should have told me. Real friends talk shit to your face and not behind your back.”
“Real friends don’t talk shit at all, Danielle. That’s what you don’t get. You’re so mean to me. All the time. You stopped being my friend years ago. You’ve just become such . . . such a bitch!”
“Oh, so I’m a bitch now too? Why don’t you write that on a note.” Danielle digs through her champagne-sequined purse and pulls out a pen, throwing it at Ava. “Let’s see . . . I’m a bitch, a slut, what next? Come on, Ava. There’s no way to win, is there? You’re a slut if you do, a tease if you almost do, a prude if you don’t, and a bitch if you stand up for yourself. I’m sick of the name-calling. We should have each other’s backs.”
Ava clicks her tongue against her teeth and laughs. “Seriously? You’ve been calling me a slut for years.”
Danielle crosses her arms. “I don’t use that word.”
Ava raises her voice in an impression of Danielle. “Oh, Ava, what do you know about being a virgin? Oh, Ava, are you gonna fuck Ryder again? Stop humping everything that moves, Ava. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“You’re embarrassing yourself now.”
“I don’t care anymore.” Ava’s voice is strained, like she’s fighting to speak and breathe at the same time. “I just couldn’t get through to you. You don’t see me as your equal. I’m not just your stupid sidekick. Sometimes it’s my story. Not yours.”
“Oh please,” Danielle says. “Don’t martyr yourself. If you felt like a stupid sidekick, you could have done something about it.”
“I did!” Ava shrieks. “I wrote those freaking notes!”
“And how did you think that would change things? What, you thought calling me a slut would miraculously make things better for you? You’re just making guys like Ryder think they’re right. You don’t get power by knocking other girls down.”
Ava shrieks, a high animal sound, like someone has just stepped on her tail. “You’re such a hypocrite! That’s totally how you get your power. You’ve always gotten off on knocking me down. You’re like a social vampire.” She wipes at her cheeks. Her hair has come down from its chignon, and there are bobby pins sticking out at weird angles around the base of her neck. She starts yanking them out and throwing them onto the ground. “I like Chase. I’ve liked him for years. You knew that. But then suddenly you decided you had to have him, and that was more important. You slept with him at that stupid party, and you didn’t even like him! You dropped him right after you finally got what you wanted. How do you think that made me feel?”
Danielle sighed. “I didn’t . . . drop him because I was done with him. I dropped him because he was done with me. He fucked me and then told everybody about it! And then I’m supposed to wait around for him to tell me he’s done? Please don’t tell me all of this”—she motions back and forth between herself and Ava—“is about Chase, because he’s not worth it.”
“It’s not about Chase,” Ava says. “It’s about you taking something you knew I wanted because you knew you could. And you’re doing it all over again with Andrew! You’re only here with him because of Keely.” I flinch at her words.
Ava pulls out the final bobby pin and her hair tumbles over her shoulders in purple waves. She throws the pin at Danielle. “I’m surprised you never fucked Charlie. Hannah would have flipped and you would have loved it.”
Danielle lunges at her, grabbing hold of the necklace around Ava’s neck, and as she pulls away, beads fly everywhere— scattering and rolling across the dock in all directions. Ava grabs a strap of Danielle’s gown, pulling and ripping so that it tears, and Danielle shrieks.
“Stop!” I say, and Hannah and I rush toward them. We grab on to their arms, trying to pull them off each other. Ava turns to me and her eyes are wild, like she’s gone mad. Her blue, glittery makeup has smeared down the side of her temples, and there are mascara tracks down her cheeks.
“I