I walk into third-period history, which is held in a bungalow behind the school. It sits on the field where the JV baseball team used to practice, before everything here doubled in size and space became impossible to come by. There’s no more JV team. They’ve been axed, just like half of the other shit at this school the administration decided wasn’t important enough to salvage when the Carter kids came. I’ve heard people talking about it in the halls, moaning how unfair it is that we have to suffer just because those kids needed a new place to go.

Which should tell you something about my classmates and how wonderful they are. Just so, so wonderful.

As I move through the room toward my seat, everyone avoids making eye contact with me, per usual. From the far corner, I hear whispers and giggles. The hair on the back of my neck pricks and my skin goes hot. I don’t have to turn around to know who’s talking, or that they’re talking about me.

I’ve begged my counselor only about a thousand times to get me out of this class, but she keeps telling me that it’s impossible, that with the influx of kids from Carter, every classroom is filled to the brim. I suppose it’s an appropriate punishment, in a way, that I’m now stuck in a room every other day with my former friend, Matt, who hates me and, to slam that cherry on the top of the disaster that is my life, is now dating my ex-girlfriend. Which, to be perfectly honest, is sort of my own fault.

I hear more giggles and force myself to keep moving toward my seat. I slump into it and train my eyes on the white board at the front of the room. I just love coming to school, to a place where people used to greet me with high fives and now turn their heads in disgust when I walk by them in the halls. It’s amazing how fast people will turn on you, even after you’ve known them practically your whole life.

Thankfully, Conor slides into the seat next to me a moment later. My shoulders start to drop away from their position near the top of my head. Conor’s the only one who stuck around; the only one who acts like my mom’s decision hasn’t somehow infected me. In part it’s ’cause he wouldn’t know what to do without me, and in part because he knows better than most that the choices parents make sometimes suck a big fat D. About eight years ago, his dad got back from Afghanistan all messed up in the head and his mom decided she couldn’t deal and split. Left Conor living alone with his mostly unemployed, generally drunk dad. He started staying at my house a bunch after that.