On Thursday at lunch, Mina Lee and Grace Leung arrive as emissaries from their corner of the academic court to talk to Regina. They come together, like they need reinforcements, pretending the rest of us aren’t there and standing over Regina while she tries to eat her lunch.

Mina and Grace are both part of a group of maybe a dozen or so girls in our grade and the grades below who’ve all grown up going to Regina’s church together. I don’t know either of them well—aside from Regina her church group has always been pretty insular—but I’ve had enough classes with Mina to get the sense that her view of the world is a series of kind of rigid boxes I probably wouldn’t fit neatly into. Once, hanging out at lunch last year, one of those days we took for granted, Sandra watched from across the rally court as Mina talked with Orson Lam. She mimicked a narration as Mina looked up at him and giggled—Oh, Orson, you are just so funny!—and then when Mina kept tugging down the bottom of her skirt, running her hands over her shoulder like she was checking to make sure her bra straps were in place, Sandra said dryly, “When you want a boyfriend but also your boyfriend is Jesus.” Regina was kind of pissed; she always stuck up for her friends from church. I remembered how Mina said once in AP English that girls who wore tight clothes had low self-esteem—it was a throwaway comment, something that was supposed to be a self-evident truth, and I remembered Sandra was wearing this clingy skirt that day. She referenced that comment once or twice as why she didn’t like Mina, but sometimes I wondered if the truth was that she was kind of jealous of those friends—all those times Regina vanished into them and their world.

“We just wanted to see how you were doing,” Mina says now. “We haven’t seen you at church in so long.”

Regina puts up a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, squinting up at them. “That’s nice of you. I’ve been good, just busy.”

Grace and Mina glance at each other. Mina says, “Do you think you’ll come out on Friday night?”

“I think I actually might have some things I need to work on.”

“Right,” Grace says, like she expected that answer. “What about Sunday? We’re probably going to start planning Brothers Appreciation Night. We want to do a progressive dinner. We thought maybe your house could be one station since you live right by the Chiens.”

“Sunday I have SAT tutoring, actually.”

“Oh.” Grace looks at Mina again, maybe for some sort of confirmation. They’re uncomfortable in a way that makes it clear if there was any way they could’ve managed to have this conversation with just her, and not in front of us, they would’ve. “So, um, how’s your walk with God been going?”

Lauren Kao and Maurice Wong, who’d been talking with us, both kind of edge away, drifting toward where Abishek Batra is laughing about something I can’t make out. Regina says, “It’s fine.”

“It’s just really been on our hearts to see how everything’s been going for you.”

Regina smiles. “Things are fine.”

“When my mom was in the hospital freshman year it really helped when I was good about doing my quiet times,” Grace says, and it comes out in a rush like maybe she’s been rehearsing it. “I went through this one book—I can lend it to you if—”

“Sure, thanks.”

She’s sitting very still, holding the same smile on her face, and you can see them feeling themselves deflect off her. Harry says, “You guys want to sit down?”

“No, we just wanted to say hi,” Mina says quickly. She turns a little red. “Regina, let us know if there’s anything we can lift up for you, okay? Or let us know if you want to be part of the progressive dinner or anything. And I’ll get you that book.”

“Great. Thanks.”

When they’re out of earshot, Harry says, “It sounds kind of nice to have something like that to go to.” He says it with a careful, practiced mildness that makes me think he worries about her more than he lets on. “Your church, I mean. It meant a lot to you, right?”

“Sure.”

I say, “Sometimes I wish I believed something like that.”

She shrugs. “You can.”

Is that what people think, that you can just decide what to believe that way? That’s not how believing in anything works—you can’t always buy in when you want to, even if you know it would be better if you did. It’s why leaving Texas was so hard for me as a kid, even as much as I wanted it to be true what my parents told me that it was fine, that we’d be happier.

Harry watches her. He finishes his lunch, some kind of Paleo bowl from one of those meal-delivery services, then crumples up the (compostable) bowl. “Are you annoyed?”

“No.”

I can’t tell if she means it or not. I also can’t tell if she’d answer differently if I weren’t here—if she’d open up with just Harry and no one else.

