“So, did your friends like me,” asked Tiffany, sitting on Cyrus’s bed, a diet Pepsi in hand. She took a tentative sip, waiting.

“Yeah. Lucita said you were pretty.”

“Lucita is the girl with a crush on you, right?”

Cyrus winced. “Yeah, but we’re just friends. Everyone else agreed with her, and they said you look nice. It was a good chat.”

“I’m glad.” Tiffany took another sip of her drink. She had been hoping for Lucita to say something for her to latch onto and twist, something for her to use to create a bigger wedge between Luci and her dream boy. But no, she had to keep her mouth shut. And everyone else had also kept out. How clever of them.

“Yeah. You know, we should video chat with them together.”

Hard pass. “Oh no, I’m not sure that would be the best thing. I mean, well, I guess I’m shy? I don’t want to say the wrong thing, especially in front of my boyfriend’s ex—”

“Lucita isn’t my ex.”

“Right, sorry. I didn’t—“

Cyrus sat on the bed next to her, grabbing her hand. “If you’re worried about Luci, you don’t have to be. I promise we’re just friends. We’ve never done anything. I’ve never let her believe anything could happen between us.”

What a liar. “It’s not that. Really, it’s not. Can we just date for a while longer? I just want us to be us without people making their opinions about us.”

“Yeah, okay. Maybe that is for the best. You know, she’s actually a sweet person. She likes almost everyone, and the fact that she thought you were pretty…well, it was hard for her to say, I could tell.”

I bet. “Almost everyone?”

“Yeah. She and my friend Matthew don’t get along. They never have. He kind of hates her. And she feels the same way about him.”

“Really? Why?”

“Well, uh, back in middle school, he bullied her a lot. I never quite understood why.”

Interesting. “Hmm, well, that’s unfortunate. Hopefully, Matthew likes me more than he liked her.”

“Maybe. Matt is a little rough around the edges.” Cyrus shrugged and headed back to the desk to finish his homework.

She reached into her pocket and fiddled with her cell phone. How do I get to Matthew? After all the fuss she just made about not meeting his friends, she couldn’t just say, “Hey, can I meet him?” She hadn’t thought this through.

Staring at the back of his head, his phone on the dresser, she got an idea. Pressing down on the power button of her phone, she pulled it out.

“Crap! Hey Cy, can I borrow your phone. Mine is dead and I forgot I need to text my roomie. Apparently, there is this party going on off-campus—”

“Oh, I know what party,” said Cyrus, turning on his chair and grabbing his phone. “My friend hooked me up with the details.”

“Friend?”

“Conner Smith?”

“Oh my god, that’s my roommate’s boyfriend.” She scrunched up her face. “He sells pot.”

“Yeah, I know. I, uh, kinda smoke it.”

What the hell? “Seriously? I didn’t take you as that kind of guy.”

“I started this summer. It helps with my anxiety. You don’t like that, do you?”

“No, no, it’s just. I mean, I hate that my roomie does it, but you never like it. She reeks of it, and since I’m on probation, I just get kind of nervous being around it—”

“You’re on probation?”

Shit, shit, shit. “Oh, well, with all the drama at my previous school, given that there wasn’t much evidence, just a lot of rumors, the school would only take me on the condition that I prove them false. Which is easy to do. I’m not that type of girl.”

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense.”

“Anyway, I just didn’t know. You don’t really fit my image of a pothead.”

Cyrus shrugged. “I just use it to relax. Sometimes, I get pretty bad anxiety, and learning I was coming here just, well, it made me anxious. I’m not very good at making friends.”

“I think you’re quite charming.” She was happy to discover she meant it and gave him a genuine smile that he returned.

“Anyway, here, you can use my phone. My pin is 020290.”

“Thanks. Do your friends mind that you smoke?” She fiddled with the phone. She had to keep him talking if she would pull this off.

Cyrus shrugged. “Matthew doesn’t really care, but Lucita. She’s going through a lot, so I think she’s just projecting. She has a lot of her own anxiety and doesn’t really deal with it at all.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I hope everything is okay with her.”

“Eh. I mean, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to tell you. She saw her father this summer, and it was…well, it was bad. The last time she saw him, she had been six, he hadn’t been involved in her life at all. Come to find out, he remarried this person he had been dating a few years ago and they have this new life together. She even discovered she had a half-sister and half-brother. Neither wants anything to do with her, but they’re kids, so what do they know.”

“That’s terrible.”

“It gets worse. Lucita is a peny pincher. She saves up every dime she makes doing chores around the house. The thing she spends the most money on is books. Girl has a whole wall of books. Apparently, her father lost his job a while back and decided the best way to reconnect with his estranged daughter was to hit her up for money. Not even just her, her whole family.”

“Excuse me?” Even Tiffany thought that went too far. How dare he just be absent from her life and then expect his teenage daughter to cover his bills. No, she told herself, shaking her head, she would not feel bad for Lucita.

“Yeah. It was rough. His wife shut him down real quick. Luci said she liked her. But what really pissed her off was that apparently her father wasn’t there because he didn’t know where she was. After her mom graduated from college and moved them to Florida from Boston, no one told him where she went.

“Her mother’s family doesn’t really like him. So how was he supposed to help her and her mom when her mom lost her job? How was he supposed to be there if her family decided to keep it a secret? Luci was pissed. She threw her phone at the wall of her grandmother’s house. Called them all out on their bullshit, and her mother, well, she actually stepped up for once and defended her.”

