I managed not to text either Drew or Caro that night, and at dinner my mom said, “Why do you have a funny little smile on your face?”
“Oh, just happy,” I said, shoving around some rigatoni on my plate. Did they have rigatoni in the campus cafeterias? Maybe I should try being a vegetarian. “No big deal.”
My mom eyed me, but said nothing more. I could tell she thought my smile was Oliver related, and I decided that that was probably safer than her realizing the truth. I was going to have to tell my parents at some point, but I was hoping it could be in the future. Like, the way future. Possibly once I was a grandmother.
By lunchtime the next day, though, I couldn’t keep it in anymore. “Caro!” I said when I saw her in the hallway. “Caro! Best friend for life! I have to tell you something!”
She stopped in her tracks and pulled out her earbuds so I could hear the tinny music blasting. How she doesn’t go deaf is beyond me. “Well, you can tell Drew, too,” she said, gesturing over my shoulder to our friend as he came walking over.
“Hallway meeting!” he said, flinging his arm around my shoulder. “I’m thinking of inviting Kevin to my grandmother’s big seventy-fifth birthday party extravaganza. What do you think?”
“Snore alert,” Caro said.
“Can’t you just take him to a nice dinner instead?” I asked. “And yeah, what Caro said.”
“Duh, we’ve already been to dinner, like, three times. I don’t know how much more unlimited salad and bread sticks I can handle.”
“I love the bread sticks,” Caro said dreamily. “God, I’m starving.”
“I just want my family to meet Kevin,” Drew said, and underneath the eagerness of his voice, I could hear everything he didn’t dare say out loud: I want my family to want to meet Kevin. “And everyone will be there at the restaurant and Kane will be there, so it’s not like I’m going in alone and . . .” He stopped and took a breath. I realized that he was wringing his hands in front of him.
“Drew,” I said, putting my hand on his arm. “You should invite Kevin. If everyone else is bringing a guest, you should be able to, too.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” Drew said, waving my words away. “I’m just worried that Kevin doesn’t want to meet my family.”
“Well, he’s already met Kane,” Caro pointed out. “That’s about as exciting as it’ll get.”
“True,” Drew said. “And there will be alcohol.”
“Tell him it’s like a booze cruise, only no boat and your grandmother will be there,” I suggested. “That’s a good sell.”
“And cake!” Caro added. “Who doesn’t love cake? Oh my God, seriously, can we go eat lunch now?” She looked pained.
“Wait, I still have news!” I said.
“Let’s walk and talk,” Drew said. “I have to head over to yearbook.”
“Can you ask them to cut back on all the picture taking, by the way?” Caro asked as we started to make our way through the hall and toward the quad. “Not every aspect of high school life needs to be commemorated.”
“Not every student hates school the way you do, Caro,” I told her, linking arms with her. “Some of us might want to remember it.”
“If Caro had her way, the yearbook would be a pamphlet,” Drew added.
“On my island,” Caro muttered. “Okay, Emmy, hit it. The big news.”
I stopped walking and turned to face them. Caro looked pained that we weren’t heading in the direction of food anymore.
“The big news—” I started to say.
“Oh my God, you’re pregnant!” she said.
“You’re pregnant?” Drew said in the loudest whisper possible. “Is it Oliver’s?”
“What?” I cried. “No, I’m not pregnant! What the hell, Caro? Do you really think I’d be announcing that in the hallway at school?”
Caro shrugged. “I don’t know. You’ve never told me you’re pregnant before. I don’t know what the rules are.”
“I’m not pregnant!” I said again. “This is how terrible rumors get started! Talking to you two is like playing a sick game of telephone!”
“If you are, though,” Drew said, “then you should be on 16 and Pregnant because then Caro and I will get airtime as your supportive best friends and then you’ll probably end up on Teen Mom and make some really good money.” He nodded sagely, the oddest and youngest financial planner ever.
I just stared at both of them. “You two are the worst best friends in the history of existence.”
Caro just grinned and hoisted her backpack up farther onto her shoulders. “Well, whatever you’re going to tell me is going to be really disappointing now.”
“Thanks,” I said, then took a deep breath. “Okay, here’s the actual news. I got into UCSD.”
“Oh my God!” Drew said, then reached forward and grabbed me up in a hug. “Congratulations! Wait. Did I even know you applied?”
“No,” Caro said, but her voice was oddly flat. “I didn’t know you applied, either, Emmy.”
I hugged Drew back, then pulled away to see Caro’s stony face regarding me with . . . well, I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t exactly pride or happiness. “I didn’t tell anyone,” I said. “I just did it to see if I could get in. And I did!”
“And you did,” Caro repeated. “When were you planning on telling me, though?”
I glanced at Drew, who gave me the “you’re on your own with this one” look. “Um, right now?” I said. “I couldn’t obviously tell you that I got in until I knew whether or not I had, Caro.”
“Because it’s not like we had plans to go to community college together for the next two years or anything?” she replied.
“Plans?” I asked. “I don’t remember having plans. We talked about it, yeah, but we didn’t—”
“Did you tell Oliver?” Caro continued like I wasn’t even speaking.
