Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,10
and we might make friends outside of our musketeering but we always knew that we four were the closest of friends and the “core” group.
I’m close friends with a few juniors and sophomores because of how I had to repeat first geometry and then algebra 2. Imani has two other tight friend groups, one with the student council kids and the other through the Multicultural Club (I’m in it, too, but I don’t go as much as Imani because I have tutoring after school. Right now the club is putting together an anime film festival). Siggy is hella into Botany Club and is of course close with Mark’s friends. Blair is big in the AV Club and the newspaper, and has other friends in those groups.
But for all of these other friendship circles, we all always knew that Imani, Siggy, Blair, and me were the innermost circle. The base. The core.
And for me it was like each of them saw something different in me, and more than that called something else to the front.
With Blair it was intensity. She made me feel so immediate, a little unsafe, a little thrilled, being around her like being on a roller coaster that hasn’t been tested.
I don’t know what she liked about me. Whatever it was, I guess she didn’t like it all that much, in the end.
We were all still friends until a little over one week ago, which is when I found out that Blair had gone behind my back to go out with the guy I was dating. And when I say “dating” let me unpack how pathetic this all is, because Scott’s the one guy I’ve ever actually gone on a real date with, okay? And he’s only the second guy I’ve ever French kissed, and the second French kiss total. (When we kissed the first time at least. We kissed a lot after that.)
I mean, it’s not pathetic to not date. Plenty of people don’t date, and they don’t want to. And that’s great!
It’s just that I really want to. Despite all my complaining about Siggy and Mark. And my teasing Imani when she was with her ex, Ryan, who graduated last year.
Despite all of that, I just really, really wish I had a boyfriend, too.
High school for me has been one long, unending series of secret crushes from afar or boys who “think of you like a sister,” and I’m not good at flirting or any of it.
But then there was Scott! And we were flirting, effortlessly, and he was so fun and funny and when he looked at me, I felt like he saw me and saw someone awesome at the same time. He doesn’t go to our school; he actually lives in Peachtree City, which is thirty minutes away, and so it sort of gave me hope, too. That maybe boys just don’t like me here, but when I get somewhere else . . .
Anyway, we met at a comic shop event in Peachtree City. One of the artists for the comics adaptation of Human Wasteland was there signing. Scott started talking to me, about the show, about zombies, and the podcast he wanted to start, and we just clicked.
Scott was the first guy I really liked who liked me back. And okay, so he wasn’t my official, exclusive boyfriend. Not in that “going together” or “it’s serious” way, but I thought we had that potential. And it sucked that I got him so wrong, and that he was a two-timing jerk, but it hurt so much more because Blair was my friend.
Or so I thought.
Needles sting the corners of my eyes.
Blair has reached the separate VIP security station. She’s opening her purse for the guard, smiling and talking to him.
Okay, I better look away, because I don’t want to cry, and I definitely don’t want her to see us here in the damn plebe line, and I don’t want to miss her at all, which I do. Even though I hate her with the fire of a thousand suns that are also on fire and in a volcano. In space. A space-volcano.