Alexis about my crush on Ruby at all, and if I knew Ronni, it had never even occurred to her to relay that information to anyone either. Which meant Jamie must have said something to Alexis. “What did she say?”
I looked at the screen but the bubble was gone.
“Nothing, honestly,” I said.
“Let me see.” Alexis reached for my phone, and I swatted her hand away.
“Really, it’s nothing. Last night I asked her what she was up to, and she just responded now.”
“Interesting,” said Alexis. She drummed her fingers together like a mad fortune-teller.
“Not really,” I lied. I risked another peek at Jamie, but she’d returned to her salad. She scraped the bottom of the Tupperware with her plastic fork, which made a horrible noise she knew I couldn’t stand.
“What are you going to write back?” Alexis continued. “I can help you if you want.”
If she’d had it her way, Alexis would have drafted every email, text, and Instagram caption the rest of us ever posted. It wasn’t that she thought we were incapable of communicating. She just thought everyone could afford to communicate a bit more like her. She had a lot of feelings about punctuation and emojis.
“I don’t think I should text her again right now,” I said. “But thanks.” I gave the screen another quick glance—no bubble—silenced the phone, and threw it in my backpack. If Ruby did text me again, I wanted to keep it to myself.
“Smart,” she said. “Give it a few hours.”
“So are you guys, like…?” said Ronni. She glanced at Jamie, unsure what was kosher to say in front of the person who really shouldn’t get to have any opinion on the matter, if you asked me. But Jamie didn’t look up. She just scraped. Ksss click kssssss.
“We’re just friends,” I said. And then, unable to resist, I added, “For now.”
“Yeahhhh. That’s what I thought,” Ronni said, grinning. She gave me a captain-ish clap on the back. Across from me, Alexis clutched her hands and wiggled her shoulders in delight.
My face was fire-truck red. I could feel it. I shouldn’t have said anything in front of Alexis, I thought. I didn’t want it getting out that I thought I was capable of seducing Ruby Ocampo. I only wanted everyone to know when it had already happened.
Jamie threw her plastic container back in her backpack and got up.
“Quinn, you ready?” she asked.
“Oh! Uh. Yes. Yeah, I should go.” I shoved the remaining quarter of my sandwich into my mouth and hoisted my backpack over my shoulder. “Bye, you guys.” Ronni waved, and Alexis mouthed, Text me later.
Once we were out of earshot I muttered my thanks to Jamie for helping me escape before Alexis could keep interrogating me.
She shrugged. “They were being annoying.”
“Agreed.”
We walked without talking until our routes to class diverged, and then we saw each other off with a nod. I loved Ronni a lot, and Alexis, too, but even now I felt more comfortable around Jamie in the tensest silence than I did around my other friends. I wondered if I’d ever feel that at ease around anyone else, friend or more. It was almost impossible to get to that place with someone, and when it did happen, it took such a long time. And even then, cruelly, there was no guarantee you’d both stay there.
* * *
—
After practice, I pulled out my phone and saw I finally had a text from Ruby. It took everything I had not to yelp.
It said: Wanna help me make posters for the show?
She’d sent it twenty minutes earlier. I hoped I hadn’t missed my window, that she hadn’t already changed her mind.
Yes!! I wrote. No, I thought. WAY too much. Delete.
Sure! I sent it quickly, before I could find something wrong with that, too. I knew from past experience that I could lose hours of my life this way.
Your place? I added. I wondered what her bedroom looked like.