of my mouth—and the loss of his dinner—I won’t forgive myself for the rest of the night.
“Here’s your tip, sweetheart—” he says with a flourish. “Do something about that attitude.”
I throw him a short, pudgy middle finger. The sleigh bells clattering against the glass are a cry for help when the front door crashes back into the frame, and the man disappears into his crusty old Buick.
“His check was, what, seven bucks? Eight? It doesn’t matter.” Sarah turns to lean against the counter, frowning. “I’m gonna live another day without a dollar-fifty.”
The frustration scatters over my skin like electricity. “It’s the principle of the matter—”
“‘The principle of the matter’ doesn’t matter,” Sarah says. Her palms are warm and moist when she presses them against my cheeks, and she says it again: “The principle. Of the matter. Doesn’t matter.”
This isn’t just about the old man with the money. I know what she’s saying to me:
Please, for the love of God, let it go.
Let Rhodes go. Let the past go.
Let. It. Go.
“You can’t keep making everything about … her,” I say, and bat her hands away from my face. She blinks once, twice, then returns to the dishes.
I don’t have to say her name; it hangs around my neck like an albatross in perpetuity.
“We don’t even have a year left,” Sarah says. “It’s going to be November soon. We have eight months together, tops. Quit making me split my time.”
“I’m not making you split your time.” It’s easier to have this conversation without looking at Sarah, so I turn my back to sling a bleach-soaked washcloth up onto the counter. I work at where I imagine the man’s fingerprints to be, as if I’m clearing a crime scene. “I’m making you choose.”
“Choose. Really?” I don’t need eyes in the back of my head to know she’s scoffing at me. “She’s my roommate, I can’t just—”
“I got fucking arrested, Sarah! I lost my scholarship because of her! You can absolutely ask the school for a new roommate.”
It’s the right thing to do.
It had been less than forty-eight hours since The Incident the first time I said it when Sarah showed up on my front porch crying off her eye makeup onto her hands as if we were all equally victim to some great existential plight. She’d been grounded for the rest of the school year and the entirety of the summer; Rhodes’s family had gone radio silent, and rumor had it both Rhodes and Griffin were being shipped off to one of those high-end rehabilitation centers set up in a McMansion with a live-in caterer the minute classes were over.
They all managed to get away, and the worst of their problems was dealing with their parents.
I hadn’t heard from the Savannah College of Art and Design yet, but I knew the other shoe would eventually drop: They’d read about it in the newspaper, or the school would be required to inform them, or someone would read about it on social media and tip them off. My parents wouldn’t take my computer away because I used it for homework, but I spent the entire summer on house arrest.
Rhodes, Griffin, and Sarah left me behind, and I had the most to lose.
I don’t like the way Sarah watches me as if I’m about to rip her face off. I don’t like this conversation, and I don’t like the fact that by not choosing, she’s making a decision every day to choose someone, the very person who hurt me.
“She doesn’t choose you, you know.” I snatch off my apron and toss it onto the counter. My shift doesn’t end for an hour, but I can’t stand to look at her anymore. Dad’s supposed to come get me, but I think I’d rather walk home. “Do you really think her mom needed her help cleaning out the garage at 6:30 this morning? Why did Griffin come get her? Why didn’t he stay—aren’t y’all ‘besties’?”
“You’re just jealous, okay?!” Sarah’s voice echoes off the walls, and her face goes from ghostly white to fire-engine red. “You’re jealous. You’ve always wanted to be friends with her—”
“I’ve never wanted to be friends with her—”
“And I honestly think it blows your mind that she’d choose me and not you.”
“Fuck off, Sarah.” I march exactly ten paces to the ancient punch clock that hangs on the wall, snatch my card from the top, and slam it into the slot. The date and time prints across the card with a satisfying cha-chink, and I