and she doesn’t look even the slightest bit hungover. There’s an obvious hickey on her neck that I hope she will cover before seeing her parents. She sits cross-legged at the end of her bed, which I apparently slept in, though I don’t really remember how I got here. She hands me a glass of water. “Please tell me you did not hook up with Joe.”
“Eww. No. Course not.” My head throbs, a pain radiating from the inside out, like my brain is rotting. I sit up and then lie right back down. Too fast. All too fast. “So, I was thinking about going back early.”
The words come out before I think them through. I just can’t stand to be near Scarlett and for us not to be us. I imagine this is what breaking up with someone feels like.
“Don’t. J. Seriously. Not like this.”
“I don’t know why you hate me so much.” My eyes are closed, so the words are easier to say, to slip them right into the darkness. I must have spent all of my tears last night, because none come now. Just an overwhelming feeling of loss.
“I don’t hate you.” Scar scoots up the bed, so she is sitting next to me now, and her arm is around my shoulder. “God, you stink.”
I laugh. “Thanks a lot. I threw up.”
“No shit.”
“Scar—”
“I don’t hate you.” She pauses. Gathers the words. “But you left. Not me. You are the one who left.”
I look out the window, behind Scar’s head, and see that the trees are almost bare already, even though it’s still autumn. Their leaves have been shed, one by one, leaving the branches naked and unprotected in the cold. I shiver, pull the blanket up.
“That’s not fair. I didn’t want to go. You know that.”
“But you barely even ask about how I am. You didn’t just leave, you, you know, left.”
“I just, I guess I just assumed you were the same. There’s been so much going on with me, I wanted to tell you all about my life. That’s what we do,” I say, and now my bottom lip begins its familiar quiver. Maybe she’s right and I’m wrong, and everything is all my fault. Scarlett, my dad, SN, soon Dri. Maybe my mom, in some strange cosmic way. Maybe self-centered narcissists like me don’t deserve mothers.
“You know how hard it’s been for me? You think I wanted to hang out with Deena? When you left I had nobody. Nobody,” Scar says. “You never even ask, like, I don’t know. Anything.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I’ve had my head really far up my own ass.”
“And I feel bad even being mad at you, because it’s like, your mom died, and then you had to move and live with the evil steppeople. They don’t seem so bad, by the way. But I still need my best friend, you know? Not everything is about you.” Scar folds into herself and then starts to cry so hard, her body shakes. I put my arms around her from behind, my stomach to her back, though I have no idea what’s going on.
“Scar, it’s okay. It will be okay. Talk to me,” I say, but she’s in no condition to talk. Too many tears and too much snot. So I wait. I can do that. I can wait and then I can listen.
“Adam is going to break up with me,” she says, after I’ve gotten out of bed and handed her a wad of toilet paper to clean off her face. The floor undulates, but I can power through this hangover for Scar.
“Why? I mean, what makes you think that? He seems so into you,” I say, because he does. Before they made their not-so-subtle escape to the laundry room, he kept glancing at her, checking to see her reaction each time he made a joke. Wanting not only to see her laugh, but reveling in being the one to make that happen.
“I just, I don’t know. Partially it’s the sex thing.”
“Which sex thing?” Does she not even realize that she hasn’t yet told me they’ve slept together? Have we drifted that far apart without my even noticing?
“You know, that we’re not having it yet. Like, Deena had this big pregnancy scare last year, and I’m just, I’m not ready. It’s embarrassing, but I’m scared. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“No one knows what they’re doing the first time, right?”
“And I’m just so—” She stops, pulls the blanket over her head. This new