“You were kind of acting like it,” Harry says.

“I mean—” She sighs. “No. I wasn’t. I don’t know.”

She’s quiet the last few minutes of lunch, and I think she’s maybe a little relieved when the bell rings. All day I think about that. Honestly, I’m not the biggest fan of Mina Lee, but coming and finding Regina when she’s with all her friends, pressing to make sure she’s actually okay according to the terms they always cared about most—when have I done that for her? I should try harder, put myself out there more. I owe her at least that much.

This is the thing I keep coming back to: the ASB elections last year. Because of what happened with Sandra, mostly, and because I keep going back again and again to try to figure out how much blame I hold and what it all means.

Harry, of course, was running for senior class president. Harry has been class president every single year since first grade (and I think it says something that I know this, even though I didn’t go to first through sixth grade with him).

“You should run for vice president,” he said earnestly. “Or like—secretary, or something.”

“I’ll pass.”

“It would be cool if you won and then we were on it together.”

“Assuming you win.”

“Yeah, assuming I do.” He wrapped his fingers into a fist and thumped it gently, pinkie side down, against his palm. “You think I will?”

“Probably.” Since I first met him, I’m not sure Harry has lost anything more significant than a tennis match.

“I’ve tried to do a decent job with it before.”

I knew he was fishing, but I also knew he meant it, that it really mattered to him. I’ve seen how hard he’s worked on ASB stuff, how he’ll send out memos to everyone in Leadership about inclusiveness and campus culture and peer connectedness. When we have rallies, he spends hours trying to get a good cross section of the student body to call up to participate in front of everyone, and he’s always proposing stuff like Tell Someone You Care week or things like that. Every class has its own particular personality, and the class above us was kind of shallow and cruel, the sort of social ecosystem where girls would regularly cry at lunch and if one of the popular kids was talking to you the odds were good it was some kind of joke, and we aren’t like that (thank God) in part because of him. I should’ve just told him that, that I think caring as much as he does and working as hard as he has is something to be proud of, and that if I had to say who the most influential person is on campus it’s him, easily, and I think he’s actually tried to use that in a positive way because in the truest, most non-throwaway sense of the word, Harry’s nice. He is. He’s a nice guy.

I didn’t, though. I said, “Mm.”

You would think, perhaps, that eleven out of twelve would be enough of a run and that it wouldn’t matter to him all that much if he got to do it a final time, but you would be dead wrong. I knew how desperately he wanted to win the election. I knew because of how much he didn’t like talking about it. He did all the campaign stuff—he made posters, he went around at lunch and talked to people, joking around with the freshman guys and flirting with all the girls. He emailed me about eight drafts of his speech to read over. But then when you actually asked him about it, he’d change the subject. We all have those things, I think—those things we want too badly to speak about aloud for fear someone’ll swoop in and tell us we’re just dreaming, those things we hold close and fantasize about at night and swear to the world we don’t care that much about, the way I feel about art, the way I want to believe my parents are grateful I was the child who survived. What Harry wants above everything else is to know the world is behind him.

Most years I don’t think anyone even ran against him, but last year, kind of out of nowhere, Sandra decided to. We had our various cliques-within-cliques but for the most part we had all the same friends, so it felt like a weird move on her part. For one thing, Harry and Regina were going out at that point. Sandra had been the VP since freshman year, which seemed like it was working fine for everyone, but I guess apparently not. “It’s all Game of Thrones up in here,” Ahmed Kazemi had teased, looking between them while they stapled rival posters to the side of the gym. Ahmed had been in love with Sandra forever. I always thought it was a weird pairing—Sandra was a huge partier, for one thing, and even though he went just to hang out, Ahmed was Muslim and didn’t drink. And he was always messing around, always at the nucleus of some joke. Once sophomore year he came to school wearing a T-shirt that said DAMN STRAIGHT, and in second period Mrs. O’Neill made this big deal about it being inappropriate. They argued back and forth until finally Ahmed wrote an R on a Post-it note and taped it over the M on his shirt. “Darn straight,” he announced, flinging his arms in a come-at-me-bro motion, and everyone applauded except Sandra. Mostly Sandra acted annoyed with him, and Ahmed tried to make her laugh. But all the same it seemed like there was a kind of happiness between them, or at least a comfortable set of roles to settle into.

