Shane’s eyebrows draw together for just a second before his face softens and he says, “Ohhh, no. I’ve got a family thing that night. Thanks for asking, though. It sounds like it’s gonna be fun.”

Oh my god. “No! No, I wasn’t asking you, sorry, was that— I mean, I know you’re going out with Sabrina, so of course, ha ha . . . no, I was just, you know. Making conversation.” Great. Very slick.

Shane smiles sadly—I can tell he doesn’t believe me. But then he says, “Actually, Sabrina and I broke up over winter vacation.”

Oh. “I’m sorry,” I say. Maybe that’s why he’s sad?

“Nah, it’s fine. It was for the best.”

“Oh, well, that’s good then, I guess,” I say.

We both stand there for three hundred years and finally I say, “Well-I-should-probably-go-eat-my-pizza-now-bye,” and turn to flee.

“Hey,” Shane says. I turn back around. “Give me your phone number. Maybe we can hang sometime.”

I literally die from shock.

But I am only metaphorically dead, of course, so after I type my number into his phone, I book it over to Emily and Aviana to tell them why. Once I’ve returned to the land of the living, I check in with Emily about her OUTlet mixer situation.

“So you really want to go? Even though Brynn for President’s going to be there?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s still our mortal enemy, though, right?”

I expect Em to laugh, or at least roll her eyes and shrug. But instead she says, “I dunno. She seems different these days. Like she talks to me, like actual conversation, and not just because we’re lab partners.”

Whaaat. “You’re lab partners now? How come I haven’t heard about this?”

“I know. I—I just, I don’t know; it slipped my mind,” she stammers, and I know right away she’s lying.

“The girl who broke your heart and tossed the pieces in the trash is your new lab partner and it slips your mind to tell me about it?” I turn to Aviana. “Did you know about this?”

Aviana mumbles, “I dunno, kind of, I guess?” She announces that she forgot she has to talk to someone about something she didn’t understand in calculus, and disappears.

“I’m sorry,” says Emily. “I— She asked me to be her partner, and I knew you’d give me shit about it, so—”

“You agreed to be her lab partner?” This is getting worse and worse.

“See, that’s what I mean. You’re doing it right now.”

I sigh. “I’m not giving you shit. I just think you shouldn’t have—”

“What was I going to do, Ceej? Say no, right to her face? That would have been rude. That’s not who I am.”