I sigh into my pillow. Breaking up sounds so final. There will be other people, of course, but there will never be another Miles. Dave has told me about the girls he’s dated, but he talks about them the way adults talk about high school girlfriends: with the knowledge that they were just a way to bide time.

I don’t want Miles to be someone I forget about. I don’t want to lose his smile or the way he live-texts musicals or his stupid lacrosse obsession. I’d miss the way he looks so serious when we watch movies together and the tenor of his voice when he speaks. But every time I think of him, there’s this pang in my chest. He was so cool when I told him about having HIV. He acted like it wasn’t a big deal at all. But then his parents got involved, and some kind of switch flipped. It was like he couldn’t even talk. Maybe he just didn’t want to. Maybe he didn’t feel like I was worth it in the end.

“Everything all right in here?”

I freeze, glancing at the door. Dad is standing with Pops, which is weird. He must’ve gotten someone to cover for him at work, and that takes a lot of string-pulling.

“Yeah,” I say, gesturing to my phone. “I was just watching something funny.”

“So,” Pops says, walking in. “Jesse Harris.”

“Yeah.” I pick at my fingernails. “Him.”

“He wrote you an apology.” Pops holds up an envelope. “Principal Decker suggested it.”

“Wait, so she spoke to him?” I ask. “How did he even find out? Was he lying about the hospital?”

“Well,” Dad says. “I think he wrote about that.”

“Oh.” I stare down at my bedspread, blinking. “That’s—wow.”

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.

“It doesn’t make any sense, trying to piece it together,” Pops says, sitting down on my bed. “That kid must be really troubled.”

Jesse likes Miles. Maybe, if he weren’t so horrible, I could feel bad for him. I guess I could tell Miles, but it would just make me feel worse. It would be super weird, for one thing. And it’s—I don’t know. It seems private. I respect that sort of thing.

“Yeah.” I run a finger along my bedspread. “I guess so.”

“It’s true,” Dad says, settling beside him. “Emotionally healthy people don’t do things like this.”

They’re taking their science-based, levelheaded approach to this, like they usually do. I can’t remember what they said to me about Sarah—I think Dad tried to say that she was jealous of me, which just made things worse. All I could think about was that I could’ve stopped it if I just kept my mouth shut.