“You’ll do great no matter where you go,” I say, squeezing her arm.
Jodie blows out her cheeks, then glances around the room and spots the vacuum next to the drapes. “Are you doing housework?”
“That’s my punishment. It could be worse, I guess.”
Jodie taps her chin thoughtfully. “What if I help you out with that and we make some grilled cheeses for lunch and then watch terrible daytime TV together, like we used to during our middle school vacations?”
“Best. Day. Ever,” I say, clapping my hands.
“You know, if this were an old TV show, we’d totally hug right now and the studio audience would go ‘awww,’” Jodie says.
“I don’t need a studio audience,” I say, and throw my arms around her.
“Aww,” Jodie coos, and we both double over laughing.
CHAPTER 26
On the third day of my suspension, I’m tasked with heading over to the Shop & Save to do the food shopping. I decide to go early enough that I don’t run into any of my classmates—surely they won’t be hanging out in the produce aisle at nine thirty in the morning.
I’m hit with a sudden wistfulness as I enter through the automatic doors, thinking of my group expedition here back in September, and how wary I was of all the guys at that point.
Now I’m just hoping they’ll speak to me again.
The wistfulness hits its full peak when I steer the cart through the frozen food section. In my winter coat, I’m nowhere near as cold as I was that day, but the memory of the smell of Luke’s sweatshirt hits me like the world’s saddest cannonball to my stomach. It doesn’t help that Christmas carols are playing, and I wonder what Christmas nerd Luke would think about that.
I really can’t think about him like this. It’s not good for anyone.
I manage to finish shopping without losing myself further down Memory Lane, and for that I’m grateful. As I’m pushing my full cart out the door, my eyes fall on someone sitting on the bench outside the Shop & Save entrance.
Someone with blonde braids, snapping blue eyes, and a snowboard across her lap.
Stop looking, stop looking, stop looking, my brain implores me, but it’s too late. Greta must feel my gaze because she turns her head, her eyes instantly locking on mine.
“Hey! Mary Ellen!”
Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap.
I squeeze my eyes shut and am filled with silent regret for never making a will. I’m just going to have to hope Jodie knows she can have all my old InSyte merchandise.
I finally manage to lift my hand in a weak wave and hope I can fix my expression into something other than guilt.
Greta moves off the bench and walks over to me, hugging herself against the cold. If she’s going to bludgeon me with her snowboard, I hope it’s quick.
But it’s not beating the crap out of me that’s she interested in.
Her eyes sparkle and she grins. “Did you seriously take down Jared?”
Then, I swear to god, she lifts up her hand and instead of punching me, she makes a motion to high-five. So I do. She gives my hand a robust thwack. “Bad. Ass. And thank you.”
I’m still ready to run. I’m not convinced this isn’t going to be an ambush of some kind. “He had it coming,” I say.
She rolls her eyes dramatically. “Understatement of the year. That guy didn’t even learn from being called out, no, he had to turn it up a notch.”
“Yeah, I suspect I’m not the only one who wanted to flatten him after that last post.”
“What did he say to make you blow?”
“We were in class and he called my group losers, then implied I’d made my way from cold fish to raging slut, basically,” I say. “I was having a bad day already and that was enough to set me over the edge.”
“Typical dude, thinking he gets to label us to fit his narrative,” Greta says. “Should’ve punched him myself for the stuff he said about me.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for her to call me out. But when I open them, she’s shaking her head. “Like, he had to tell the whole world about Evan Fishman and drag Luke into it.”
It’s as if the chilly temperature has somehow breeched my coat and frozen my insides. I don’t even get to say anything because Greta keeps going. “I swear to god, he was the biggest mistake of my life. What was I even thinking? Still wasn’t any of Jared’s business, though.”
“Evan Fishman?” I blurt out when I finally have the capacity to speak.
Greta blinks. “Yeah, he and I were hooking up. I thought it was more but it was only ‘messing around’ to him—direct quote there—so when he went off with that girl he works with … wait, I thought you read The Buzz?”
I’m suddenly sweating in spite of the cold air. “I thought it was Luke who’d, uh, done you dirty.”
“Luke?” Greta says with a snort. “He can be a stubborn ass sometimes, but no. It was Evan who quote, unquote, did me dirty, though I guess I deserved it for being dumb enough to fall for his lying ass.”
I remember Evan driving Greta to Luke’s that day of the interview, and how she looked at him when she said goodbye. And then it hits me: “Fish-y.” It wasn’t referring to me, the cold fish. It was referring to Evan.
Fishman.
Oh my god.
Now Greta shakes her head. “I mean, we had issues, Luke and me, but it’s all because we broke up over the summer and got back together when we shouldn’t have. Then I had to start falling for another guy? I was really confused. Luke finally was like, ‘This isn’t really working, is it?’”
It’s like someone’s taken a wrench and clamped down on my stomach and started twisting, to the point that I feel nauseated. It’s actually worse than anticipating getting beaten up.
“So, when you came to the party together,
