Chloe considered this, and he liked how she didn’t rush her answers. “Sometimes? Like I’m anxious and queer and Vietnamese, and I just think… wow, no one could be bothered with me if I’m toomuch. But it isn’t true. You just have to find the people who love you for you. I’m lucky to have those.”
“It’s shitty that it has to beluckto be loved as you are,” Andrew said.
Chloe looked serious. “Agreed.”
“Sorry, I’m… sorry.” Andrew squeezed his eyes shut. “I know how whiny I sound compared to what you deal with.”
She gave him a small smile. “Did Thomas do something to you?”
He loves me and I put a knife through his ribs.Andrew fumbled for words through the haze of anguish still smoldering in his mouth, but Lana stomped toward them and dropped cross-legged on the floor. She demolished the last of a cookie and then eyed Andrew’s.
“Are you going to eat that? I’m starved. Rehearsals flattened me. Also, Chloe, are you dressing up tomorrow?”
“No.” Chloe looked mortified. “They saidoptional. I’ll just wear a nice dress.”
“I’m going as a witch. I bought a hat.” Lana sneaked a hand toward Andrew’s cookie, but he passed it over to Chloe.
Chloe bit into it, smiling demurely at Lana.
Lana narrowed her eyes. “Leaving you two to bond was a mistake.”
Chloe beamed.
Andrew hugged his legs tighter to his chest. “Aren’t you a junior, Chloe? How did you and Lana get close?”
“I tell you,” she said, “Lana hunts for lonely people.Hunts.But we’re also roommates, so that helped.”
Something heavy thumped in Andrew’s stomach. He shot a glance at Lana, but she busied herself retying her shoelaces. He couldn’t jump to conclusions. Tons of the dorm rooms slept three. Lana said she had the sketchbook Thomas had given to Dove, so clearly they were still in the same room, but why did he never see her around Chloe?
Dove had isolated herself from everyone.
Butwhy?
He thought of Lana and Thomas in that dim hallway, how she accused Thomas of hurting Dove. She would know, wouldn’t she? But Thomas wouldn’thurt…
“After we wrap up here, let’s go for dinner,” Lana said. “It’s meat loaf night, isn’t it? Freaking fantastic. They better serve Halloween cake tomorrow. Remember that time Dove had lemon cake in a Tupperware box and was eating it under her desk all through class? She never even got caught.”
Andrew huffed a laugh. “Thomas caught her. He followed her around all day begging for some.”
“Typical needy boy.” Lana rolled her eyes, but she didn’t sound as barbed as usual.
Andrew couldn’t stop himself. “Why do you hate him so much?”
Lana abruptly went still. She shot a glance at the teens hanging out around the room, surrounded by queer flags draped overdesks and unequivocal acceptance as they chattered. It was a happy moment, and he’d dragged war into it. He should never speak.
Lana pushed to her feet. “If they hadn’t had that fight, maybe this year would’ve been amazing. We could’ve all been friends.”
Andrew could see it, unwrap it like a story: all of them together, an unwieldy group with sharp elbows and sharper tongues, but with enough laughter and teasing to smooth it over. Dove would soften Lana and Thomas. Andrew and Chloe would share wry smiles and retreat to watch the more energetic explosions from the others. Thomas would always reach a hand back for Andrew. Dove would quietly stick them all together.
He missed it in a deep, aching way, even though it had never happened and it never would.
“I get that you forgave him.” Lana looked away. “But he was the reason you put your hand through that mirror.”
Andrew said nothing; it was easier that way. But a yawning emptiness opened in his mind, an endless black nothing where a memory should be.
He had no idea what she was talking about.
TWENTY-SIX
