Luckily for me—but unluckily for them—neither Darbs nor Lily has big spring break plans. That’s why we decide to schedule a Girl Day, when we go out to lunch before splurging on manicures and shopping. When we all have pretty fingernails, we hit a bookstore (my choice), then go kiosk-hopping in the mall (Lily’s), and then make our way to a craft store (Darbs’s).
“I like the soy wax,” Darbs tells us as we browse the candle-making aisle. “It’s better for carrying the essential oils.”
“How about this color?” Lily holds up a tube of light blue candle dye. “Look, it matches.”
She flutters a periwinkle-tipped hand at us and I look down at my own fingernails, painted a bright red. Halfway through the manicure, I realized I was channeling Marley Flagg with the color, but it was already too far gone to switch. Now I can see that I’ve already chipped my ring finger.
Figures.
“Are you hanging with any of your rah-rahs over spring break?” Darbs asks me. When she sees my quizzical look, she clarifies. “Cheerleaders. Jocks. Assholes.”
“Some of those assholes are my friends,” I tell her.
“Seriously, June. Theo.”
“Gross,” says Lily.
“Not Theo,” I tell them. “Definitely not Theo.” I look at Darbs. “Are you hanging with Ethan?”
“Unclear.”
“If you’re not, Lily should go make out with him,” I say, and then Darbs and I crack up. Lily only blinks at us, so I explain. “Because I did it over summer break and Darbs did it over winter break, so spring break—your turn.”
“Actually, hold off on that,” Darbs says. We turn to her, surprised.
“You actually like him!” Lily accuses her.
“Maybe,” she says. “I don’t know. I just don’t want anyone else putting their tongue in his mouth yet.”
“That’s fair,” says Lily.
We reach the end of the aisle and round the corner to find Zoe Smith carrying a plastic store basket. After we all exchange hellos and commiserations about a lame spring break, she shows us what she’s buying. “They’re candy melts,” Zoe says. “All you have to do is cook them down and pour it into molds. They harden into chocolate candy, like magic.”
Lily looks down at the bags in her basket. “But they’re already chocolate candy,” she says. “They’re shaped like little hearts.”
“I know,” says Zoe. “But after I’m done melting and pouring, they’ll be shaped like little teddy bears. Way cuter.”
“Are they a present for someone?” Darbs asks, and Zoe shakes her head.
“I wish. They’re for home ec, which is bullshit. It’s supposed to be an easy class, but somehow I’m failing it. My GPA is all screwed up, so I have to cook for extra credit over spring break—how shitty is that?” We all agree it’s shitty, and Zoe continues. “Even Oliver Flagg—who only took it because of that bet with Theo—even he’s getting a better grade than me. When a jockstrap like that is schooling you in flambé, you know you suck.”
Anxiety tickles my insides. I forgot about the bet, and I never found out what it was about. Suddenly, I feel like I really, really would be better off in blissful ignorance.
Darbs is the one who asks, “What bet?”
“Oh, you don’t know this?” Zoe sets her basket on the floor at her feet. “So Oliver started dating Ainsley sometime last year, right?”
I hearken back to eleventh grade, when Itch moved to town. When I was the girl who got the new guy. Back then, I wasn’t exactly paying attention to Oliver, but now that I think about it, Zoe’s time line seems right.
“It was around this same time,” Zoe says. “Spring break adjacent. Oliver bet Theo that he could get into Ainsley’s pants by the Fourth of July.”
“No.” I don’t realize I said it out loud until everyone looks at me. “Oliver’s not like that,” I say as an explanation.
“Please.” Zoe snorts. “They’re all like that. My brother’s on the track team. He’s the one who told me.”
I turn into a statue. Cold. Hard. So still that I can’t turn my head to look at Lily or Darbs.
“All the letter jacket guys knew about it,” Zoe says. “Oliver didn’t make the deadline, so he had to sign up for home ec. And yet he’s still killing it while I’m flunking the class.”
The waves of horror wash up and over my statue self. I’ve been feeling jealous of Ainsley when really I should have felt sorry for her. And Theo—thinking he’s the devil incarnate, but now it turns out Oliver is just as terrible. Or even worse. Because Ainsley is his girlfriend. He’s supposed to cherish her, protect her, be kind to her. Not treat her like an object.
Oliver.
I am so disappointed in him I could cry.
Zoe is still talking. Something about how she also needs to do an extra-credit sewing project and do we think latch-hook counts. I don’t answer and neither do Darbs and Lily, because they’re both looking at me.
Looking at me with pity.