10:43 P.M.

I wonder where I’ll be in a year from now.

11:15 P.M.

I’ve never cried as much as I have in the last twenty hours. I thought I was done crying, but then Kate made me a cheese toasty, and I started all over again.

Sunday, July 15 #HappyBirthdayToMe

12:01 A.M.

I’m sixteen.

11:35 A.M.

Thirty-five people have already messaged me wishing me a happy birthday, including Miriam Patel.

Emma hasn’t.

Kate gave me a card Nan and Granddad sent from Hong Kong. They say I should visit soon. Maybe I should spontaneously go this summer. It’s not like I’m doing anything else. Maybe I’ll ask Mum.

She hasn’t messaged me.

Kate, James, and I are going out to lunch now, but we have to go via the thrift shop, because Kate forgot her wallet there, and she’d never let James pay.

Monday, July 16 #HereBeDragons

So, yesterday was basically insane.

We got to the thrift shop, which was obviously shut because it’s Sunday.

Kate unlocked and shimmied inside, and James was all rubbing himself up against her back in the process, and Kate was like: “Phoebe, can you see if my wallet’s on the stockroom table?” And I was like: “Check yourself,” but Kate was like: “I can’t, because I’m kissing James.” And then she went and kissed James, and I was just like: gross.

So I walked through the shop, and into the stockroom, and suddenly all these people shouted, actually shouted:

“SURPRISE!!!!!!”

And I swear I screamed and fell to the floor.

Kate was laughing and clapping, someone switched on the lights and opened the back door, and then everyone was singing “Happy Birthday.”

Everyone was there.

In the stockroom.

Singing.

Polly, Tristan, Emma, Miriam Patel, Alex, his parents, Bill, and even Pat.

I think I must have said “fuck” about a thousand times, but no one was outraged, they just laughed at me.

My eyes kept bouncing back to Emma, and my heartbeat was all over the place, but that could have been the shock of the surprise. She smiled at me, but I knew straightaway that something was off. Missing. Broken.

My brain was like: What have you done, Phoebe? But there was so much going on that I couldn’t process that question properly, and so I was left just looking at Emma, and looking at Emma, and looking at Emma.

Kate must have arranged the whole thing on Saturday when I was recovering from that awful meltdown and was literally lying unconscious on the sofa.

The table was set all Halloween-like with skull cups and ghost plates and a string of skull fairy lights along the middle, and skull and rat candles.

People must have brought chairs, and there was food, and presents, and everything.

It’s still so strange to think that everyone had made such an effort for me.

I’m also still surprised that Kate had any love left after I almost kicked down the wall that separates the hallway from the kitchen in my blind rage.