Anyway, the election was something people talked about a lot—who they’d vote for, whether Sandra was being a bitch by running against him (public verdict: yes, if you already didn’t like her, which a lot of people didn’t), whether it was going to be really embarrassing for whoever didn’t win, etc. It was, I think, borderline agonizing for Regina, who always just smiled when Sandra would link arms with her and say, “Regina’s my campaign manager. Hos before bros.” Regina came over once that week and we sat at my kitchen counter drinking the chrysanthemum tea my mom makes in hot weather and discussed whether there was ever going to be any form of competition that Harry would look at and decide he didn’t care if he won. No, was our consensus. Probably not.

“Is that exhausting to be with someone like that?” I said. I couldn’t quite look at her when I said it—I swirled the tea around in my cup and watched the little whirlpool it made instead.

She shrugged. “You’re his best friend. You’re probably with him more than I am. Is it exhausting for you?”

“It might be if I were as success-driven as you are.”

“I’m not success-driven,” she protested, and it was such a ridiculous statement I laughed out loud. I teased her about sitting here in my house this way and lying to my face, and she got all snappish the way she always does when you tease her. I remember thinking, in that moment, if my sister had lived it would’ve felt like it always has with Regina.

“It’s not because Harry doesn’t like other people,” I said. “It’s the opposite. It’s because he wants them to like him.”

Regina said, “I know.”

Something in her tone—there was something static about it, something I couldn’t relate to. “Are you happy with him?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Everyone has good and bad to them.”

“Whoa, whoa, let’s keep it PG, can we? Get a handle on those hormones, Regina.”

She kind of laughed. “It’s true, though, right?”

“I guess, sure. I just think that’s a weird way to look at things with your boyfriend.”

“Maybe. It’s probably the most fair way to look at everyone.” Then she said, apropos of not very much, “You know, I really think you and Sandra could be pretty tight again if you got over your feuding,” and I got up and cleared our empty cups. I said, “Mm.”

My relationship with Sandra was, at that point, nonexistent most days and awkward/residually negative the others. This is what happened, or at least this was the first thing: The day before school started freshman year, I was supposed to hang out with Sandra. Since none of us could drive yet and Regina and Harry were way up in the hills, she and I had seen a lot of each other that summer. Which is what I told myself when Harry called me that day—he’d just gotten back from a few weeks in Taiwan—and I told him I was free, and a few minutes later I let Sandra’s call go to voicemail.

Harry got a ride down the hill from his dad and at my house we decided to walk to Pearlbubble. We’d gotten to the end of the street when my phone buzzed with a text from Sandra: What are you doing? I’m bored.

I could’ve just said I’m with Harry, we’re walking to get boba, you want to come? But the truth was that I didn’t want her there. Not even her in particular, nothing personal; it was just that it had been weeks since I’d seen Harry and I didn’t want his attention pulled away.

Busy right now, I wrote back. And then, because it felt too abrupt, I added, You get your class schedule already? What is it?

She didn’t answer, and I pushed away the twinges of guilt. A few seconds later Harry pulled his phone out of his pocket and glanced at it. There was a plummeting feeling in my stomach; I knew already, I think.

“It’s Sandra,” he said. He lifted his head and looked around. “Doesn’t she live right by here? I’ll tell her to meet us.”

If there was a plausible reason I could’ve given to say no, I couldn’t get there in time. We waited for her on the corner. She found us five or six minutes later—her house was just on the next street over.

“Well, hi,” she said, giving me a cold smile, her lips pressed together. “So nice of you to let me join you.”

I could feel my face going hot. “I thought—” And then there was nowhere to go with that one, obviously. I mumbled something about being glad she could make it. She ignored me the rest of the walk as much as you can ignore one of the two people you’re with. But—I always think about this—she could’ve made a scene in front of Harry, she could’ve revealed me as the person I was, and I would’ve deserved it, and she didn’t.

