“Trouble in paradise?” she cuts in, sounding way too gleeful about the possibility of a rift between me and Miguel, which is weird because not only does she like Miguel (as far as I know), she thinks it looks good for cheerleaders and football players to date. She’d be allll over the team if her parents hadn’t strictly forbidden dating until she’s eighteen. Then again, maybe this is her jealousy talking.

“Not exactly,” I say, not wanting to give rise to this weird false hope she’s showing. “It’s just, Miguel and I don’t, uh, see eye to eye on everything.” Like, for example, being attracted to girls.

“Oh, thank the Lord,” Cara says on a sigh. “He was being so nice to her at Maggie’s, and it was driving me nuts. I was wondering if it was bothering you, too. Honestly, I’m relieved that it was, because I feel like you’ve been a little soft, especially at the pep rally.”

I’m sorry, what? “Her who? Jack?” I mean, Cara’s not wrong that this is about her, but wowwww, it is not in the way she thinks.

“Of course Jack. Everything’s about Jack now!” she says bitterly, as if she weren’t the one who just made this about Jack. “I can’t wait to take her down.”

It’s like watching my best friend transform before my very eyes. I’m surprised I don’t see foam gathering at the corners of her mouth. But there are no changes to her outsides as far as I can see, and I know them almost as well as I do my own—the ears she was finally allowed to pierce with basic gold studs for her sixteenth birthday, the reddish-brown hair that always smells like the two-in-one her mom buys in bulk, the scar of two parallel lines on her knee from when we gave up trying to get one of our parents to teach us how to ride a bike and struck out by ourselves.… I know that girl. And yeah, she can be petty like we all can, especially when her little siblings are making her world feel too small, but this is a level of wrath that exceeds even the time her brother Christopher and his friends ate every one of the cinnamon buns we spent an entire Saturday making for a bake sale fundraiser.