“Claudia didn’t mean it. She was just—surprised,” Lydia says. She takes a long moment to swallow. “You can tell us who it was. I promise.”

“Why should I believe you?” I say, turning to her. “You just sat there and let her scream at me.”

“It’s because—”

“I don’t care.” It’s getting harder to talk with the tears stuck in my throat. “It’s like I get a boyfriend and I don’t know how to handle it and instead of talking to me, you guys just turn on me. Friends aren’t supposed to do that. Friends still act like friends. Claudia is shitty all the fucking time and I never tell her to break up with her girlfriend.”

Claudia bites her lip. “It’s not…”

“And yeah, I did have a girlfriend,” I say. “Sarah was the first person I met at boarding school, my first kiss, my first girlfriend….I thought I could tell her I have HIV, but she said I was selfish for keeping it a secret and texted five different girls all about it. By the next day, everyone knew. It was all over those stupid parent Facebook groups. None of my friends would talk to me.”

I take a deep breath, but my chin is trembling. This is not how I wanted them to find out about Sarah. I still don’t understand what it means; does kissing her and liking it make me bisexual or pansexual or still straight? Do I have to wait to be attracted to another girl before I can declare myself anything besides straight? Do I only have to like girls? Can I like people who are feminine and not girls and still be queer? They’re all questions I used to want answers to, but now I just wish I could forget all of it.

Why can’t I have a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a person, like everyone else? The first girl who kissed me was disgusted by me. The first boy I dated was a dick. Then there’s Miles—Miles, who touches me all the time because he isn’t afraid, who kisses me on my mouth and my neck and my legs, who makes all the second-guessing go away—and I don’t even get to have him. Not with someone following us around. Not once everyone at school finds out that I have HIV.

This is how I expected my friends to act after they knew. I thought Claudia and Lydia understood, but maybe things have changed. It was okay when I was alone and pining after celebrities, but now that there’s a chance that I could actually have sex, they have to sabotage it.

A horrible thought enters my mind.

“How do I know,” I start, squeezing my eyes shut, “that you two haven’t been sending those notes?”