“But youaregoing, right?” Gia asks, starting to follow Kiki’s lead with my fries before yanking her hand back as she presumably remembers it’s cheer season. “You guys promised you’d come watch me.”
We did? Shit. So much for playing hard to get. “Of course we’re going,” Shannon says before I can get in a word. “Riss is just making Chase sweat.”
“We’ll be there,” I promise Gia, and Kiki nods in agreement.
“And after, we’ll all go to New Girl’s party,” Kiki adds. Like that, the conversation returns to Jasmine, and I contemplate whether one can literally drown herself in ketchup.
It isn’t until last period—English, because of course it would be our shared favorite subject—that I finally havea Jasmine sighting. She slips in right as the bell rings, giving me no chance to make eye contact. I don’t even know if she sees me. But it’s unmistakably her and her jangling bracelets and her smoky voice saying “Here” and God, I can’t even remember what class this is anymore.
She doesn’t say another word for the rest of it, and neither do I, but I pack up slowly, sure she’ll saunter over on her way out—maybe with a “Hey, Tinkerbell.” Heat rises in my cheeks as I imagine it, and I take my sweet time getting my stuff into my bag, waiting for the scent of her favorite peach body lotion to reach me. When I finally can’t take it anymore, I look up… and the room is empty.
Okay, what the fuck? Even if she didn’t see me when she came in, she has to have heard me respond to “Bogdan, Larissa” during roll call. I’m not letting her ignore me. A few weeks ago, we were staying up all night watching movies with our legs intertwined in the dark, tasting the salty-sweet of popcorn mixed with M&Ms on each other’s lips, and now… this? What even is this?
I have to storm all the way outside before I catch up to her, but there she is, getting into the Jeep I know better than my mom’s old Toyota. “Jasmine!”
She pauses. Steps out of the car. Slowly. Like she knew this was coming and has been dreading it all day. She doesn’t say a word, just waits. It’s her thing—she’s chased, never chases. I’d thought I was exempt. “Jasmine,” I repeat when I’m standing a few feet away, like I still need to confirm.
“Larissa.”
Not Tinkerbell, not a sing-song accented “Larotchka” to affectionately mimic my mom. Just… Larissa.
“What are you doing here? Why didn’t you tell me you were moving?” I feel silly asking the most basic questions, but I don’t know what else to say.
She shrugs. “We weren’t really talking anymore when my parents decided, so.”
“Okay, but we weren’t talking because—” The words burst from my lips and stop. We weren’t talking because it was too damn hard after the intensity of that summer. I tried so many times, but my hands would always shake as I typed and erased, typed and erased. It was too impossible to reduce our communication to texts or even phone calls, and I didn’t know what to say, how to start. So, I didn’t, and neither did she.
“But you’re here” is all I manage.Don’t you want to be friends?hangs in the air in front of my lips. But I can’t seem to give it voice, because “friends” doesn’t feel like the right word for what we were. Being something else here, in Stratford, away from the magic of the Carolina coast, around Shannon and Chase and real life… none of it makes sense.
“Right, I am, and I’m the one who has to meet new people and shit, so.” She tugs on the familiar gold necklace hanging at her throat, the hamsah and six-pointed star charms clinking against each other quietly. “Role reversal.”
“You already know one person,” I point out. “That’s one more than I knew.”
“Well, when I walked in, the one person I know was otherwise occupied,” she says casually, and I realizeshe’s talking about watching me flirt with Chase in the hallway. It feels like a little punch to the gut, knowing that was her “welcome” to Stratford, and I feel like I should apologize, but… for what?
“You could’ve interrupted.”
“You and the legendary Chase Harding? I would never.”
The words suggest she’s hurt or mad or maybe both, but her tone doesn’t suggest either one. If anything, it sounds like she’s in on a joke.
How do I respond to that?
“Anyway, turns out I don’t even need to know you to get a party invite, so.”
“I heard. And apparently you’re the person to go to for an invite now.”
Her full lips, uncharacteristically bare and lightly chapped, curve into a smile. “I suppose I am.”
“So,” I ask, genuinely unsure, “do I make the cut for your inaugural Stratford party?”
She slips into her car then, taking a seat behind the wheel and closing the door, although the window is wide open. “I’ll think about it.”
Chapter Three
“You didn’t tell me Jasmine was moving here,” I say accusingly to my mother the second she walks into the kitchen after a day spent taking messages for my former friend’s father. “A little heads-up would’ve been nice.”
“I hope you had a lovely day too, milaya.” Her keys jangle as she puts them next to her bag on the laminate counter, eyeing the bowl of salted edamame sitting in front of me. Normally I’d have popcorn mixed with a healthy dose of M&Ms like I’ve been having every day since I got back, but after seeing Jasmine, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Unfortunately, soybeans were the next most appealing snack in the house. “And I didn’t realize you needed to be told, given you were inseparable this summer. She didn’t call you?”
