Emma were cold to me at school that Monday. People shot me sideways glances and whispered as they passed me in the hall. Some guy I didn’t even know grabbed my ass and asked for my number. I gaped at him as he walked away, laughing with his friends. Over the span of one weekend, I had ceased to be an unknown theater nerd and become “that crazy chick” instead.
Two weeks later, I dropped out of Eastside and started looking for online programs.
It took months of therapy and reading before I understood that I’d had my first episode of hypomania. It was supposed to be the “upside” of the bipolar experience—but it was worse than any depression I’d ever suffered.
I was terrified that Liam had seen those videos. He’d been a senior on his way out—but he was popular, and the link had more or less gone viral at Eastside. If he had seen them, though, why had he bothered to talk to me tonight? Why had he asked me out?
I hated wondering, hated worrying who knew what about me. It was why I’d left Eastside, and it was why the idea of a phone-and-text-only friendship with Ripley appealed to me on a deep level. From a distance, I could filter out the worst parts of myself.
I tapped Ripley’s number, and it only rang twice before he picked up.
“She lives!”
The sound of his voice sent a wave of relief through me; I hadn’t realized how stressed out I had been. Or how lonely.
“Hello? Can you hear me?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry. It’s been a long day.”
“Tell me about it.” He paused. “No, seriously. Actually tell me about it. Distract me from the napalm-and-raccoon-hair trash fire that is my life.”
I laughed. “Well, to start with, we got evicted from our trailer park.”
Ripley gasped. “Are you being serious right now? Or is this some weird Indiana country music reference I’m not getting?”
I snorted. “Serious. Apparently, we haven’t paid rent for like three months.”
“Holy shit. Where are you?”
“Walmart.”
“At ten thirty at night?”
I looked at my phone. “It’s one thirty-two a.m. where I . . . Oh, shit!”
“What is it?”
“I forgot my US History test. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“I thought your school was flexible about tests. You can’t just take it now?”
I slapped my hand against my forehead. “I can—it’s just . . . I lose a full a letter grade. And I have to maintain a three point oh to get into Harrison.”
“Right. Nursing school. Shit. What are you going to do?”
I wound a lock of hair around my finger and yanked. “I don’t know.”
I heard a scraping noise on the other end of the line, then some ominous thumps. Ripley liked to talk to me from the privacy of the little roof outside his window; I assumed he was crawling out there right now. I felt a sudden rush of envy that Ripley lived in an actual house.
“What about you?” I said, forcing myself to reengage. “What’s your existential crisis?”
“Oh, that. Dad and Heather had an epic fight, but it’s over now.”
I closed my eyes and yanked on my hair again. I was the worst kind of friend: always needy but never available when it was my turn to listen.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.” My voice sounded small.
“Don’t even. Your timing is perfect. The aftermath was worse than the fight; they made up loudly for like two hours. I think I’m permanently traumatized.”
I laughed. “That’s nasty.”
“Oh, and I caught Jude vaping. Only twelve, and already a delinquent. So yeah, things are basically falling apart here. At least my mother hasn’t turned up. That would fuck everything worse.”
“Yeah.” I tried to sound sympathetic, but a splinter of resentment stuck in my throat. If my mom were still alive, I’d want to see her, no matter what.
“But back to you. What are you going to do about money?”
I leaned back against the stucco exterior of the Walmart. “I don’t know. We’ve never been this hard up before.”
Immediately, I wanted to take it back. I didn’t think I could look myself in the mirror if I heard a single note of pity in Ripley’s voice. He was an optimist, a problem solver. That’s what I loved about him.
“Are you going to resort to bump-and-grabs again, or . . . ?”
“I jacked eighty gallons of diesel and a wallet. Does that count?”
“Holy crap! I’d say so. Are you still keeping track?”
“Yeah.”
“Let me know if you need me to hack in and delete any security-camera footage.”
“You can