I miss her in ways I didn’t know I could miss someone. She is the person I’d become accustomed to sharing things with; she’s tangled up in everything. The void left in her wake is more painful than I ever would have imagined possible. She is the only person I have ever let my walls down for, the only person who was really allowed inside. I was always so afraid that people would see that I was defective if I showed them my real, unguarded self. But Sam saw me as I am. And instead of loving me less, she loved me more.

She loved me too much. And it cost us both everything.

In the weeks that follow, I occasionally catch a glimpse of her ponytail and hoodie as she plows through the hallway crowds, head down. She does not want to be seen, I know. I struggle between wanting to reach out to her, both because I miss her and because I feel desperate to help her feel okay about things, and respecting the distance she is clearly signaling she wants. But one day I see Will approaching in the hallway — he’s impossible not to spot, since his head is basically at a different latitude from everyone else’s — and I stop him.

“Oh, hey, Zoe,” he says, swiping at his hair and looking sort of shiftily off to the side. But then his face seems to soften a little and he adds, “How’re you doing?”

He knows.

My pulse speeds up at the thought of what Sam told him and the worry that they both hate me.

We move over to a bank of lockers to get out of the way of traffic, the sounds of shoes and shouts echoing around us. “I’ve been better,” I say. I don’t want him to tell Sam I’m doing great. That seems hurtful as well as dishonest.

He nods, and his deer-in-the-headlights expression speaks a thousand words. He must feel disloyal to Sam in talking to me and worried about what I might say or ask.

I force a small smile. “It’s okay, Will. I just wanted to ask how Sam is.”

God, he’s decent. I see the confusion on his face, the struggle to do right by Sam, and it makes my heart ache with gladness that she has such a good friend.

“She’s okay,” he finally says. And he shrugs, which I take to mean he does not feel at liberty to say more.