“I… you…” I stumble over my attempt at a response. That my best friend, this person I love with my whole heart, who I talk to every single day, experienced this huge life event and felt like she couldn’t tell me about it….

“And it doesn’t really matter if I fail the bar once or twice, as long as I keep going. Once I’m a lawyer, I won’t care how I made that dream come true, but Ellie—you had this dream you worked so hard for, and you experienced one setback and just quit.”

Why does everyone always make everything about Laika? “I didn’t quit. I got fired,” I argue, trying not to think about that conversation with Jack at the Singhs’ cabin. I had a neurotically crafted ten-year-plan I refused to deviate from. And when things got hard, I couldn’t cope with changing the plan. So, I just gave up instead. I got fired from Laika and walked away from art entirely. Maybe because most things had walked out of my life, and maybe because I wanted to be the one to walk away first.

It hits me, the weight of this secret Meredith kept from me. “Shit,” I mutter, the tears crowding against the backs of my eyes. “I’ve been a terrible friend to you.”

“You haven’t been a terrible friend,” Meredith reassures me in her non-lawyer voice, the gentle one she uses when I’m being especially pathetic. “We all have seasons of needing and seasons of giving.”

“But I’ve been in my season of needing so long, you felt like you couldn’t come to me with something really big and important. I’ve failed horribly at being your best friend.”

“Jesus!” Meredith erupts, boomeranging back to anger and frustration. “Are you listening at all? You can’t fail at friendship! And failure—actual failure—is part of life. Remember when I got that D-plus in pre-calc fall term of freshman year?” Meredith asks slowly. “And the prof told me he only gave me the D-plus because he felt sorry for me and didn’t want to give me an F?”

I honestly don’t remember that at all. I can’t imagine the bold, confident girl pouring bleach into a shampoo bottle over her cheating boyfriend ever getting a D-plus. And I can’t imagine anyone ever feeling sorry for her.

“And it doesn’t fucking matter,” Meredith plows on, “because I have never once needed to use calculus.”

I’m still crying. Meredith is still draped across my body like a weighted blanket.