When I reach my room and open it, I find Via writhing in my bed with Gus on top of her. Their mouths are fused, and he is running his fingers up and down her bare leg. She is wearing a dress I don’t recognize. Mel must’ve taken her shopping between the time she broke my heart and the time she crushed it with her fist, just to make sure that it’s extra dead.

“Texas Gus,” I purr, and Gus’s eyes shoot up from Via, but he is still on top of her. “Take a hike. I need to have a word with Mississippi Sylvia.”

“Nah, Followhill. I think I’m comfortable right”—he thrusts his jeans-clad crotch onto Via’s groin, and she is laughing evilly—“fucking”—he leans down to bite her nose—“here.”

I elevate my phone to my face and start typing with a cheerful bravado I don’t feel.

“I guess I’ll report it back to your QB1. You know my daddy always puts him in charge, making sure everyone’s on their best behavior when I throw parties.”

“Bitch.” Gus nips at Via’s lips one more time before he jumps to his feet, grabbing his varsity jacket from my lilac bed bench and storming past me, his shoulder brushing mine.

I continue standing at the door. I’m not even going to touch the subject of them making out on my bed with a ten-foot pole. It makes me want to throw up in my mouth, and I’m mad about it, but not as mad as I am about her sleeping with the enemy—quite freaking literally.

Via huffs and gets up, about to leave, but this time, I’m the one to close the door behind me and push her back onto my bed. “Sit.”

“Give me one good reason to.” She makes a move to stand again.

“It’s about your brother, and if you care about him at all—which you haven’t shown any signs of doing in the past four years—you will listen.”

I settle next to her on my bed. We’re both staring at our feet. I feel tipsy and frustrated with the past few days. Just when I thought I was making real progress with Penn and Mel, Via came back and screwed up everything.

“What’s going on with you and Gus?” I demand.

“As if I’ll ever tell you anything.” She sulks. I peek at her from my peripheral vision, and tears are brimming in her eyes. It must be so hard for her to see all this and know it wasn’t a part of her youth. That it never would be. She can’t get her high school years back.

“Have you ever been kissed before Gus?” I trail my linen with the tip of my finger, trying another tactic but also genuinely curious.

She snort-laughs through her tears. “Get to the point, Daria. We’re not friends, and this is not a heart to heart.”

“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “I just want you to know the whole picture before you date Gus or even mess around with him. He and your brother have an open beef. I heard there was mad trash talk the day the Saints beat the Bulldogs on the football field when the season started. Penn came over to our school a few days before that to try to patch things up with Gus, but it didn’t work. Penn thinks Gus cheated somehow in order to win,” I explain, manically trying to convey to her the level of hate these two share. “And every single time I see them in the same vicinity, Gus is trying to throw Penn off-balance.”

Via takes a deep breath and closes her eyes.

“I feel like Penn gave up on me the moment I ran away, and that nothing I can do will ever narrow the abyss between us,” she admits. I perk up, looking at her cautiously. This sounds a lot like an admission. And an admission is better than an attack, which is what I’ve been getting since the day she came to live with us.

“How so?” My voice is so small and encouraging, barely a whisper.

“Penn is being weird with me. Not exactly hostile but…distant. I feel like I’ve let him down so much by leaving. As if I had a choice. I thought Rhett was going to kill me at some point. And Penn, no matter how much he loved me and was there for me, he was still only a child himself. He couldn’t protect me. I realize that I’m the only one to blame—”

“No, you aren’t,” I cut her off. “Rhett is to blame. Your late mom is to blame. Your school, and the system, and to an extent, even my mother for not noticing. But not you.”

“Penn isn’t to blame,” she stresses. “And he is the one who got hurt the most.”

Now I have my own admission. The truth is clogging my throat, and the alcohol begs for me to let it loose. It’s a confession. A difficult one. But one that would make her let go of her inhibitions and guilt, and maybe start building a strong bridge to cross that gulf.

“Penn and I are also to blame,” I admit quietly.

“What?” Her eyes shoot to me. “What in the hell are you talking about? You didn’t know each other back when that happened.”

I tell her everything about that day. Rehashing the entire thing from the moment I stood at the door and prayed not to see her to the moment Penn gave me my first kiss. And all the horrible things in-between. The letter. How he tore it. The glee I felt when he did. How I wrote about it in my little black book that same evening. How the book got thick.

“He tore it, but he didn’t know. He didn’t know, Via. He didn’t know,” I keep repeating.

After I’m done, I feel out of breath. As though I just ran a marathon. I shift my entire body on the bed so I can look at her better. She is shaking, and tears stream down her face. I realize my mother never told her that she got into the Royal Academy. And why would she? It’s cruel, bittersweet news. I try to hug her, but she shoots up to her feet. I do, too.