We had homeroom together the next day—it’s alphabetical, and at MV there are so many Changs/Chens/Chengs I barely made the cutoff—and she cornered me while everyone was milling around inside before the bell rang.

“Why did you ditch me like that yesterday? I thought you hated Harry, anyway.”

“He’s—” I hesitated. “He’s not the worst person ever.”

“Not the worst person ever. Right.” She crossed her arms and glared at me, for so long I felt the rest of the room fade back, all those new binders and new outfits and all that first-day-of-school energy. I wished we were outside so I could squint, hide my eyes under the guise of it being too bright. My mouth was dry. The irony was that in basically every other circumstance I always wanted to talk about Harry, wanted to feel his name on my tongue and fill the room with my thoughts of him. Sandra said, “Why did you say you were busy? I was just sitting at home. We were supposed to hang out.”

I’d had the past night to come up with a better story now. “I just thought you wouldn’t want to walk. It was hot. You hate sports.”

“Walking’s not a sport. Are you serious?”

“Well, it’s not with that attitude.” I forced a smile. She didn’t. “Fine, next time if we walk somewhere I’ll tell you. Okay?”

“I just think it’s weird you didn’t want me there. And by weird I mean you were being a dick.”

“It wasn’t you, I just—”

“I also just really didn’t want to be alone.”

She’d been like that as long as I could remember, the kind of person who gravitated toward noise and commotion and who scored off the charts in those How Much of an Extrovert Are You? quizzes online. In elementary school she used to always get in trouble for talking to other people during class, and in high school she’d go to anyone’s party even if she didn’t know a single person there. I said, “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, whatever. Keep it.”

“I’m just—”

But she was done with the conversation; TianTian Chien had come in and Sandra was bounding over to talk to her without a backward glance, which was a rebuke, I knew, even if no one else in the room would notice. I sat down heavily, a simmering feeling in my chest. It had been one afternoon, I thought. And for all she knew I was going to hang out with her later in the day. She was overreacting. But even at the time, I think, I knew that what was masquerading inside me as pure resentment was more complicated than that, something maybe closer to a form of guilt. Which made it worse, actually. I held that against her.

Later, by the time Harry’s and my friendship was pretty widely established, Sandra told a bunch of people she thought I was a social climber. I never got past it, and a coldness filled the distance between us. If I was talking with Regina and Sandra showed up I’d usually go somewhere else, and a few times Sandra had made a big deal out of it. “It’s okay, go ahead,” she’d called after me once. “Go find someone better to talk to. Go for it. That’s right, keep walking. You’ll get more popular that way. Keep going.” That was the time I’d turned around and snapped, “Bitch.” I hate myself for it still.

By that point, Harry and Regina were going out, which seemed like a double standard given that she and Sandra were still best friends (hadn’t we both chosen Harry?), but I guess it wasn’t; it was more that Sandra thought I’d been a hypocrite, I think. Regina liked Harry from the beginning, so Sandra never judged her for that the way she did me. And maybe Regina didn’t make her feel like she’d chosen against her; I’d always suspected Harry came second for her, after Sandra. Or maybe we all just forgive the people we love, because we love them, and for no other reason than that.

But anyway, so Sandra had made it clear what she thought of me, and someone’s opinion of you isn’t the kind of thing you can exactly confront someone over or defend yourself against, especially when that would mean bringing too many things you’d rather keep hidden out into the open; it’s just that every time from then on when you see them (which in my case was kind of a lot) you know that they think you have no principles, which, cool. Especially because loyalty matters a lot to me. I’d still do Ethan any favor he asked, and it’s been twelve years. But as far as Sandra was concerned I was someone else completely, and I’d always resented her for it.

I told myself that, anyway, because it let me off the hook. But maybe it was always more that I couldn’t ever quite face her. Maybe it was just that she was a witness to a part of myself I’d rather bury. That’s probably why I let things stay that way—I was always afraid she’d expose me, even if just to myself.

