We spent a lot of time together that weekend. That’s the good thing about being a social outcast: your schedule opens right up. Dee doesn’t seem to have a lot of demands on her time, either. And we join up in those wedges of time between school, before bed, on the weekends. I have my part-time job, but Dee doesn’t have a job, so she just goes with me and waits in one of the booths writing in her journal.

“What are you always writing in that thing?” I ask her one night when we’re walking back to our neighborhood after one of my shifts. The days are getting longer, but it’s dark by now, and the streetlights are like bright teeth in an open mouth.

“All kinds of stuff. Notes. Observations. Lists. Goals.”

“Like, you look at me making a soft serve and are all, like, ‘hashtag goals,’” I say, turning my fingers into a hashtag.

“Oh yeah,” she jokes, “and the hairnet is ‘hashtag fashion goals.’”

“Of course, the hashtag written in the notebook doesn’t have quite the same effect.”

“Right. It’s more of an homage or a reference to our digital age, if you will.”

“Haha. Okay, there, Pete,” I laugh.

“Yes, I think I might be securing myself an A in Media Studies this term.”

“Oh God, don’t remind me. I haven’t even started to think about that final assignment yet.”

Dee jumps up on a curb beside me and walks along it, her shadow looming above mine. “Oh please, that assignment was made for people like us. ‘A new interpretation of a classic film or TV show’? Honestly, I think Pete might have actually written that for you.”

“I don’t think that’s how teaching works.”

Dee deadpans with her fingers crossed. “Hashtag ‘teaching goals.’”

I groan.

“Well, I’m going to do something completely over the top,” she says, jumping down from the curb. “I’m already planning it. Go out with a bang.”