Kyle leads me back into the choir room, which is empty since Ms. Jennings left for lunch.

We sit on the bleachers, and at the same time, we both blurt, “I’m sorry.”

“Let me go first,” I say.

“No, no, please. Let me,” Kyle says. “I need to say something.”

I nod. “Go ahead.”

“I . . . when you said all those things you said the other day, my first instinct was that you were wrong and that you couldn’t see past yourself. So that’s why I apologized, because I figured I would say sorry and it would be over and we could graduate in two weeks and move on. But then everything you said started to really fester inside of me, you know? It’s hard for me to even think about what my life was like when I was still . . . bigger. And I’m starting to think that maybe that has less to do with how I looked and more to do with how I felt about it.”

He takes a deep breath and shakes his head, like he’s trying to clear his thoughts. “What I’m saying is I guess I have a lot more things to sort through than I realized, and what you said brought up a lot of things that I’d pushed to the side . . . things that I thought I was magically cured of after I lost weight.”

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “That’s a lot to have to deal with.”

“No, no,” he says quickly. “Those are my issues to work out. I’m the one who’s sorry for the way I’ve made you feel and that this has apparently been going on for so long.”

“Well, that’s a little bit my fault too. I could have said something instead of being all passive-aggressive.”

He laughs. “I do thrive on clear and direct communication.”

“Yeah. Not exactly a strong suit of mine. I’m doing amateur night, by the way. Or at least I’m going to attempt to, so thanks.”

“Yes!” Kyle clenches both his fists. “Me and Alex are totally going. We can say we knew you when.”

I take a deep breath. “But Kyle?”

“Yeah?”

“I need a favor.”

The Prism Club is bigger than I’d imagined. There are thirty-six members in total. Clem’s jaw drops when Hannah and I walk in, signing our names to the clipboard.

“Welcome,” Kyle says with a smile. “We have one—no, two!—new members with us today.”

You better believe I coerced Hannah into coming to this with me.

Behind Kyle, a few ninth graders who I vaguely recognize give each other brief excited glances before feigning indifference, and beside them Corey from choir gives me a small wave.