and brilliant, her confidence parting the crowds in the hall like she was the ultimate Queen Bee, like she was Victoria’s actual secret, was Cherisse.
Holding hands with Keats.
“Oh crap,” Grace muttered under her breath, and she grabbed my hand, squeezing it tight. “What a complete bastard person.”
Keats saw me and cringed, stopping abruptly in the hall.
Cherisse turned toward him, confused, and whatever he said to her must have involved me, because for one brief unbelievable human second an expression crossed her face that might have been shame.
“Pen, I’m sorry,” Grace said, leaning around me and giving Keats and Cherisse the finger. You suck, she mouthed at them.
I giggled, even though I was crying. Keats looked stricken, but Cherisse was pissed, narrowing her eyes at both of us and spinning Keats around, marching him the opposite way.
For some reason it made me laugh and cry harder.
I wiped my face on my sleeve, the soft gray of the sweatshirt, hoping I wasn’t simultaneously smearing snot all over it. “No, that’s not it. It’s fine. Seriously,” I said, realizing as the words left my mouth that it was fine, that I didn’t care about losing Keats.
She handed me a tissue and I blew my nose.
It was Eph who was breaking my heart, Eph who’d left an emptiness inside me that was as surprising and infinite and unknowable and terrifying as a black hole.
As if the realization had conjured him into being, I saw his long, slouched form round the corner and pause, taking in the scene in front of him. Me against his locker, blowing my nose and wiping my eyes, Grace huddled around me like she was protecting me from roving bands of blood-hungry Vikings, and walking toward him, holding hands, Cherisse and Keats.
It happened before I could say anything, a blur but in slow motion, too: Eph dropping his bag on the floor and racing forward like some superhero, straight at Keats, knocking him to the linoleum; Cherisse’s hand whipping loose, her face opening to scream; and Eph’s fist, pulling back, like grace, like the fury of gnashed teeth, landing a hard one right on Keats’s face.
Cherisse’s scream echoed through the hall, and people circled around them so I couldn’t see what was happening, and Grace pulled me forward, elbowing through the crowd, and everything was sweat and adrenaline and noise and I needed to find Eph.
When we broke through, Mr. Garfield was pulling him off Keats.
Eph’s eyes were wild, like he was ready to keep on fighting the whole world and every single person in it, but then he saw me.
A beautiful, horrible ache bloomed inside, all the nerves in my body tuned toward him, and I stepped forward, wanting to tell him I was sorry about everything, that I believed him, that I loved him.
He met my gaze, and his face flattened.
He turned away.
Grace held my hand.
Mr. Garfield led Eph toward the principal’s office.
Mrs. Carroll helped Keats up.
Keats moaned and cradled his nose.
Cherisse sniffled but still managed to fetchingly flip her hair, clutching Keats’s arm.
Students muttered and whispered and laughed and dispersed.
The first bell rang.
Grace held my hand.
The second bell rang.
Grace held my hand.
And then my heart broke.
I dropped to my knees and cried, the most absurd girl in Absurd Town, the one who didn’t know what she had until it was gone.
• • •
Eph was suspended for a week.
I didn’t hear that from him, though. The seventeen times I tried to call him on Monday, he never once picked up.
Instead I heard it from Audrey, who stopped by my locker that afternoon, Grace and Miles on either side of me like bodyguards. She told us that Keats’s nose was broken, that Eph should have been expelled, but that Keats had said he’d instigated it, which was one small point—the only one—in his favor, and that instead Eph was suspended for a week, and when he came back, he’d have to complete four weeks of community service.
Audrey walked me home after school, both of us quiet and cold, and she hung up my coat as I crawled into bed, Ford making himself as small of a ball as possible against my thigh.
That night I called Eph twelve times, sent him four texts. No response.
When I woke up on Tuesday, I couldn’t bear the thought of going to school, my bedroom seeming much less fraught, so I told my mom I had cramps.
That night I called Eph eight times, sent him five texts. No response.
When I woke up on Wednesday,