When I get upstairs, Sammie has two mugs of hot coffee and a brand-new package of Oreos ready for us. It’s dark, but the entire city is lit up and alive. It’s the perfect time to tell her everything—and I do want to—but I’m not sure exactly how to start or what to say. Where do I even start? Sorry, it sucks, but he likes me, not you? How do you even say that to your friend? What words do you use to break your friend’s heart, even if it is just a crush?
So we sit mostly in silence on the plastic lounge chairs and spend the night working our way through half the cookies. We spy on apartments across the street and braid each other’s hair, and I’m grateful for the fact that she’s not asking me about what happened yet. She gives me a crown braid, so that my hair wraps over my head, which I can never do myself, and I braid hers into a half waterfall. Sammie plays with a new app that lets her take artistic night photos and then has me take some shots of her hair for her Instagram. She hovers over her phone while I lie on my back and look up at the sky. I count four stars, two airplanes, and one helicopter, and then I close my eyes and listen to the buzz of the city below us. I love being up here with her. We’re twenty-eight stories into the sky, away from everyone and everything, but perfectly good together.
“My hair looks so good,” she says. “This will get a lot of likes. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” I open my eyes and look over at her.
Sammie finally puts down her phone and breaks the silence: “Okay, what was that?”
I sit up. “I don’t know.”
“But, like, what happened? Why did you walk off like that?”
I shrug. “I guess I was just offended. I mean, what an ass. How dare he say we don’t know about life.”
“I get that. But what’s with the dramatic exit? That kind of performance is my specialty.” She laughs quietly. “You know that.”
I have to tell her. “Evan jumped in after me. After you left.”
“What do you mean he ‘jumped in’?”
“He got into the water with all of his clothes on.” I force a laugh to make it sound like it was something silly, something light. “He was playing lifeguard or something, I think.”
“But Vanessa was on duty,” she says. “Ugh. This is ridiculous. He likes you, not me.” She can see straight though me.
I try a different route. “Well, even if he does, I’m pretty sure that I’ve sufficiently convinced Evan that I’m certifiable, so I don’t think he’ll be expressing any further interest in me. Now he’s really all yours.”
I hope this works. Even though he may be into me, which I’ve just admitted, I’m absolutely determined not to go for him. I’m absolutely determined not to go for anyone. If Sammie knew that I even remotely like him, she’d back off, which would be pointless. As far as I’m concerned, he’s fair game.
Sammie gives me a half-skeptical, half-hopeful look. “So you’re saying you think I should go for him? That it’s okay if I go for him.”
“Of course,” I say. And I’m being honest. It really is okay.
“I mean, he wasn’t as much of a jerk today,” she says. “All that talk about true love and his dreams and that stuff with his dad. He seems really sweet, actually.”
“That’s true.”
She picks up her phone and opens his Instagram page. “Look how cute he is, with his guitar.”
She clicks on it and plays a clip of him strumming a Bon Iver song. “He’d make a good boyfriend, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t know what a good boyfriend is.”
She doesn’t respond to my pathetic burst of self-pity. Instead, she just sighs and puts away her phone. We lie under the clear, dark sky a little longer, and thankfully the conversation shifts to finals and senior year and then to less important stuff, like the pros and cons of fried Oreos and our lack of plans for my upcoming birthday, which is on the Fourth of July.
At midnight, we head back downstairs and climb into her bed, where Sammie continues to play on Instagram while I lie awake, trying not to think about my most recent Episode and why I reacted the way I did. Or Evan. Or how much Sammie likes him. Or how cute he was in that clip.
*
Sammie’s off today on a mysterious errand with her mom, one that she won’t tell me about. I assume it has something do with my birthday in a few weeks. Even though I told her she doesn’t have to do or get anything for me, she always plans some extravagant surprise, like baking me two dozen cookies from scratch or setting up a citywide scavenger hunt. She goes so far that when her birthday finally comes in August, I feel lame for not knowing how to match hers.
Since she’s gone, and it’s slow today, I’m actually able to get some studying done. Hardly anyone has come, since it rained all morning, just a few of the hard-core lap swimmers. Virgo thought he was going to have to close the pool, but there hasn’t been any lightning, just a sprinkle here and there, and there’s still another hour and a half until closing. Still, poor Evan’s under an umbrella on deck, waiting for an eighty-something-year-old woman to finish her water aerobics.
Virgo sits down next to me and opens the schedule binder. “Ciao, bella. Mind if I join you?”
“Not at all.”
He looks at my book. “Aren’t you done yet?”
“Nope. Three more finals.”
“I do not miss high school.”