It makes me want to vomit.

Even so, I swipe to the side to reply. I sit up and give my best “disinterested and beautiful” pose. My face looks good in the camera. A tiny bit of remaining eyeliner still darkens my eyes, and I’m glow-y from the moisturizer.

I hover over the center button that would take the picture. Behind me, you can clearly see the stuffed animals and books on my shelf. And the clock on the top of the screen says nine-thirty.

I exit out of the camera.

And although I know it will just make me sad, I check anyways. And sure enough, right there in his Snap story, the boys’ night picture.

I put in my headphones and lie back down. Since I’m already being masochistic enough...

I open iMessage and click on his name. I scroll past the most recent stuff, the messages that were weeks apart: when do you leave for college? and happy birthday sorry this is late and how have you been?

I go back to the good stuff. The talk every day, your mom asks who you’re texting during dinner, losing sleep staring at your phone until four, everything they say is perfect, stuff.

We met at a party. It was my grade school best friend Claire’s seventeenth birthday. Claire and I went to different schools after eighth grade, and by the time this party rolled around, our friendship had diminished to getting Caribou Coffee every few months and our moms talking to each other about how each of us was doing. So I’m sure my invite was more out of obligation than anything.

But I went anyway. By that point in high school, I think my parents had started to worry about the number of nights I spent in my room, making chem flash cards and streaming Grey’s Anatomy. So I wasn’t about to turn away an invite to a Real High School Party.

It was over the summer, and one of those days that stayed hot, even after the sun went down. The warm Minnesota summer reminding us of how much we had wished for the heat all winter.

The event was in her backyard, with twinkly lights strung overhead and country music radiating from an iHome. And vodka in a water bottle hidden behind the swing set.

When Chris came up to me, I was sitting alone, watching the fire crackle, while most people clustered together, talking in groups of three or four.

I had lingered near one cluster for a while, but no one stepped back to let me in, and I was too self-conscious to push forward. So I took a seat and drank the orange soda that I was too scared to spike and thought about how I should’ve just stayed home.

“Too good for us?”