Sitting across from Aiden now at an all-day breakfast place not too far from my house, stealing not-so-subtle glances at him, I’m glad we have some alone time to talk things through. I told him about what happened this morning with Kaitlyn, but he assured me that she and Ryan combined didn’t have two brain cells to rub together, never mind be able to uncover my secret identity, and it put me at ease.

“How’s everything between you and Mason?” I ask between bites of Nutella smothered pancakes. “He barely said a word at lunch.”

“We’re good. We just kind of pretend that night didn’t happen, which is fine by me.”

He doesn’t need to clarify which night he’s referring to: the one at the beach house when Mason basically told Aiden that he’s an asshole who doesn’t deserve to be with me, right before everything with Harvey went down.

“Have you guys talked since?” he asks me.

“He called me to apologize for the hundredth time about my nose, and we talked a bit, but not about that night. I guess we’re going to pretend it didn’t happen too. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him in first period.”

Mason knows how I feel about Aiden; all our friends know. So even though he technically didn’t come right out and tell me that he has feelings for me, Aiden and I know the truth, and I’m sure our friends aren’t oblivious to it, even if they haven’t outright said anything. Mason is my friend, and I’d never want to hurt him, but I love Aiden, and Mason deserves more than trying to fight a battle he knows he already lost.

“How are you feeling about everything with your dad?” I ask, and Aiden’s jaw twitches. Every time I asked about it on FaceTime he would brush it off and ask me how I was coping with everything.

“You mean Andrew?” he corrects, and takes a sip of his coffee. “I’m fine. I haven’t heard from him since before New Year’s Eve, and it’s cool with me if I never hear from him again, unless it’s about him being arrested for ordering a hit on you.”

I hesitate. “And what about . . . everything else?”

“You mean the death threats from random people on the internet? As long as they leave my brothers alone, I don’t care.”

After Aiden’s interview exploded on the internet, he became semifamous. In addition to the whispers from kids in the hall, which didn’t faze Aiden at all today, he’s receiving both support and death threats from strangers. He doesn’t like talking about it, but my friends and I know it’s happening.

“Have they been getting worse?”

He shrugs, seemingly unaffected. “I’ve been trying to stay off social media. People can get really aggressive and I have other things to worry about.”

Being “Amelia,” I don’t have social media, but even I know the kinds of things people are saying about him and to him.