Lily smirked that familiar smirk again. ‘Don’t you worry,’ she said. ‘I got my revenge.’
‘I feel bad,’ I told Dylan as we were taking off our make-up that night. ‘I didn’t see any of that stuff Heather did. I feel like a terrible ally.’
‘It’s a lot easier to spot when you’ve spent your whole life hearing it,’ she replied. ‘Besides, it wasn’t like she was doing it when everyone was around. It was always little comments, slipped in here and there, usually when there was no one else in the room.’
‘I still should have realised she was the literal worst, though,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
We left the bathroom, and Naya ducked in after us. With Jess K and Marija both gone, Lily was the only other person left in our bedroom, but she’d mysteriously disappearedagain, so Dylan and I were alone. ‘Just so you know,’ I said, as we walked over to our bunk, ‘if there’s another Heather – if you need me to use my white privilege to call someone out – I’ll do it.’
‘Mandie, it’s cool,’ Dylan said. ‘Put your guilt away. I don’t need a hero. I can handle the Heathers of the world.’
‘I know you can,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t mean I can’t help, though.’
I climbed up onto my bunk. ‘You’ve spent enough of your time in here standing up for me and making my voice heard,’ I said. ‘The least I can do is the same for you.’
‘Thanks, babe,’ she said, patting my hand. ‘You’re a great friend.’
I refused to let myself hear a single negative thing in that statement. I’d been giving myself some extremely stern talking-tos in the few days since the Great Affirmation Flashcards Oh God My Emotions incident, and this was what I had decided:
1) Those flashcards had been an absolutely top-notch friend gesture from her.
2) That was because she was an absolutely top-notch friend.
3) That friendship was, far and away, the most important thing to me.
4) I wasn’t going to jeopardise it by making heart eyes at her.
5) Even if I did sometimes wonder what sounds she would make if I touched her just the right way.
It wasn’t because it was what Murray wanted me to do. It was because it was what I needed to do. No matter whathappened in the Villa, I wanted to keep my absolutely top-notch friend Dylan in my life.
‘You too,’ I said, patting her hand back.
‘I don’t know if I was a particularly good friend today,’ Dylan said, leaning her chin against the post at the end of my bunk. ‘I’m sorry about letting Lily get under my skin like that.’
‘Oh, because she didn’t get under my skin at all,’ I said. ‘I was completely cool and calm and collected the whole time.’
She chuckled. ‘That ruled, actually,’ she said. ‘I love mad Mandie. You were like this tiny avenging angel.’
‘Right up until I started crying.’
‘You are not the first woman in the world to cry when they get angry,’ Dylan said. ‘I used to be exactly the same. I trained myself out of it, because it’s really not good to burst into tears in a hospital whenever someone makes you mad, but it’s definitely not just you.’
I grabbed my pillow, put it at the foot of my bunk, and flopped down on my stomach, leaning my arms on it so I could face Dylan properly. ‘Jac always told me I cried too easily.’
‘Can I ask you a question?’ Dylan asked, curling her fingers around the bedframe.
‘Of course.’
‘What did you actually like about Jac?’
I blinked.
‘She sounds like a nightmare,’ Dylan said. There were no cameras or mics in the bedroom, and Naya was in the shower,so we were safe, but she still lowered her voice. ‘Everything you tell me about her makes me want to run her over.’
‘She wasn’t a nightmare,’ I said. ‘She could be mean sometimes. Cruel, even. But she wasn’t a nightmare.’
I tried to find the best way to say it. ‘She wasn’t an easy person,’ I said at last. ‘But that was one of the things I liked about her, because the reason she wasn’t easy was that she was always so certain. She knew what she liked. She knew what she didn’t like. She knew what to do, no matter the situation. She knew who she was, and she wasn’t going to change, not for anyone.’
