Years of warring between trying to maintain friendships and trying to move on.
And then one night it all caught up to me.
Unwelcome memories flooded my brain until they were the only things I could focus on, but I tried to push through them, because Iwantedthis, damn it.
To my surprise, Alex had been the one to pull away Friday night, murmuring something about taking things slow. I was grateful to him for putting on the brakes, because Lord knew I wasn’t about to.
“So when are we eating Mexican candy?” Alex asks as we walk out of class.
“When are you free?”
“For you, Joey? I’m always free,” he says easily. I roll my eyes and laugh at the corniness, but my mirth vanishes when I spot a familiar face.
Helen offers me a small smile in recognition, and I do the same. Once we’ve passed her, I turn to Alex to see him looking at me with an expression I can’t quite read.
“Friend of yours?”
“She’s in my creative writing class.”
“How’s that going so far?”
“I’ve only been to class once, but I had to turn in my first short story Sunday night, and let’s just say… I wouldn’t exactly call myself Jane Austen.”
“Well, of course not. Jane Austen didn’t write short stories.”
I search for a change of subject. I don’t want to get into it. Sitting at my laptop staring at a blank page was hell. After hours of nothing, I broke down and wrote what basically amounted to a bad synopsis of the movieYesterday, where the protagonist wakes up in an alternate universe in which the Beatles never existed. It’s certainly unethical, but the plagiarism can’t be proven, and it also feels kind of perfect, considering the plot.
“Can I ask you a hypothetical question?”
Alex’s eyes light up with mirth as he says, “Iloveyour hypotheticals. Sure, but only if you clarify at least two more times that it’snot real.”
“Say I had this friend—”
“Oh, afriend?”
“Not like that. An actual friend, not a placeholder for myself. I have a friend, and she’s struggling. Or… I’m worried she’sgoingto struggle. Sorry, I know that’s cryptic. I want to help her, only I don’t know how. I need advice, but I don’t want to invade her privacy.”
A pause, then he asks, “Is this about the girl we just passed?”
“No,” I protest too quickly. “No, it’s someone else.”
“Is it anything I can help with?”
“I don’t think so.”
He considers this. “Have you tried consulting the internet?”
I snort. “Like, the whole internet?”
“Not thewholeinternet. You ever go on Reddit?”
“A couple times.” I wouldn’t say I’vegone onReddit so much as it’s popped up when I searched random topics over the years. I have never typed www.reddit.com into my browser.
“Make a throwaway account, go to a relevant subreddit, and ask for advice.”
I frown, unsure of this whole ask-the-internet plan. But when I get back to my dorm after acting, the first thing I do is open my laptop.
It takes me two days to post—two days of psyching myself up, lurking, searching for the right subreddits. One class with Helen, my knowledge of her future looming like a dark cloud.
