“Yeah. You seem, well … I know that for a while there you were, um, well, you know.” Matthew, no stranger to bullying, does me the favor of not naming the thing.

“Things were definitely shit for a while.”

He nods knowingly. “I’m sorry I never—”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say, my face growing red.

“Okay. Anyway, glad you’ve got some solid people with you now. Ava and Antar are awesome.”

“True that.”

“And if you ever get into Magic: The Gathering, Jamie and Mitch and I would be happy to have you.” He turns to leave and I head into my own classroom, a smile on my face.

I have friends now. It’s not just Dee, although she is at the core of it. She is my ride-or-die bitch, ever since Lottie jumped. But there’s a proper group of us, now. A bunch of misfits and nerds and freaks who have become my people. Antar and Marta and Ava, and sometimes even Matthew, but also some music and arty kids, a couple of second-string athletes, some gifted students and a few other of the dispossessed seeking sanctuary from the high school melting pot.

I remember being a kid, and then being a slightly older kid (preteen, my mom would say, rolling her eyes at everything I did), and still wanting to hang out with my mom, or having the occasional playdate with other kids, and that was enough. But then, it felt like overnight, all I wanted was this: friends I could hang out with all the time. And now that it’s here, I want it constantly. I need it like a high. Every joke is hilarious; every shitty thing that happens to any one of us is a tragedy. I suffer terrible bouts of FOMO when I can’t meet up with them. We are all up in each other’s social media; we compliment one another’s pics with a range of fire and heart emojis because we are the most gorgeous, hilarious, brilliant, and strong creatures any of us has ever encountered. Love, hate, school, clothes, hair, TV, movies, food, parents: it is all fodder for Snapchat and group texts. We are puppies! We are kittens! We have huge eyes and bunny ears and hearts and tiny birds flying around our heads! We’re dead. We’re dying. We’re expressing our constant devotion. It is therapy: balm for the soul, soothing the cockles of my nearly deadened heart. They know, they knew, that I was a target at school, and they buffer me. They shut people down and boost me up. They are saving me. They know it, too, what it’s like; all of them. The shared experience of being a loser. And maybe it’s that: the being part of something, as Dee said, the belonging that makes me hardly question her tactics, helps me to adopt them as my own.