“A million,” she corrected me.

“Right. Exactly. You still have a million followers hanging on to your every word. And that’s just online. Wherever you go, people love you. That’s not how it is for me.” I took a deep breath and turned my eyes to the ceiling, trying to stop the tears from ruining my flawless makeup. “It’s never been that way for me.”

“Cat, you have plenty of friends. I mean, we’re going to trivia to see a bunch of them right now.”

I leveled my face at her. “I have a few friends because I work hard at it. Social graces don’t come easy to me. They never have. You know that.”

“Cat—”

“Stop pretending otherwise, Audrey. It’s disingenuous.” I put my thumb in my mouth and bit down hard, the pain drowning out the aching memories. “Don’t you remember when we met?”

“Sure. What about it?”

“You didn’t think … ?” I tasted blood suddenly and removed my thumb from my mouth, tucking it inside my fist. “Come on, Audrey. Why did you decide to be friends with me?”

“Cat …”

“Tell me. You and I both know how awkward I was. Why did you decide to be friends with me? No one else did.”

Audrey’s aqua-blue eyes flashed briefly, a dare, and then she looked away. “Just remember you asked for this, okay?”

I nodded and steeled myself for the worst.

“I went to high school with this girl named Tara. She was … well, she was weird. She never washed her hair and she shopped at Goodwill, but not in a cool way, you know what I mean? She was a punch line for our whole class.” Audrey paused and studied her nails, frowning at a chip in the gold polish. “Senior year, my biology teacher, this vindictive troll of a woman who’d always had it out for me, I swear to God, assigned Tara to be my lab partner. And … I mean, I just lost it. Trust me, I know how it sounds now, but at the time I really couldn’t imagine anything worse. What if we, you know, had to study together outside of class? What if people saw us? What if they thought we were friends? God, it would have ruined my social life. Or, I mean, I thought it would have. I was being dramatic, I know, but I was seventeen years old, so cut me some slack.” She glanced quickly at me, ready to defend herself, but I said nothing. She sighed and continued. “Anyway, Tara was nothing but nice to me, and I … I just was mean. Like, I barely spoke to her, would only answer direct questions. Mostly, I just rolled my eyes at her and called her stupid. And … um, well, I started spreading these rumors. I told everyone that her parents were cousins and that was why she was so stupid.”

My heart clenched. I knew what it felt like to be the Tara of the story. I knew the desperation, the feeling that you would do anything—anything—to escape the torment.