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And my answer would be because Nash was standing in a stairwell with his hands in his pockets, trying very hard not to say something in front of me, and whatever it was, he’d decided I didn’t need to hear it.

Instead, I say, “It’s none of my business.”

Paige flops back onto my pillow. “God. I’d need to know. I’d die.”

“You’d be fine,” Bianca chuckles.

“I’d be dead.”

“I don’t think you should do anything,” Kenzie says to me. “I don’t mean nothing nothing. I mean don’t get in the middle of a hockey thing. Stop answering Declan’s texts and don’t explain why. Don’t give him one thing to talk about.”

“That’s so boring,” says Paige.

“You know what’s not boring?” Kenzie says. “Being the girl the whole hockey team is talking about by Wednesday.”

The room goes quiet.

“Okay, yeah,” Paige agrees.

“Imagine if you’d kissed him,” Kenzie says with big eyes.

I cover my face. “That’d be humiliating.”

Bianca tips her head back against my mattress and looks up at me upside down. “What do you want to do?”

“I want him to leave me alone,” I say. “I don’t want to be part of whatever this is. I don’t want to be the reason somebody gets benched or punched. I want to go to class and eat lunch with you guys and never think about Declan Greeley again.”

“Then block him,” says Bianca.

“I told Nash I wouldn’t.”

Three heads turn. “What?”

“In the stairwell. He told me to block him, and I said if I block him, Declan knows something’s up. Nash is already off the ice for a week. I don’t want to make it worse.”

Paige sits up slowly. “So you’re protecting Nash now.”

“I’m not protecting him.”

“You are.” She tilts her head. “When’s the last time Declan texted you?”

I check. “Friday night. You saw it.”

“So annoying.”

“You should block him,” Kenzie says.

“Agree,” says Bianca.

“I vote that too,” Paige says.

“What about Nash?”

Paige smiles. “He’s a big boy, Kylie. You saw the fight. He can handle it.”

I did see the fight. I think about the way Nash’s fists kept going at Declan, over and over, and the way Declan took it and laughed after. They both threw punches like they’d done it before. I’d never seen a real fistfight in person, and I stood at the bottom of those stairs stunned.

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll block him. I think I should text him first.”