I was hanging out in the library after school waiting for Harry to get done with a lab group meeting one day after school last year, right in the middle of the ASB elections, when Sandra came and slid into the chair next to me. I was drawing (I was forever working on my RISD portfolio; I probably slept five hours a night all year) and I looked up. She said, “Hey.”

I probably couldn’t quite hide my surprise. “Uh—hey?”

“Could you sound less excited to talk to me? That would really make my day.”

“I wasn’t—” I pretended to clear my throat. It was probably no use pretending. “What’s up?”

“I have a proposition for you.” She leaned forward. “Who are you drawing?”

“No one. Just doodling.”

“Regina said you’re just applying to art schools.”

I put my pen down. “Yeah. Ideally just one, actually.”

“Oh, gross, you’re doing early decision? If I only applied to one school I literally don’t think I’d be able to get out of bed in the morning. Just thinking about that kind of pressure makes me want to die. It’s like colleges were like, wait, how can we possibly determine your self-worth in a way that’s even more stressful and even more degrading than it already is? Boom: early decision.”

I smiled in spite of myself. The truth is that I missed her—all along I’d missed her. I was just too much of an ass to do anything about it, too much of a coward to make a first move. “So you’re applying more than one place, I take it. You know where?”

“Everywhere. Like literally everywhere. I have no chance.” She laughed a little, not like she actually found it funny. The sad thing was, it was possibly true. Sandra worked hard, but she wasn’t someone everything came easily to, not a Harry or a Regina, and her parents refused to forgive her for it. She’d probably get into the lower UCs. Irvine might be a stretch. “But I’m avoiding thinking about it. Anyway, I’ll save you the suspense. I wanted to talk to you about the float.”

“Oh, right.” It was homecoming season, and Sandra was in charge of our class float. Sandra loved floats. She’d spearheaded the efforts every year since we were freshmen, one reason I’d always avoided it. The theme that year was Around the World, which I knew because a side effect of Sandra being in charge meant Regina spent a disproportionate amount of time talking about homecoming, and for a few weeks we all had to pretend we cared about our preternaturally ungifted football team. (Should’ve made homecoming during a badminton game. At least then we might’ve won.) “What about it?”

“I want you to design it.”

“You want what now?”

“Design it. I think we have a really good shot at winning this year instead of the seniors. Their float last year sucked—remember their sixties theme and it was, like, three girls in poodle skirts? That whole class is super mediocre. So if you design it and we build it, there’s no way anything they come up with will—”

“Who’s going to build it? You know there’s probably like ten people in each class who even care about winning, right?”

“But I count as twice as many people at least. Hence, our win. You’ll help, right? I’m wearing you down?”

I was never going to say no to her. I mean, she was offering me a chance to literally stick my art on a wagon and parade it in front of hundreds (okay, dozens) of people. Of course I was going to say yes.

The three years since we’d talked had given me a while to pretend she was someone she wasn’t—someone it didn’t matter if I lost, I guess. But I understood: this was a peace offering, after I’d proven I didn’t deserve one. I said, “Yeah, whatever you need.” I should’ve said more.

“Perfect. Draw something and give me plans by Friday.” She’d picked up her purse and turned to go when I said, “Can I ask you something?”

She turned back around. “Maybe.”

“Why—This is going to come out badly. But how come you’re running for president instead of vice president again?”

She looked evenly at me. I thought she wouldn’t answer. After a while she said, “Does Harry think I’m a bitch? I asked him if he cared before I decided to run.”

“Nah, he doesn’t think that.” It was news to me that she’d asked him. What was he going to say—No, don’t run? Yo, I actually need this to feel good about myself? “I was just wondering, that’s all. Forget it.”

“Oh, you know,” she said finally. She smiled; I don’t think I realized it at the time, but there are people who always smile when they’re upset, and she was one. She pitched her voice in an imitation I knew was supposed to be her parents. “You don’t win. Too lazy. Never best in anything. Don’t waste time trying if you don’t win. College don’t want to read about number two.”

“That’s messed up.”

“Well.” That smile again. “It’s not a big deal either way. I probably won’t win, anyway. Everyone loves Harry, right?”

