I thought about our conversation when he’d dropped me off the other night. He’d been easing me into a breakup, and now I wished I hadn’t stopped him. This would all be over by now if I hadn’t. In the end, I decided it would be best if I let Victor make the first move. I wouldn’t let him do all the dirty work, but I’d follow his lead.

“Really?” Anamae asked as we rode to school twenty minutes later. “Grinds? How could you?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Not sure I follow.”

“If you break up with Victor at Grinds, that place will be tempered.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t help.” Tempered was apparently a new word in a very long list of made-up Anamae-isms.

“Ruined,” she huffed. “How long will we have to stay away because you go full-on sad every time I want a cup of coffee?”

“Wow. That’s very compassionate of you,” I said sharply.

“Come on, Leath. You know it, Victor knows it, even the entire town knows it. You two are not meant to be. The whole thing shouldn’t take more than five minutes to end. Can’t you do it on the way to Grinds? That way, if you feel any remorse, like you usually do when you have a breakup, Grinds will still be fair game.”

I supposed I should have felt annoyed by Anamae’s selfishness, but then I remembered she didn’t possess the ability to be selfish. Anamae would part with her most valued of belongings; she’d give anything and do anything for me or anyone else she cared about. In her own way, she was trying to be practical.

“It’s not just me,” she continued. “You know that in a day or two, you and Victor will want to head over to Grinds for your weekly cup of coffee at Woodvine’s only coffeehouse.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, already feeling exhausted from the breakup conversation with Victor I hadn’t yet had. “I’ll talk to him on the way there. Better?”

“Much,” Anamae said. She patted my leg. “Don’t worry about it. I think it’s going to go easier than you think. Maybe this breakup won’t leave you second-guessing yourself.”

We parted ways as we walked into the main building. Anamae’s exam was going to be administered in the media center, while mine was in the cafeteria. I hurried to the exam room, taking my place among fifty other kids. Three hours into the exam, my morning protein bar was no longer keeping my stomach from grumbling.

Fifteen minutes more, I thought. And then you break your best friend’s heart.