*Thinks you should keep design and make him dispense spaghetti* *is grateful to have laughed today when it didn’t seem possible*

A thrill races through me that even when they’re around her, she’s still thinking of me. And suddenly I want to be alone with the way my heart is soaring, lost in Starworld, far away from reality and Kitty’s annoying questions and the reek of Caroline’s cheese-cracker breath. I manage to sit there fidgeting for maybe another five minutes before I can’t take it anymore.

“I gotta go,” I say, and jump up from the table.

I snatch up my bag and lunch and bolt for the closest entrance to the hellpit, which isn’t far from Zoe’s table. I keep my head down and my eyes averted as I pass, but just as I’m nearly to the doors and almost feel safe, Ethan, one of the guys at her table, jumps up on the bench and starts moving all jerky and weird.

“I AM SAM JONES, YOUR FAIRY GODBOT. WOULD YOU LIKE CHEESE ON YOUR SPAGHETTI?” he asks in a mechanical monotone.

I stop in my tracks.

Everyone at the table cracks up like Ethan is the funniest thing since cats on the internet. Connor Grigsby is practically convulsing. And suddenly, my invisibility has failed: even the people at surrounding tables who aren’t laughing are staring at me, seeing me. But not like Zoe does. Not like I thought she did. She wrestles her phone back from Connor, and when she turns and sees me, her hand goes to her mouth. Clearly I was not meant to know that she was sharing my idiot antics with her friends for a laugh.

I bolt for the doors and don’t look back, screaming through multiplication tables in my head at top mental volume, trying to drown out the chaos of feelings with numbers. But my stupid, broken brain keeps interjecting the same three words: She told them.

As it turns out, Will’s new co-op RPG is a button masher, and consequently an excellent outlet for rage. I manage to mostly push aside my feelings about him ditching me next Sunday and channel the rest into pounding fuzzy blue squirrel monsters into pulp. To avoid thinking about Zoe, I muted all my message notifications except for Mom’s and haven’t looked at my phone since lunch. I can’t. I won’t. Everything I thought about Zoe is wrong. I shouldn’t have been stupid enough to trust her — if she’d tell her friends about Starworld and let them mock the stories we made up together, the secrets I told her about my mother can’t possibly be safe.