the post-makeover scene in every teen movie, hoping everyone else was seeing me pass in glorious slow motion. I was still wearing my normal clothes and I still had the same haircut, but surely I looked different. I wasn’t just Quinn anymore. I was Quinn, Ruby’s girlfriend. Ish. I reminded myself at every opportunity, willing it to feel real. When I saw a pair of freshman soccer players in the hall I imagined them thinking, That’s Quinn. She’s dating Ruby Ocampo. I grabbed my books from my locker and thought, I wonder what my girlfriend, Ruby Ocampo, ate for breakfast. Then I remembered she’d told me she didn’t eat breakfast. Pancakes just for me, thanks—my girlfriend doesn’t really like breakfast food.
I’d more or less confirmed our status via text message the night before, in what was hopefully a very restrained, almost ambivalent manner. Ruby had finally texted me that afternoon: the slant-mouth emoji with a bandage on its head, which briefly made me panic she was about to write the whole thing off as a drunken mistake. I didn’t think she’d been very drunk the night before, and definitely not that morning. But before I could decide how best to respond, she sent the kissy-face emoji, and I knew she wasn’t going to take it all back. Later, when I asked her if all this meant we were together, she replied Lol so formal. But then she added, Yes, I guess it does. Smiley face.
So that was that. We were official. I took a screenshot, just in case I wanted to print it for a scrapbook someday. I wanted to give her something of mine, because just saying the words didn’t feel like enough. There should be a high school couple registry, I thought. I wanted my name listed next to Ruby’s on some sort of permanent record. Maybe even a plaque.
Instead I decided to wear my great-grandfather’s bracelet to school in order to give it to her. Not to keep forever, unless we were together forever, but to wear for now. It felt important, and a small, secret part of me knew it was because I didn’t think people would believe we were together otherwise. I knew if Jamie found out she would scold me, say I was being patriarchal and probably somehow capitalist, too. She would say I was trying to mark my territory, but it wasn’t like that. Or if it was a little like that, it was more that I wanted to be marked as Ruby’s.
Now, more than ever, it felt cosmically unfair that Ruby had B lunch period when I had A. But I practically skipped into the cafeteria anyway, plotting how to share my news without screaming it before I sat down. Ronni and Jamie were already at the table, which meant Alexis was probably still in line for her usual salad and french fries.
“Hey,” I said, easing my backpack off my shoulders. Good start.
Jamie’s mouth was full, so she gave me a wave, and Ronni clapped me on the back.
“What’s up, Q?”
“Not much,” I lied, stalling. I didn’t want to say anything substantial in front of Jamie before Westville’s TMZ joined us. “How’ve you been since…twenty hours ago?”
“Good,” said Ronni. “I ran a six-twenty-five this morning.”
“Are you kidding me?” I asked.
She smiled smugly, then glanced at Jamie. “Jamie was actually just telling me about her weekend.” Something about the way Ronni said it made my face go hot with worry.
“I went to the dance,” Jamie explained.
My stomach dropped into my feet. Immediately, I had ten million questions, but I was too shell-shocked to ask any of them. Who? (Natalie?) What? When? Where? WHY? As of last week, as far as I knew, Jamie had had zero plans to attend the dance. I knew this because I’d listened very carefully anytime Alexis and Jamie talked about Alexis’s homecoming drama on the other side of the lunch table, and Jamie had made no indication she would also be there. How did she even get a ticket so last-minute? I wondered, ridiculously, as if our crappy school-gym dance tickets typically sold out like Coachella.
“What’s happening?” said Alexis, who, apparently sensing potential drama,