Em sighed. It was fifth-period lunch, and she and Gabby, along with Fiona and Lauren and the rest of the girls, were sitting at their typical table in the junior section of the cafeteria. Or rather, Gabby, Fiona, and Lauren were sitting, and Em was hovering next to the table, having just told the girls that she kind of had plans to meet Drea at the deli for lunch. Big mistake.
“I didn’t know my presence provided such a ray of sunshine,” Em said dryly, trying to smile. Her skin was still crawling from last night, and she couldn’t shake the creeping feeling that the Furies were nearby. She’d agreed to lunch after all—she was going to meet Drea off campus (at the deli, so Drea could get her Reuben) in order to discuss the run-in at the park and the tattered flag; Em had been dying to share the details all day.
But just as she’d feared, and as harmless as it seemed, bailing on lunch was obviously going to hurt Gabby’s feelings. It would destroy the daily routine—lunch under the skylights of the Gazebo, rehashing the morning’s dramas—and forgoing it meant something was . . . off.
Of course, something was off. Obviously Em and Zach’s hookup had caused a major rift, but over the past month or so, she and Gabby had been working hard to rebuild their friendship. Still, it was crystal clear from Em’s distance and her new friends that things were different. Just as she couldn’t tell JD what had happened that night at the mall, she had sworn to keep the truth from her best friend as well. Gabby had no idea what had happened—she didn’t know about the Furies, and she didn’t even know that Em had feelings for JD.
“The skylights provide the sunshine, sweetie. You can provide the skincare tips. What’s up with your skin recently? It’s, like, flawless.” Gabby shook her head, wide-eyed. “I mean, I can’t even see a pore. Sit down and spill. Do I need to change up my face cream?”
Em looked around at the familiar crowd of girls gathered at their table. Lauren and Fiona were arguing over whether the new Bachelor was Hot or Not; Mindy and Caroline were sharing a plate of fries; Jenna was frantically penning her history homework last-minute. Em realized she needed this. She needed to sit down and talk about creams from Sephora and homemade avocado masks. She wanted to eat a slice of Ascension’s thick Sicilian pizza and complain about how hard her French quiz had been this morning. To have Fiona lecture her on the dangers of white flour, and for Lauren to laugh so hard she shot Diet Coke out her nose. She wanted those things—normal things—not another hushed, clandestine conversation with Drea about the Furies.
“I’ll stay,” she said, tossing her bag under the table. Then, with a playful smile toward Fiona, she added, “But no lectures about my lunch.”
“Like we could lecture her,” she heard Lauren say as she walked toward the lunch line. “She’s thin as a rail.”
“It’s not about size, Laur, it’s about health,” Fiona was saying. Em smiled as she walked over to the stack of trays.
As she waited in line for her pizza she pulled out her phone to text Drea: Can’t make it after all. I’ll call you later. She hoped Drea wouldn’t be too pissed. As she made her way back to the table, it was like her ears had popped on the way down a mountain—her head suddenly felt lighter. She knew she needed to talk to someone about what had happened last night. But it could wait. Didn’t she still deserve some semblance of a regular teenage life?
Back at the table, the girls were talking about Josie Swanson, another junior, whose parents were paying for her to have a private SAT tutor and a college admissions coach.
“May as well pay for her to have a personal academic assistant at college so she can keep scamming the system,” Fiona said. “Doesn’t she know that good grades and good schools are for, like, smart people?” Everyone knew that Fiona wanted to go to Harvard, and she wanted to get there all on her own. She’d balked even at buying an SAT review book.
“It really is kind of ridiculous,” Gabby chimed in. “Do you know that she has a hot tub? I’m jealous. Apparently there was some impromptu senior party there on Saturday night.”
Em took a bite of her lunch. Everything was the same—the thick dough, the too-sweet red sauce, the salty cheese. But for some reason, her guilty pleasure suddenly tasted gross.
“Speaking of hot tubs, Gabs, can you please ask your mom when it’s going to get warm again?” This from Fiona, whose health craziness did not extend to sun damage—she started laying out in April and was usually brown by mid-June.
“Fee’s dying to go back to that beach where we met those crazy USM boys last summer,” Lauren said. “Gabby, do you remember how absurd that one guy was, the one who kept bringing you beach glass?”
“It was embarrassing,” Gabby said with raised eyebrows. “I hope he found himself a nice girl his own age.”