“Come on,” Agatha says. I follow her to her car. It’s a newer model, immaculately clean. She throws my phone at me once we’re inside.
She zooms through a yellow light without blinking and barely buckles her seat belt a block later. She’s always been an awful driver.
“Spill,” she finally says. “Whatever bullshit is going on that’s making you freak out on Linds and Talia and avoid Sammie and ditch school with Wesley, I want to hear it. Now.”
“You know about Talia?”
“You two were glued at the hip for the past two weeks, and suddenly you’re skipping lunch and she looks ready to burst into tears every time someone so much as mentions your name? Somehow I managed to put two and two together,” she sighs, picking at one of her butterfly clips.
I ignore the implication that they’ve been talking about me when I’m not around. “Nothing is going on.”
“Okay, sure.” She rolls her eyes so far back I wonder how they don’t get stuck. “So suddenly you’re someone who spills your friend’s secrets and skips class and crawls back to Lucas, of all the losers you’ve drooled over? That’s the story you’re going with? What you did to Linds, calling her out on Wesley and Sammie, after everything? That was a dick move of you, O. You know you’re my best friend, and I’ll shoot the shit with you any day of the week. But lie to me again about how nothing is going on with you, please.”
I don’t know what to say. “Things got messy with Talia,” I admit, leaving out every important detail. I fiddle with my hands in my lap. “It threw me off, and Lindsay was being a bitch; even you can admit that.”
“Lindsay is always a bitch,” she says. “But she’s our bitch. The same way Sammie’s annoying teasing and hair ruffling that he knows not to try with me makes him our bitch. And Wesley’s quiet mouth and awkward commentary makes him our bitch. And your roses and crushes and gossip and sarcasm make you mine.” She sighs and taps her sharp acrylics against the steering wheel as we zoom down a nearly empty street. “But when that shit gets too much for you, you tell her to cut it out. You don’t chew her out in front of everyone.”
“She could’ve done the same with me,” I retort.
She glares at me out of the corner of her eye. “What she said was messed up, no doubt about it. But this is about more than Lindsay being jealous and catty, and you and I both know it.” Her phone lights up with a text from Sammie. “I told him I was giving you a ride home,” she says, nodding to her phone. “So don’t get pissed at him over that too. He was going to wait for you.
“I believe you, by the way, that nothing is going on between you and Wesley. But if he’s the one helping you deal with this shit, I sincerely hope he starts doing a better job.” She pats my hand twice. “As for whatever you’re doing with Lucas…”
“Why is everyone giving me so much crap for Lucas?” I snatch my hand back.
“You said no to him originally,” she says, tilting her head. “What changed?”
I did, I want to say. Regression is compensation. But I say nothing instead.
Ags sighs. “Prom is prom, babe. You’ve always had the right idea about it, in your hopelessly romantic little heart. But the dresses and corsages and dates and yes, even the goddamn theme, are not the end of the world. It’s one night. We’ve got weeks of school and an entire life beyond that to worry about too.”
I pause. “Can I ask you something?”
“Given that you avoided all my questions? Yeah, yeah, I guess you can.”
“Why didn’t you run for prom queen? Why go through all the effort convincing Lindsay to run and helping her campaign instead of running yourself?”
She cackles, wiping an invisible tear from the corner of her eye. “That’s on your mind right now? O, I don’t want a pointless title. Lindsay, bless her, drunkenly admitted it was always a dream of hers back at that party she had before the year started.”
“What? When?”
“After everyone left,” she says, pulling onto my street. “I mean, you were there. It was literally just us three. You were all spaced out though.”
Spaced out about Talia, about her kissing a girl and liking it. About me wondering, I suppose I can admit now, if maybe I could kiss a girl and like it too.
“Wait, but if Lindsay has always wanted it, why’d she fight you over it so much?”
Ags cocks her brow. “Did she really fight that much?” I make a noise of agreement. “Linds likes to play it cool, I get it. But look, for her? Prom queen is it. It will define her senior year. It will define her. That’s not a bad thing; it’s good to have hopes and dreams and all that sparkly rainbow-feelings shit you love and that she’ll never admit she does too. I was annoyed about the theme and our grad song for aesthetic purposes, but I’ve got my eyes set on New York and Milan, not prom queen. And honestly? The campaign was good practice for dealing with diva models as a designer and shoot director one day.” She fluffs out her hair. “But I’m playing the long game with my successes. Looking at all those other people accepted into FIDM with similar designs as me made me realize that I needed to switch things up and challenge myself.” She hands me her phone, open to a collage of various dress sketches. They’re unlike anything she’s ever created before—all sharp edges and deep jewel tones. “I even got inspiration for a new line from all the campaign chaos.”
It takes me a second, but when I see the crowns on the models and recognize the color schemes, it hits me. “You designed prom queen dresses based on classic fairy-tale princesses?”
“The ridiculous prom theme and all of Sammie’s jokes about Lindsay looking like Ariel did one good thing, at least.” She laughs and puts her phone away again. “Even if it’s going to be scary as hell in the fall, I’ve got this. Who I am in high school isn’t my endgame. I don’t want to be defined right now, especially not by a plastic tiara that’ll probably have fucking seahorses on it.”
I laugh and feel something loosen. It’s not bitter, not angry or self-deprecating or forced. It’s genuine laughter, because holy hell, I really, honest to God, hope that fucking prom queen crown will have seahorses on it.
“I don’t think I want to be defined right now either,” I admit suddenly. “Is that okay?”
She places a hand on my knee. It doesn’t give me butterflies, not totally, but it doesn’t feel like nothing either. I decide that’s okay. “Whatever you want, O. But please, try to get at least some of your shit together.”
“Thanks, Ags,” I laugh once more before exiting her car, and then watch her nearly hit all of Sammie’s trash cans as she drives away.
* * *
“Glad you’re feeling better,” Dad says as he closes the back door behind him. I’m knee-deep in damp dirt, tugging at mushrooms that started to sprout around my Olympiad roses.