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“Hey! Let’s . . . let’s watch a movie!” Felicity says brightly, voice high and fake, like her mom’s. “You can pick, Gretchen. Doesn’t that one cute guy you like have something new out? Or like a special on HBO? There’s that new horror show, I heard it’s super scary!”

She’s trying, but it’s not enough. We’re going to pretend that everything is fine, that I belong here, that we can all just watch a movie together and go back to having a sleepover at a birthday party after one girl puked her guts out and then stole someone else’s tampons. The girl who can’t buy her own. The girl who doesn’t belong.

I duck back into the bathroom and toss the box under the sink, not caring that I knock over a dozen bottles in the process. They’re all lined up, matching sets of shampoo and conditioner in bright colors. I push over the last two for good measure, go back to the bedroom and curl up under some of the blankets without a word, my back to the others, snuggled into a nest of my own making.

I can’t be here, but I can’t go home, either.

I don’t have one of those anymore.

I lie still, listening to the others drop off, one by one. Maddie goes first, her little comments about the movie falling away into light snores. Gretchen sticks it out longer, but eventually she asks Felicity if she can sleep in the bed because sleeping on the floor is just not comfortable enough. Felicity tells her that yes, of course she can, and soon Gretchen is out, too, her breathing deep and regular.

I hear Felicity get up, tiptoeing around the others. I hear the bathroom door swing open, the higher creak of the cupboard door following that, and the sound of her straightening her shampoo bottles. She comes back to the bedroom, steps over me lightly, unzips my backpack, and puts the tampons inside.

I lay there, stiff and sweating, until there’s a glimmer of light outside. I sneak out and walk home, stopping to throw the tampons into the river. The box comes open as it falls, and they float downstream, refusing to sink, bobbing brightly against the dark brown of the water. They’re packaged in different colors, the foil flashing pink and neon green, the sun reflecting off them as they go with the current, for everyone to see.

Something that doesn’t belong.

Tossed away.

Trash.

Just like me.

Chapter 27

Felicity

“I was trying to help you,” I say, bristling. “You needed tampons; I gave them to you. I was trying to be your friend!”

Tress is shaking her head. Slowly. Calmly. But I wouldn’t say patiently. No, I wouldn’t call it that.

“My friend?” she asks, crossing her arms. “Giving me things doesn’t make you my friend, Felicity. It’s . . .” Her face contorts, and I know she’s trying to find a way to say what she wants to say without using the word charity.

She clears her throat, trying again. “It doesn’t make you my friend. Giving me stuff makes me . . . less than.”

Tress Montor < Felicity Turnado

“I never looked at it like that,” I say.

“No.” Tress comes to her feet, mortar trowel in hand. “Of course you didn’t. You were just thinking of yourself, how it made you feel to give me stuff. And how did it make you feel, Felicity?” she asks, stepping closer.

I grind my teeth, shredding the new layer of enamel that was recently applied in an attempt to undo years of damage . . . years of me doing exactly this—grinding my teeth and thinking about Tress Montor.

Because yeah, it did make me feel better to give her things—clothes, pairs of shoes when there was a BOGO, books that my ever-hopeful librarian aunt bought me for Christmas that I was never going to read. Over the years it went way beyond tampons, every box that I dropped on her doorstep late at night lightening the load on my heart.

They came back sometimes—but not always.

“Don’t act all insulted,” I say, though I am keeping an eye on the trowel. “You didn’t return everything. So don’t stand there all high and mighty and act like you’re above a handout.”

“No,” Tress says. “Only what I could balance on my bike, or carry, once I outgrew my bike. The rest ended up in the river.”

“That’s . . .” I imagine designer-label clothes, tags still on, hardcover bestsellers floating down the river along with bottles of body spray. “That’s ridiculous, Tress. Jesus, swallow your pride.”

“Pride?” Her grip on the trowel tightens, knuckles going white. “You actually think I have some of that?”

Tears pool in her eyes, and she turns away from me, shoulders hunched, back tense with an urge to strike out at something. When she speaks, her voice is an empty echo, bouncing back to me off the stone walls.

“When you gave me things, it made you feel better—and that’s all you thought about, how it made you feel. You never thought maybe it made me feel even worse. I wasn’t your friend, Felicity. I was your pity project.”