I step farther away from the rehearsal tent and find a quiet place near the empty parking lot. “That’s ridiculous. I mean, yeah, I get excited about stuff, but you know that about me. We’ve been friends for years, and you’ve known that about me. But you’re acting like ditching you is a pattern when it’s absolutely not.”
“But it is. Like when you first switched schools and you spent all semester hanging out with those two girls you said you were going to start a band with, and then basically forgot I even existed,” Chloe says.
I fling my hand up in the air like she’s making zero sense at all. “I was trying to make friends. That’s what people do at new schools.”
“By trying to start a band when you don’t even play an instrument?”
“I was trying new things!”
“It felt like I was being replaced.”
I kick at the scattered pebbles on the ground and watch them scurry in the opposite direction. “I know I’m not texting super often, but you’re acting like I’m the worst friend in the history of the world.”
Chloe sighs. “I’m not saying that. But okay, what about the time my parents asked you to house-sit, and you ditched school for an entire week and barely said a word to me the whole time I was gone because you were scrapbooking or whatever?”
“Seriously, since when did you start keeping a list of all the times you were mad at me and never bothered to tell me?” I ask angrily. “And I was not scrapbooking. I was writing a comic.”
“Minor detail. My point is that you let things take over your life sometimes, and you don’t think about who it affects. You don’t even think about how it affects you.”
“Oh my God, you sound like my mom. What the hell, Chloe? I don’t understand why you’re mad at me.” I clench my teeth and stare angrily in the opposite direction of the circus.
“It’s not easy telling someone you feel ignored, you know. But I hate when this happens. I hate being the half of our friendship that is always forgotten about.”
“I’m not ignoring you on purpose! I don’t know how many times I have to say it.”
It’s quiet for so long that I look at my phone to make sure she’s still there.
Chloe’s breath catches, like what she’s about to say keeps getting stuck in the back of her throat. “It’s not just that I feel ignored,” she continues cautiously. “I’m concerned, too. You do things without thinking. Sometimes you put yourself in dangerous situations, because you get so excited about whatever it is you’re doing. I know it sounds like I’m lecturing you, but I honestly don’t know how else to say this to you. Because to you, it’s just excitement. But to me—your friend—it’s a warning sign.”
“This is one thousand percent a lecture. And how is writing comics or starting a band dangerous?”
Chloe doesn’t miss a beat. “Inviting a random stranger over to my house, when my parents gave you the keys to house-sit and your parents thought you were in school, was dangerous.”
I blink.
She doesn’t wait for a response. She just keeps talking, like she’s trying to drill her point into my brain, and I guess I must be able to feel it because my skull is throbbing. “You knew him for less than an hour, and you invited him to a house where you were alone and nobody in town even knew you were there,” she says matter-of-factly. “And you didn’t even tell me until, like, a month later, when you let it slip by accident. It felt like you had some secret double life you didn’t want me to be a part of.”
“Seriously? I didn’t tell you about it because it wasn’t a big deal. He said he wanted to look at my comic, and I thought he seemed nice, so I said yes. But it ended up being super awkward, and he left twenty minutes later. It was nothing. I literally barely remember it even happened.”
“That doesn’t matter—what matters is that it was dangerous, and you don’t see it. I mean, you didn’t know anything about him. You met him in a Target parking lot. He could’ve been lying about the comics. He could’ve been a freaking serial killer!” Chloe says exasperatedly.
“I was fine.” I chew the inside of my cheek.
“You were lucky. Just like how you were lucky nothing happened when you got into a