“Parvin!” Ruth clapped, snapping me out of my downward spiral. “Don’t go to the dark place in your head again, okay? We’re worried about you.”
Fabián handed me a peanut butter cup. “Eat,” he demanded.
Fabián’s basement was the best meeting spot because his parents were never home. His mom and dad worked fancy jobs at the Mexican embassy, which kept them super busy and meant they got to live in this amazing house. They’d even converted this entire floor into a dance studio for him. That’s how Fabián had gotten so many followers: He uploaded videos of the different dance routines he choreographed and performed. He was almost up to a hundred thousand and had been verified on multiple platforms and everything.
My parents, meanwhile, never seemed to leave our house. Having their design studio in the basement meant they were steps away from making sure we didn’t eat junk food, even though they rarely remembered to make dinner. Ruth’s mom was the best cook, though she was the most terrifying adult I knew. She worked at Georgetown as a professor of data science or something like that. Who gets their eggs frozen before their PhD studies and only considers sperm donors who went to Harvard? Mrs. Song, that’s who.
Fabián and Ruth had tried calling last night, but I’d gone straight to bed after talking to Ameh Sara. Only to wake up and realize I was still dumped and dateless.
I didn’t just hurt because Wesley had broken up with me—I hurt because I’d lost a friend. Over the summer, Wesley and I had spent every waking moment together, and losing my accomplice stung, too.
“Want to open some of my PR mail?” Fabián suggested, like he was asking a little kid if she wanted to play.
I nodded pitifully. He handed me a sleek black box.
“Oooh, luxury packaging,” Ruth noted. She squirreled away the black ribbon from the box to use for one of her crafting projects.
Inside was a pair of sneakers in shiny, metallic fabric. They looked like an oil slick, with a faint rainbow running throughout. I picked up the card.
“‘Dear Fabián—Hope this helps with your next routine!’” I read out loud.
Fabián rolled his eyes. “They just want me to wear those sneakers in my next video.”
“Tough life.” I handed him the shoes.
“Can I keep the box?” Ruth asked. Doubtless she would turn it into another project, like an oven mitt holder or a paper-clip organizer.
“Sure,” Fabián said, handing me another box. I opened that one, too, and it was filled with workout clothing. I helped Fabián stack them into a pile.
“Do you want to talk about Wesley?” he asked.
“Fabián!” Ruth scolded him. “She’ll talk when she’s ready.”
Fabián shook his head. “I know, I know. I just wanted to put the offer out there. In case you did.”
I folded a pair of purple sweatpants from the box. I was done crying. And not talking about it somehow gave Wesley even more power.
I cleared my throat. “Am I loud?”
Fabián shrugged. “I mean, yeah. But that’s why we like you.”
“WHAT?” I cried.
“But in a good way,” Ruth quickly added. “You make us laugh. And we have fun with you. Why does being loud have to be a bad thing?”
Why was it such a bad thing? “Is that what being loud means, though? Having fun and making people laugh?”
“I think it’s when you’re not afraid to be yourself. You stick up for what you believe in, and you let everyone know it.” Ruth chewed a peanut butter cup thoughtfully.
“I just thought being loud meant you had too many opinions and stuff. Like you were obnoxious, or immature,” I said, remembering what my mom had told me last night.
“Then that means all boys are loud.” Fabián put another box in my lap.
“According to the dictionary, loud means ‘strongly audible; blatant, or noisy; conspicuous, ostentatious, or garish,’” Ruth read from her phone. “‘Antonyms: quiet, shy, restrained.’”
“Garish?” I spat. “As in . . . ‘to gare’?” I wasn’t totally sure what the word meant, but it couldn’t be good. Nobody said anything.
I opened Fabián’s other PR box. Inside was a Mexican flag, a bottle of tamarind Jarritos, a pack of Abuelita hot chocolate, and a single flip-flop. I checked the note—it seemed to be fan mail.
“Do you think they know I’m Mexican?” Fabián asked sarcastically.
Ruth silently dragged the flip-flop over to her pile. Lord knows what she was planning to do with it.
“But don’t you think it’s strange?” I pressed on. “I’ve never had a boyfriend until Wesley. Fabián—you’ve had, like, twelve. And Ruth gets valentines every year from random emo boys who are obsessed with her!”
“That’s just because I make valentines for the whole school,” Ruth insisted.
“What are you saying?” Fabián looked up.
“That maybe there’s some truth to what Wesley told me. Maybe I am too noisy or too much when it comes to getting a boyfriend. Otherwise I would have had a million dates by now, right?”
Fabián went quiet. He and Ruth exchanged a nervous glance. What weren’t they telling me?
“The thing is, Parvin”—Ruth fiddled with the black ribbon—“some people at school do think you can be a little . . . um . . . passionate.”
I gasped. Passionate? How dare they! Passionate hadn’t seemed to be a bad thing, but now, knowing people thought it behind my back, it definitely was.
“But that just means you need to wait for someone who sees how great that is. You can’t be upset because one person can’t handle your amazingness.”
“So, let me get this straight: The whole school thinks I’m this passionate person who doesn’t shut up and is probably really annoying and obnoxious? And nobody thought to tell me?”
“Parvin, that’s not what we’re saying,” Fabián objected.
But I barely heard him. Who cared if my friends and family liked my “amazingness”? If potential boyfriends
