“Why would I talk to him? I told him never to talk to me again. He hates me. Besides, I really don’t think I need to torture myself by seeing him with Kelly.” I’m suddenly not hungry. In fact, I kind of have a stomachache. I knew I shouldn’t have ordered dessert. I put my spoon down.

“He’s not with Kelly,” Simone says.

“He’s not?”

“Nope,” Jasmine confirms. “He was never with her. They were working on some stupid project together.” Oh. So he was telling the truth. “Actually, when he found out Kelly was the psycho who printed all that shit about us, he requested a new partner.”

“Oh.”

Jasmine and Simone look at each other. “So are you going to talk to him?” Jasmine asks.

“I don’t know what I would say.”

“You could start by apologizing for flipping out on him.”

“I did not flip out on him! I thought he was hooking up with my archenemy!”

“Fair enough,” Jasmine says. “But someone has to make the first move. And to tell you the truth, I think he thinks you hate him.”

Simone nods. “He does. He thinks you hate him.”

“He does?” I’m secretly pleased. Not that he thinks I hate him, but that he’s thinking about me at all.

“You should talk to him, Ally,” Simone says. “It’s not worth it. I mean, you guys were friends.”

“Yeah,” I say. I pick up my spoon and drag it through the melted ice cream on my plate.

“Hey, Simone?”

She looks up.

“How come you’re supposed to be the least experienced of all of us, yet I’m lying around in my bed, crying my eyes out for days like some kind of slug, and you’re destroying James’s property and moving on?”

She looks surprised. “Because,” she says. “What else am I supposed to do? Being upset about it isn’t going to help anything. I have to move on. I have no choice.”

NOW

And neither did I.

THEN

Corey calls later that night. I’m in my room, lying on my bed, listening to music and catching up on my reading. My little journey into the land of no showering/no eating/no studying has left me woefully behind on some of my homework.

No one else is home, and I reach over and grab the phone on my nightstand distractedly.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” Corey says. “It’s me.” I fall back on the bed in surprise and my legs get tangled underneath me.

“Oh,” I say. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

Pause. “I just wanted to call, you know, and say hi,” Corey says. “And make sure you’re doing okay.”

“I’m fine,” I say. “How are you?”

“Good,” he says. “I’m good.”