Now I’m looking at Nevaeh for maybe a second too long, but finally just shrug. “I’m fine,” I say. I think that’s true. Maybe. I mostly try to avoid him. He’s friendly, like he doesn’t know he crushed the juice out of my heart with one fist, and, because I’ve got pride, I am fake-friendly back. Only my mentor, Carly, and these three know what a wreck I was for a bunch of the fall semester, under the big stage smile, armor engaged.

“I don’t even remember what I saw in him,” I say.

“Well, those shoulders, for one,” Taylor says.

“Taylor!” Katherine says.

I laugh and kick at him but miss, and he catches my foot and holds it. “Watch with the deadly weapons,” he protests.

“Finely tuned instruments,” I say.

“Of destruction,” he says.

“Of magic,” I say cheerfully. I am fine. I am just trying to be here in the moment and all the other things they say at the end of our yoga class.

Taylor squeezes my ankle. “Beloved pretend girlfriend, you know he’s utterly, utterly worthless,” he says to me in a very matter-of-fact way. “And he never deserved you.”

“Let him wallow in his regrets,” Nevaeh says. She grabs and kisses my palm quick, leaving behind glitter, and smiles one of those rare sunny, whole-face smiles that fills my heart.

Taylor bops Nevaeh on the head with a pillow. “Oh, hey, you and little Zoe tonight,” he says, and I am so glad to let Ellory and Gavin go.

Nevaeh groans and covers her face. “We were just dancing!”

“She’s so cute,” I say. “She has such a crush on you.” Half the freshman girls, gay and straight, have a crush on her.

“And it’s all your fault!” Taylor says gleefully, poking at Nevaeh while she whacks his hand.

“It is not!” Katherine says. “Quit it.” Katherine always squirms when we joke about Nevaeh’s heart-slaying. And Taylor’s long line of wannabe lovers, or my daydreams about artistic boys with melancholy eyes and lion hearts. Katherine doesn’t date. She says she’s never been interested in anyone. Never? Taylor asked once. She shook her head and shrugged. So we never bug her about it. I worry she feels left out sometimes when we talk about our own crushes, but I don’t know how I would even ask her about it.

“Thank you!” Nevaeh says, throwing up her hands. “At least Katy-Kitten remembers I will never in this life hit on a straight girl.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Katherine protests.