"You okay?" Jeremiah asked, noticing my sudden stiffness.
I forced a smile and took a sip of my drink. "Yeah. I just thought I saw someone I knew from class, but it wasn’t them.”
Two hours later, I was tucked into one of the velvet-draped alcoves, my third drink warming my blood and my cheeks aching from laughter. Cherry, Jeremiah, and Dylan were with me, along with a redheaded girl named Ginny, who I’d met around an hour ago. The four of them were best friends, butthey’d all been so nice and welcoming that I didn’t feel like an outsider around them at all.
“Hey, Violet, has Dylan showed off his prank channel to you yet?” Cherry asked, looking at me.
“Oh my god, not the pranks!” Ginny cut in before I could reply, eyes glimmering with amusement. “Leave the poor girl alone! She only arrived a week ago.”
Dylan laughed. “Don’t worry, you know I never get anyone involved without their express permission.”
I tilted my head, one brow arched. “What are you guys talking about?”
He yanked his phone out of his pocket and tapped on the screen. “I have a YouTube channel where I post videos of pranks I’ve come up with. Jeremiah helps me with the editing, computer genius that he is. And these two—” He paused and leaned over to poke Ginny and Cherry. “—they help with the production and filming. It’s pretty cringey sometimes, but it’s good practice for my writing and directing.”
“And it’s actually funny, unlikesomeprankster vloggers out there,” Jeremiah added, casting a pointed look toward the food table.
Cherry’s nose wrinkled. “Oh, yeah, we should actually warn you about this, Violet,” she said, jabbing a finger in the same direction Jeremiah was looking in. “See those two guys standing there? Tall guy with curly hair and shorter one with a buzzcut?”
I peered over. “Uh-huh.”
“They have a channel too,” Cherry went on. “But trust me… stay away from them, for your own good. Their pranks aren’t funny. They’re just fucking mean.”
“Yeah, they’re lucky I didn’t push them off the nearest cliff after that shit they pulled with you last year,” Jeremiah said, shaking his head with disgust.
“What happened?” I asked.
Cherry shot Jeremiah an appreciative look before turning her attention back to me. “Early last year, I found out I was going to be the senior production coordinator for the theater. It wasn’t much of a surprise, because I’d already been junior coordinator since sophomore year, but still… it was really nice. So people were congratulating me, giving me flowers and cards, and so on.”
“Then those assholes showed up with a cake,” Dylan interjected, pointing back at the two guys by the table.
“They said they made it to congratulate me,” Cherry said, nostrils flaring slightly. “Just in case, I asked if it was nut-free, because I’m allergic to literally every single nut out there. They said yes, so I had a slice, because I can’t resist a good cake. Then one of them suddenly said, ‘Oh, wait, I forgot. There’s some sort of almond essence in the frosting’.”
“We all started freaking the fuck out,” Ginny cut in, stony-faced. “Because it’s not a mild allergy. Cherry could literallydiefrom it. Everyone who knows her knows that.”
Cherry nodded. “I was scrambling in my purse for my EpiPen, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. And the whole time, I could feel my throat closing up,” she said. She paused to let out an irritated sigh before going on. “Turns out it was just a panic attack, because the whole thing was one of their so-called ‘pranks’. The cakewasnut-free. They just lied and stole my EpiPen to scare me, and they filmed the whole thing to get my reaction.”
My eyes widened. “They made you think you were going to die?”
“Yeah. Real funny, huh?” she said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Anyway, my point is, don’t let them get you involved with their videos. They’re total pricks.”
“Noted.”
Dylan nudged me, drawing my attention to his phone screen. “My channel isn’t like that,” he said. “Like I said, I’ll never involve you without full permission. But anyway, check it out.”
He tapped on the most-watched video, and my eyes widened again as I watched. “Oh! I know this one!” I said. “My sister sent it to me a while back. She said someone she knew made it, so she must’ve been talking about you.”
Jeremiah furrowed his brows. “I thought you said your sister was at a school in North Carolina.”
My smile dropped.Shit.I’d forgotten that I told him that last week. “Oh. I… erm…”
I really didn’t know what to say right now. Technically, I could continue the lie and say that I’d misspoken. That my sister ‘knew of’ Dylan, rather than ‘knew’ him. But it didn’t feel right to do that. Not after these four had been so kind to me, pulling me into their warm friendship circle like I’d always been a part of it.
They were all staring at me now, faces drawn in expressions of confusion or wariness.
“Sorry,” I murmured as I scrambled for my next words.
“For what?” Jeremiah asked, frown deepening.
