I nodded, giving her a sympathetic grimace, even as I was aware I didn’t want to be pulled too far into this, whatever it was. My whole plan for flying solo was contingent on not getting involved in people’s personal drama. “Sorry about that,” I said, taking a step back, heading toward the exit. Now that I knew this girl wasn’t hurt—just having a crappy Friday—I wouldn’t feel guilty about leaving. “That sucks. So…”
“Yeah,” she went on. “My boyfriend broke up with me right before the holidays. And then I came back to school and found out that all my friends had taken his side. So, I’m basically closing out my senior year with no friends?” She gave a little incredulous laugh at that.
“Oh,” I said, trying to ignore how this was hitting a little too close to home. “That really sucks. But…”
“And then this happened,” she said, standing up and gesturing to her jeans.
My eyes widened as I stared at her. There was a huge, dark stain covering the front of them. “Did…um…”
“It was the sink!” she said, cracking a smile for the first time, maybe at my expression. “Everyone knows to avoid the last sink—water just explodes out of it. But I was so distracted I forgot. And now I can’t go out like this.”
“Thesink?” I asked skeptically. I really didn’t understand how a sink could have done that—it looked for all intents and purposes like she’d had an unfortunate accident.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “If you don’t believe me, try it yourself.”
I was about to tell her that I had to go, lie and say that I was late for class. But there was an unmistakable challenge in her tone, and I wasn’t just going to back down from it. “Fine.” I dropped my purse and walked over to the last sink. It looked like a normal sink to me. I was about to tell her so when I turned the knob for the cold water. A geyser immediately exploded out at me—hitting me right across the front of my cords. “Agh! What!” I yelped, shutting off the water and jumping back, sliding a little, and then struggling to regain my balance.
The girl was cracking up, bent double. “I told you,” she managed. “The sink explodes!” She started laughing again, sliding down the locker to sit on the floor, her shoulders shaking.
“Why would anyone do that?” I asked. I was laughing now, too; I couldn’t help it. There was something about this girl’s laughter that made you want to laugh too, like singing along to a song you’ve always known. I looked in dismay at my reflection—and at the identical dark stain that was now across the front of my pants. “This is awful!”
“I guess we just live here now?” She was still laughing as she looked from me to her, and the identical terrible situation we were now in. “I’m Bryony, by the way. Bryony Tsai.”
“Cass Issac,” I said, coming over to join her.
“Are you new?”
“Yeah, we just moved here from San Luis Obispo.”
Her eyes widened. “You moved second semester of senior year?”
“Yeah, but it’s okay. It’s…” I took a breath, about to rattle off all the excuses and lines I’d told myself about how it would be fine to have no friends, that I was okay starting over, yet again. But as I looked at Bryony’s sympathetic expression, all those flimsy arguments collapsed. “It sucks,” I said, sitting down next to her.
“It really does.”
“And I’m really sorry about your breakup—and your friends being jerks.” I shook my head. “That’s awful.”
“I mean, I guess better to find out now that they were kind of terrible? But I was just so blindsided. And now this happened,” she said, gesturing down at herself.
“Well, I’m in the same boat.”
“You could have just believed me,” she said, starting to laugh again.
“Yeah, in retrospect that would have made a lot more sense,” I agreed, laughing too.
We stayed in the locker room for the rest of the period—it took that long for our pants to dry. And by the end of it, when we walked out together and headed to lunch, sitting down and continuing our conversation without even having to talk about it, we were friends.
It was the last thing I’d been expecting—that I’d meet the best friend I’d ever had when I was determined not to make any friends at all. But Bryony and I had just gotten along, from that very first day.
And now, as I hurried out of the restaurant and saw her slightly dented white Jeep in the parking lot, I felt myself smile. I ran over to the passenger side and yanked open the door. “Hi, friend!” I yelled, as she jumped.
“Ohmy god,” she yelped, placing her hand on her chest. “You scared me!”
I laughed. “You were the one who texted me you were here.”
“I know! I just didn’t expect you to, like, apparate here.”
“I hardly think that’s what I did.” I got into the car and immediately recognized what she was listening to.“Cereal?”I asked with a sigh.