“He knows that I got in.” Why was I starting to feel so defensive about this? Wasn’t Caro supposed to be happy for me? That was Rule Number One in the Best Friend Handbook, right?
“No, I mean, did you tell him you applied?”
I swallowed hard. “Yes. But Caro—”
“Fucking forget it,” she said, then started to walk away.
“Caro!” I yelled after her, but she waved her hand at me and kept walking.
I looked at Drew. He looked at me. “I’m out,” he said, holding up his hands. “This is between you two, not me.”
“Great, thanks,” I said, still watching Caro as she slipped around the corner. “I guess I have to go after her now.”
“Probably a good idea,” Drew agreed. “You shouldn’t let Caro stew for too long or she gets . . .”
“Yeah,” I sighed. I knew what he meant. Caro was an excellent stewer. She could turn a splinter into a redwood if she thought about it long enough. “Talk to you later?”
“Go, before her head explodes,” Drew replied, and I hurried off after Caro. “Hey, Emmy, wait!”
“Yeah?”
Drew smiled at me. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks, Drew.” I smiled back at him. And then it hit me. In six months, we wouldn’t see each other every day, that we’d be in separate schools—separate parts of the state—for the first time in our lives.
“Now go get Caro,” Drew said, gesturing off into the distance. “Before she turns into a fire starter or something.”
When she’s mad, Caro becomes an expert speed walker and I eventually had to jog to catch up to her. “Caro!” I screamed. “Would you just stop? Please?”
She stopped so fast that I almost ran into her. “What?” she asked, and the venom in her voice made me take a step backward. “Is there more exciting news? Let me guess, you—”
“Oh, knock it off, Caro!” I yelled. “I got into college and you’re mad at me? That makes zero sense! You’re supposed to be happy for me! That’s what friends do!”
“You know what else friends do?” she said. “They tell each other things! Important things, like the fact that they’re, oh, I don’t know, applying to colleges, maybe?”
“I applied to one!”
“You should have told me!” Caro yelled. “I thought we would get an apartment together, take the same classes!”
“Get an apartment?” I repeated. “Caro, do you really think my mom would let me do that? There’s no way! We talked about it, yeah, but there’s no—”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t know you were planning this whole new life!” Caro said. “Everyone seems to be doing that, though, making all these new plans without me. Drew’s got his scholarship and a cute barista and you’ve got San Diego and Oliver.”
I tried to interrupt her, but she didn’t stop. “I’m really glad you told Oliver, though. He’s been home, what? Two months? Six weeks? And yet he knows more about you than I do.”
“Oliver? Seriously, Caro? Is that what this is about?”
Caro stalked over until we were less than a foot apart. “It is always about Oliver,” she said, her voice low and venomous. “It’s been about him for years. I thought now that he was home that maybe we could move on, that we wouldn’t just be ‘Oliver’s old friends,’ or whatever the fucking press used to call us. But it’s still all about him.” Caro held up her hands like she was dropping the past ten years at my feet. “So fine. He wins.”
“This isn’t a competition!” I cried. “I’m still friends with you and Drew. I’m just . . . dating Oliver. That’s all.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me about college? Why didn’t you mention it to me? You’re not the only one who wants out of here, Emmy!”
“I didn’t even think I would get in!” I cried. “It just happened!”
“Okay, then here’s another question. Why don’t you call and ask me to do something? Or—crazy thought—ask me how I’m doing!”
I didn’t have an answer for that. It was no secret that I hadn’t been spending as much time with Caro and Drew now that Oliver was home. With Drew, it hadn’t really mattered because he was spending all of his free time with Kevin. But Caro . . .
“Caro,” I said. “Why don’t you hang out with us this afternoon? We were just going to go to the Stand and get dinner, but you should come with us.”
Caro just turned around and started walking away again. “You’ll have to forgive me if I pass on your pity date,” she called over her shoulder. “I know where I’m not wanted.”
“Caroline!” I yelled. “You can’t just walk away in the middle of a fight. That’s not fair!”
“Look who’s suddenly upset when things aren’t fair,” Caro yelled, and kept walking. She walked until she was just a speck in the distance, then she seemed to melt into the horizon. I watched her go, defeated, then turned around and trudged back to school where Oliver was waiting for me near the concrete statue of our mascot, a giant, soaring bird that looked like it was constantly deciding which student to gobble down first. (Go Hawks.) At that moment, I sort of wished he would pick me.
“Hey!” Oliver said. It had gotten cloudy out and he had tugged his hoodie up over his head so that just a few strands of hair were peeking out. “Where’d you go? I saw Drew and he said something about Caroline and stew?”
“Yeah, well,” I said, “Caroline’s not exactly happy about me getting into UCSD.”
“What?” Oliver frowned. “Why? She’s, like, your best friend. I thought she’d be running around the school, yelling at people and lighting firecrackers.”
“Yeah, well,” I said again. “Apparently not.” I didn’t feel like explaining that the problem had everything and nothing to do with him. “Ready to go?”
Oliver eyed me, then slung his arm across my shoulders. He didn’t answer my question; instead, we walked toward my car, with only one place to go: home.