Noelle was silent for a moment. I tried to read her expression, but to no avail. It was as if a veil had lowered over her face, translucent enough to just barely make out the silhouette of something moving behind it, but still too opaque to make out what it was. “Pass.”

“Oh. Sorry,” I said, looking down at my hands. “Why did you break up with Elias?”

This time, Noelle answered without a second of hesitation.

“We were never anything serious. After the party, it felt weird to still be with him.”

“But . . . didn’t you spend almost every night in his room?”

“No. I spent them in Jasper’s.”

I tried not to show my surprise or, even worse, the strange sense of relief that washed over me at that.

“Okay, my turn. What are your nightmares about?”

Noelle seemed to notice the way I tensed and quickly added,

“Remember, you can pass.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m just not sure you want to hear this one. It’s a depressing story.”

“Trust me,” Noelle snorted. “My entire life is a depressing story. I can handle it if you can handle telling.”

The thing was, I wasn’t sure if I could. I hadn’t really talked to anyone besides my parents, and that had been months ago. It was only after a few seconds and with a sandpaper voice that I managed to say, “I was outed at my former school.”

In the empty gym, I could clearly hear the hitch in Noelle’s breath. I didn’t look at her when I continued, “There was this girl, Angelica. She was my best friend. My only friend, really. I knew her for five years and then, at some point, I realized that I liked her.” I swallowed hard. “I trusted her with all of my secrets and the thought that this might be any different didn’t even occur to me. So one afternoon, when we were hanging out at her house, I told her I had feelings for her.”

Closing my eyes for a moment, I could still remember the smell of her room, some kind of sweet perfume and the cigarette she had secretly smoked at the window. After my confession, she had stubbed it out on the windowsill, the quiet crackle the only sound breaking the heavy silence. I waited for five minutes for her to say something or to at least look at me.

When she finally did, I realized her smile was gone, replaced by a look of utter disgust, like I was a spider she had just found in the corner of her room and she was about to stomp me dead.

Thinking back on it, the same helpless feeling took a hold of me again; something that felt like swimming in ice water, my limbs growing heavier by the second as the cold seeped through my skin while I realized there was no getting out in time. It was the bone-chilling knowledge that, whatever I said, I couldn’t take the words back, could do nothing to restore the image she’d had of me that had shattered the moment I had opened my mouth.