Part of this was because in the last three towns, I’d quickly decided on a set persona: perky rah-rah girl, black-clad drama queen, student government joiner. Faking all of these things was easy, because I could plan them out, selecting the friends and activities that best suited whomever I’d decided to be. At Jackson, though, it was not so cut and dry. I didn’t pick Mclean’s friends. Somehow, they kept picking me.
That day at lunch, I’d come out to the courtyard, planning to take a place along the wall. I wanted to look over my Western Civ notes because there’d been subtle hints at the possibility of a pop quiz, and I hated surprises. I’d just gotten settled and started reading when a shadow fell across my notebook. A gum-popping shadow.
“Got a minute?” Heather said when I looked up at her. She was wearing her fake-fur coat and jeans, a big, red wool knit cap pulled over her blonde hair. Before I could answer, she said, “Good. Come on.”
She turned, clearly confident that I’d follow this command, and started over to the picnic table I now knew was her and Riley’s daily lunch spot. Sure enough, as I watched her go—not having moved an inch—I saw Riley on one side, sipping a Coke and twisting her hair with one hand. Across from her was Dave Wade. It was the first time I’d seen him since I’d decked him with the ball, which probably explained why I felt a sudden rush of embarrassment.
“Hello? ” Heather said from about five feet away. She sounded impatient, as if I had actually agreed to something. “Are you coming or what?”
I just looked at her, not sure how to respond to this. Finally, I said, “I have a pop quiz this afternoon.”
“Come on,” she said, and before I could stop her, she’d come back, grabbed my hand, and was pulling me to my feet. I barely had a chance to reach for my bag before I was being dragged over to the table, where she deposited me, my notebook still open, on the bench beside Dave Wade. As he glanced up, I had a flash of him hitting the pavement again, and my face flushed, deeper this time.
“You know Mclean, right?” Heather said, plopping down across from me, beside Riley.
“We’ve met,” he said, keeping his eyes on me. As I shifted beside him, trying to organize my notes in my lap, I realized that really, this was the most mundane encounter we’d had: no secrets kept, police chasing, or flying basketballs. Yet, anyway.
“She’s graciously agreed to be our tiebreaker,” Heather told him.
“Oh, God.” Riley rubbed a hand over her face, and I realized her eyes were kind of red. She’d been crying. “Just when I didn’t think this could get any more embarrassing.”
“We’re all friends here,” Heather told her. “And besides, so far you’ve gotten completely conflicting advice. There’s mine, which is actually, you know, what you should do. And then there’s his”—she cocked a finger at Dave, who raised his eyebrows—“which is not.”
“Would you believe,” Dave said to me, “that this is her actually trying to be unbiased?”
“Okay, here’s the situation,” Heather said, ignoring him. “Riley’s been seeing this guy, and she just found out he cheated on her. He says he’s sorry. Does she hear him out or kick him out?”
I looked at Riley, who was now directing her full attention to picking at a spot on the table. “Um,” I said. “Well—”
“I said she should give him the boot. Like, literally and figuratively,” Heather explained. “But Eggbert over here is telling her to be all codependent.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dave said, holding up his hand. “Actually, what I said was she should get his reasons for doing what he did, and then proceed from there.”
“He cheated on her,” Heather said flatly. Riley flinched, picking harder. “What reason could possibly make that okay?”
“People do make mistakes,” Dave pointed out.
“Look,” Riley said, waving a hand between them, “I appreciate this town hall approach to my problem. But I can handle this, okay?”
“You said that last time, though,” Heather pointed out.
Now Dave looked surprised. “Last time? Wait, he’s done this before?”
Riley looked up at him. “Well . . . yeah. There was this other thing, a couple of months ago.”
“You didn’t tell me about that,” he said.
“You were. . . .” Riley glanced at me. “Busy. At the time.”
“Oh,” Dave said.
“He got arrested,” Heather explained to me. Now Dave flinched. “What? It was one beer. I got busted for that in middle school, it’s so basic.”
“Heather.” Riley’s voice was a bit sharp. “Remember when you said I should tell you when you’re crossing the lines of what’s conversationally appropriate?”
“Yeah.”
Instead of replying, Riley fixed her with a flat, hard stare. I could almost feel the weather changing around us, it was so severe. “Fine,” Heather said after a moment, picking up her phone. “Make your own choice. It’s your funeral.”
We all just sat there for a second, nobody talking, and I looked longingly over at the spot on the wall, where I’d been able to sit alone and worry about something small and easy like the whole of western civilization. I was just working up a way to get back over there when Dave said, “So. Mclean. How’s the entry been?”
“Entry?” I repeated.