I’m glad things are better, but I have to tell you something too,” he says apologetically.

“What?”

He looks down at his hands. “There was this thing with Helga at Senior Night.” I see her across the cafeteria with Rose and a few other girls from the dance team. No no no no no. “And, um, well, it’s just that I kind of think—” He finally looks up from his hands, and his voice goes up like it’s a question I’m supposed to answer. “I kind of think that maybe we should break up, ’cause Helga and I kind of kissed?”

“What?” I jerk away from him and my elbow ends up in the ketchup on my tray. It’s a minefield, sitting this close in the cafeteria, but we are soldiers of love. Or so I thought.

“I’m sorry, Cham, but I was upset Friday night and I started talking to Helga—”

I back my chair up into the chaos of the cafeteria. “Helga Helga?” As in the German exchange student who tongued a hot dog roll in front of the whole senior class? Yes, it was hot, but c’mon. Anyone can tongue a hot dog roll.

“She opened up to me about how hard it is being so far away from home, and I was really comfortable talking to her about stuff too, and we ended up talking for like hours—”

“So while I was at the hospital with my parents, you were with another girl?”

He blushes. “Well, yeah, but you pushed me away—”

“BECAUSE MY DAD WAS SICK.” I clench my fist and stare at my chicken patty. If it weren’t dead already, I’d murder it.

“Cham, I didn’t mean for it to be like that.”