I hadn’t yet told Jessica anything about my illness. I worried she must already know. It must’ve filtered down to her through school gossip lines. Even if it was old news, somebody would’ve loved the thrill of telling the new girl “the truth” about her new friend. But, if she did know, Jessica had never once brought it up, nor asked why I wore long sleeves and left school early on Thursdays.

With only an hour and a half ’til we were going to walk to Amy’s to get a lift, we started the laborious process of making ourselves up while eating the frozen pizza I’d cooked for us. With a slice of margarita hanging out of my mouth, I stroked more eyeliner onto my eyeliner. I smelled the armpits of my top for BO, and blasted it with Impulse body spray to cover the tang left from the shopping trip, while Jessica painted each one of her nails a different color. We put the album on again and Jessica sat on my carpet with her knees up, while I braided her hair into tiny plaits. When I was done, we both looked at her in the mirror, burst into hysterics, and spent another twenty minutes unraveling each one.

“Do you fancy any of the boys in our school?” I asked her, while sorting her hair. She’d never spoken about any of them like that.

Her pretty face crinkled up. “Eww. No.”

“Not even Francesco from the lower sixth?”

“When he’s your future husband? I wouldn’t dare.” We both smiled, and, though she was joking, my stomach relaxed a little. Jessica sighed. “No, I’m just not in that zone, right now,” she said. “To be honest, I’m still a little bit hung up on my ex.”

I dropped the tiny plait I’d been unraveling. “You have an ex?” I asked, as if she’d just revealed she had a Fabergé egg. In fact, I think that was the first time I’d used the word “ex” out loud. It felt weirdly grown-up, saying it, as if the act would suddenly make me like olives and want to read newspaper supplements.

She sighed again. “I have more than one.”

HANG ON.

“...but the others weren’t anything serious. Duncan, however... I mean, he’s a dick. He dumped me when I moved here, but I still think about him a lot. He’s a bit older. I’m worried he thought I was immature.”

“Duncan?” I still couldn’t believe she had an ex. An older ex. Multiple exes. Oh my God, this totally meant she’d tongue-kissed a boy. She’d maybe even had her boobs touched. In a minute, Jessica had gone from being my equal, to a faraway dot in the distance. I felt like a stupid child.