“Yeah!” Alex whooped, nodding in time to the heavy bass. He threw a glance at Réal, who didn’t say a word.
“Ugh!” Sunny shouted over the blast. “Dinosaur music! Turn it off!”
Alex just turned, flashing bright eyes and a wicked grin, and sang the wrong lyrics over his shoulder at her, “Satan’s Own around the bend…”
Sunny rolled her eyes and looked out the window. He turned back, ignoring her, and clasped his hands behind his head, grin cutting ear to ear, just like Shaun’s used to do.
Evie blinked at the back of his gingery-brown hair. King Alex? she thought. When did that happen?
The Olympia was packed. A wall of noise hit them as soon as they opened the door. Evie didn’t know if it was Ré’s reputation or just good timing, but when he glanced at a booth full of younger kids, they all quickly paid and left, giving them the last good seats in the room. Sunny and Alex took one side, Ré the other. Evie took the seat next to him.
No one said anything.
Evie cleared her throat. “So what about this party?” she asked.
Alex grinned. “Next Friday, after exams. I’m gettin’ a keg. And, yeah, invite whoever. I want it to be epic.”
Evie didn’t know who else she was supposed to ask. Everyone she might have invited was already sitting right here.
“Cool,” she said quietly. She glanced at Réal, who was staring down into the menu like he’d never seen it before. “If June comes back, can someone order me fries?” She got up from the table and didn’t wait for anyone to say yes.
Evie went down the hallway that led past the kitchen. The bathrooms were there, the ladies’ room mercifully empty. She pushed open a stall door and locked it behind her, leaning back against the scratched paint.
She couldn’t help it. The tears just came, like she’d been hauling ten tons on her back all day and only just noticed it now. It wasn’t just Ré. Fuck him. If he didn’t want to see her, talk to her, look at her in the light of day—fine.
It was everything else.
She looked to her shoes, at the almost obvious way her body now pushed against her clothes. She put her hand on her belly, trying to feel something other than flesh, but her mind just filled with horror movies. Aliens. Creatures. Parasites.
Evie heard the bathroom door swing open behind her. She took a shaky breath and wiped her face on her sleeve, then flushed the toilet needlessly with the toe of her shoe and opened the stall door.
Sunny stood by the sinks, arms crossed. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked, one eye squinted as though Evie were hard to see.
Evie bent to slap cold water on her face.
Sunny’s hand was suddenly on her shoulder, pulling her upright with more force than necessary. “I asked you a question,” she said, and panic punched through Evie’s chest.
“I’m fine,” she said, shrugging Sunny’s hand away. “I’m just tired.” At least that wasn’t a lie. She was tired all the time now, it seemed.
Sunny stared at her in obvious disbelief. Then she cocked her hip and said what she had probably really wanted to say last night, at the band shell.
“You know, Ev, while you and Shaun were off in la-la land this year, the real world was kinda happening back here without you.” Her hand flew up in Evie’s face like a frightened bird. “You can’t just walk right in like you’ve been here the whole time and act like you’re one of us now. You don’t have a clue what’s really going on around here, so maybe just back off a little, huh?”
“What?” Evie almost laughed. “What am I doing?”
And Sunny did laugh, harsh and cold. “I see you two, you know. Your little glances at each other. I know something is going on with you and Réal. I mean, WTF, Ev. Shaun is dead. Ré was there. And you knew. And now you two are—what? A thing?” She shook her head in disbelief. “Do you even know how fucked up that is?”
Evie twitched at the words. Sunny had hidden it well, but Evie could see it now beyond a doubt. And Ré had as much as confessed it last night, when she’d asked. Sunny and Réal were involved somehow, and no matter how “fucked up” things might really be, Sunny was plainly jealous.
She was also fearless—she might actually fight her for this, even though she had no right to in the world.
But that didn’t seem to matter to her.
“I—I,” Evie stammered out, “don’t know what you’re talking about. Seriously. I’m just not feeling well.”
She wanted to say, There is sooo much you don’t know, Sunny. She wanted to say, At least I waited till my boyfriend was dead! But she didn’t. She wasn’t going to blurt it all out in this dingy bathroom, with half the school on the other side of the door. She didn’t want the higher ground. She didn’t want Sunny’s sympathy or her hurt or surprise.
Let her have her rage instead.
Evie brushed past her and hurried back to their table, where Alex sat alone in front of three plates. “What the hell?” he bleated when he saw her. “Where did everyone go?”
Evie slumped down into the seat opposite him and stared at her fries. The urge to toss them all on the floor was almost too strong to ignore.
A minute later Sunny returned. Neither of the girls said anything, and Alex just looked back and forth between them as if a tennis match were playing out across the table. He tsked his tongue. “Everyone is so damn moody these days.”
And then Réal slid down next to her, shifting the vinyl and old springs in his direction, his leg touching Evie’s under the table.
“Where were you?”