It felt like a loaded thing to say, and I think she meant it that way. I could feel my face turning red and I mumbled something about the float, how I’d get ideas and draw up plans, and then I pretended to have to check my phone so she’d take off. Which, I mean—she was probably teasing. How hard would it have been for me to just laugh it off, or say the truth, which was that everyone says stupid shit when they’re freshmen and it’s not something you’re supposed to carry with you?

The election was a week later—speeches in the gym while all of us were cramped in on the bleachers, Mr. Hartwell getting on the mic to remind us this was supposed to be about people whose achievements we admired and trusted and not just a popularity contest (one of the white stoner sophomore guys sitting near the front booed, which made everyone laugh). Harry’s was about the importance of inclusivity and kindness and diversity and all the other things he’s been saying our whole lives (in other words, practice for if he ever runs for political office someday). Sandra’s was about how whatever else we did that year, we should make sure we also did things to just relax and live in the moment.

Mr. Davidston, who taught my Honors History class, taught the Leadership class too and was giving extra credit for the first five people to sign up to help tally the votes, so I signed up. I didn’t know Regina had, too, until I walked into the teachers’ lounge and she was there.

“At least your civil war’s almost over, right?” I said. And Regina said—I’ve never forgotten this—“I’ve been getting stomachaches thinking about how one of them’s going to lose.” Then she looked around the room. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Yes.”

“I think I might break up with him.”

“You’re what?” I grabbed her sleeve. “When?”

“I don’t know. My parents would kill me if they found out I had a boyfriend. And I always feel weird about it at church. But mostly—I’ve just been thinking about it. For kind of a while.”

Then Mr. Davidston got there and I was spared having to come up with the right thing to say. We all took an honor pledge not to share numbers with anyone outside the room and split the ballots into five piles to tally. I thought about how Harry would take it if he lost, and I thought about how all year so far he’d been letting me cheat off him in Advanced Geometry because otherwise I’d be tanking. I thought about him having no idea right now that Regina was thinking about dumping him. And I thought—it physically hurt to think—about how hopeful he was. The force of someone else’s hope can be completely crushing.

It was much closer than I would’ve expected. Leaving the room I felt kind of sick, and I told Regina my mom wanted me to go home and I hurried off before she had a chance to say goodbye. We weren’t supposed to tell anyone results, but I texted Harry to tell him—Davidston was going to call all the people who’d run, but I wanted to be the first. I waited until I was home and then I closed the door and waited until I heard my mom go out into her garden, which was stupid, because it was just a text, but I was nervous. His phone did that ellipses thing that meant he was typing, then it stopped, then he typed again, then stopped, like he couldn’t figure out what to say. Finally he wrote back, Fuck I was nervous. Just been sitting here trying to calm down. Thanks for telling me, buddy.

In the morning they made the announcement. I told myself not to look at Sandra, but then I did, and I saw her eyes fill with tears, and I saw how long it took her to wrest her expression into something presentable in public. She clapped for Harry along with everybody else.

He was so happy; I caught him sneaking off at lunch to call his dad to tell him, his hand cupped over the phone like he didn’t want anyone to hear. I avoided Sandra, and I avoided Regina a few days, too. And I waited for her to break up with him, and I thought about warning him, and in truth the only reason I didn’t was that I never knew how to bring it up. And then, of course, Regina never did.

I have never told anyone this. I wanted to at the time—I wanted to immediately, mostly because I felt like garbage—but who was I going to tell? The truth is, though, Harry was supposed to lose. I lied tallying up my votes.

I still can’t say exactly why I did it. I knew it was wrong. And deep down I think I only even partly wanted him to win; watching him smile modestly at everyone the next day I was filled with this rush of something that definitely wasn’t happiness. Maybe I wanted to give him something and that was the best I had. Or maybe I wanted to let Harry have something I might’ve, maybe, wanted for myself—not the election itself, which I didn’t care about, but just the idea that you would want something or want some version of yourself and you would get it. Maybe I wanted to hang on to the belief that the world worked that way for as long as I could.

Or maybe it was none of that, maybe it was something much shallower and less nuanced. Maybe it was just that between him and Sandra, obviously I wanted Harry to win.