Eve: Is the school email your usual form of communication?
Noah: No, but I didn’t have u on social media.
Eve: Yeah, I don’t have it. Though next time, if you want to contact me, use my phone number. You know, the school IT staff read all these emails.
Under the email, I add my phone number.
Noah: Thanks. Now I can send u my grades without IT judging me.
Noah and I don’t text each other too often — he sends me weird memes, and I respond with funny comments. I wonder why he bothers to message me. It’s not as if we talk in person.
That being said, I don’t mind his memes. I don’t have many people on my phone, so it’s nice to have a new person to talk to.
At lunchtime on Wednesday, and he sends me a meme aboutMacbeth, the play we’re studying in English.
I chuckle and type out a quick response.I’m surprised you pay enough attention in English to get the joke.
Noah: Oi.
Eve: You’re right. I need to work on the nice thing.
“Eve! Are you listening to me?”
At Ruby’s voice, my head jerks up. We’re sitting in our usual spot under an oak tree, on the lawn nearby the canteen. Across from me, Ruby’s eating a toasted sandwich, her brow creased with annoyance.
“Sorry, sorry,” I say, turning my phone off, not before seeing that Noah has sent a laughing emoji. “Continue.”
Ruby huffs before continuing on her story. “Anyway, I still hadn’t forgiven him because of what happened over Christmas—”
“Wait a second,” I interrupt, “what happened with Christmas?”
“Don’t you remember? He celebrated with his girlfriend instead of us, and afterwards, he tried to bribe me with gifts. I’m still mad about that and told him I didn’t want to see him. Of course, Oliver agreed to go …”
Ruby continues, ranting about her dad. Her parents’ divorce was the reason she moved to Easton with Oliver and their mum. When they first arrived at school, people were curious about them the way people always are about new students. Oliver made friends immediately — he was likeable and smart, and girls thought he was cute. Ruby was smarter, but also shy, and Jasmine and Isra took her under their wing.
Jasmine and Isra were my closest friends, then, but we were friends in the way you have to have friends even if you don’t get along super well because you don’t want to look like a loner. In the beginning, I didn’t think I had anything in common with Ruby, until I found out the reason she’d moved to Easton.
My parents are divorced as well. I live with my mum, who’s a lawyer, so I don’t get to see much of her. I barely see my Dad because he’s always overseas for business, and when he’s not there, he’s living in Perth, which is on the other side of Australia.
It doesn’t bother me because they divorced when I was five, but I remember telling this to Ruby. It was like a dam broke inside her, and her pent-up emotions came out in a rush. She told me everything that had happened and how she hated it all, and I comforted her as best I could.
After that, Ruby wasn’t shy anymore, her rambunctious side revealed. We started having sleepovers, watching trashy dramas, eating ice cream and gossiping.
Sometimes Oliver would join us for board games, or come into Ruby’s room to have a slice of pizza. Months after Ruby and I first became friends, we played truth or dare. When I said truth, she said, “you don’t like Oliver, do you?”
“As in like-like? Ew, no!” That was the truth at the time.
“Okay, good.”
“Why would you ask that?”
“People always like Oliver better,” she said.
“You’ll always be my favourite, Ruby.”
I think about that truth and dare a lot.
Ruby pokes my arm. “You look like you’re daydreaming.”