“Do she and her mother have a tense relationship?”

“Tense is a nice word for it.” Cyrus sighed, looking away. “Luci has run away from home twice since I’ve known her. Her mother, well, she has rage issues. She doesn’t abuse her, but she makes Luci feel small and insignificant. Forgotten.”

Finding Matthew’s phone number, she texted it to herself, quickly deleting it, before sending a fake message to her roommate and tossing the phone on the bed. That explained so much about Luci.

“Well, that’s all really shitty.”

“Yeah. It’s just making her feel…her emotions go haywire sometimes. That’s the best way I can explain it. Some days, she’s all chipper, happy, excited, and then she has these days where it’s like a black cloud is sitting on her shoulders.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I’m just hoping her new boyfriend helps her sort out her feelings. Plus, she has some great friends who really stand by her.”

Seriously! “Well, it sounds like she has a great support group.”

“Yeah.” Cyrus’s phone chimed. She grabbed it, seeing Anne’s phone number pop up.

“Caroline wants to hang out for a bit. I need to go anyway; my phone needs to charge, and my mom is going to want to check in later.” She finished her Pepsi, dropping it in the trash before picking up her bag. Bending down, she gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “I’ll see you later, love.”

“’Kay.” Tiffany left feeling happy and accomplished, skipping down the hall. Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she turned it on, waiting for that text message to pop up.

Cyrus watched Tiffany leave and waited until the door was closed before he picked up his phone. He scrolled through the contacts before settling on Luci’s name, hoping she was home to answer his call. Sometimes, he would open Messenger on his laptop and see her online, only to see her go offline. Was she avoiding him?

The phone rang twice before her voice rang through, low and hesitant.

“Hello?”

“Hey, how’s it going?”

“Cyrus!” Her voice rose, high pitched, happy as if she couldn’t believe it was him on the other end of the phone. It made him smile, hearing her be this happy. “Hi! Oh my god, I miss you.”

“I miss you too.” And he did; he really did miss her. “Now, how are you?”

“I’m fine—no, Sweets, leave Tigger alone!” He laughed at her yelling at her cats. “Sorry about that; my cat was being mean to my other cat.”

“I could tell. So, how are you?” He knew she knew what he was really asking about.

“I’m fine. Don’t worry. I’m doing my best. I promise.”

He signed, not believing her. “Have you spoken to your family?”

She groaned. “Like, every Sunday. My grandmother calls the house every Sunday, and every Sunday, my mom asks if I want to talk to her. Every Sunday, I say no with as much attitude as is acceptable. Thankfully, my mom isn’t pushing it.”

“That’s good, at least. I’m glad you and your mother are doing better.”

“Well, right now, she’s all I’ve got. Although she’s not really happy with the family either, so there’s that.”

“What about your boyfriend?”

“Right, my boyfriend.”

“What’s with the tone?”

He could almost see her shrug. “I don’t know. I mean, like, are we even dating. Sure, we hold hands, and we’ve kissed a couple times and whatever, but—”

“Luce?”

“He told me he loved me on Friday.”

Crap. “You guys have only been dating for two weeks.” Cyrus didn’t like it; it made a bitter taste fill his mouth.

“Yeah, I know. It was weird. It’s still weird. I am so glad I don’t have a phone right now because I don’t know what I would do if I had to text him.”

“So you didn’t say it back?” He tried not to think of how happy that made him. She didn’t love him; there was no way.

“No, I just sort of gave him a quick peck on the cheek and jumped off the bus. He told me right as we were approaching my stop. Thank god.”

“Anything else going on?”

“Well Jason is sort of cheating on Liz, maybe.”

“What do you mean, maybe? Wait what? Luce, you can’t just say that without any information.”

“Yeah, I know. Look, there was this house party, and Liz and Jason haven’t been great lately, right. She thinks he has a crush on me, and it’s just been tense or whatever. Anyway, they got into this fight, and this girl, Amelia, is her name. She has this huge crush on him and lets us all know it. She made a move on him, and I caught them making out. But, you know, I think it was just the one time. Things seem better between him and Liz—”

“Because he’s cheating on her Luce. Don’t be naive.”

“Well, I don’t have any proof of that, but you’re probably right. It was like a switch flipped, and he’s all super sweet to her now, and I think that’s what she wanted anyway.” He heard her let out a big sigh. “I don’t know what to do about it.”

Cyrus could picture her right now, lounging in the house in her usual short-shorts and tank top, long black hair wrapped up in a hair clip, bangs framing her face and glasses, a pout on her face. He didn’t know why, but he wished he was with her, tangled in her bed again.

No, he was not allowed to think about what had almost happened during the summer, not with a girlfriend he liked. A girlfriend who already thought of Luci as his ex.

“Luci, you can’t do anything about it.”

“I mean, I could hurt the girl. That’s always an option.”

“That is definitely not an option!”

“Well then, I don’t know. I guess—”

“No.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to say!”

“You were going to suggest saying something to Liz.”

“Okay, and what’s wrong with that?”

“Luci, I understand you want to, but you can’t. Just think, would you want to hear from everyone else that your boyfriend was cheating on you? Just think about it.”

“I hate that you’re right.”

“She needs to hear it from him. Just think about it. Think about how you would feel.”

Silence met him. He would imagine her sitting on the sofa, biting her lip, twirling the short hairs at the back of her neck. “I’d feel humiliated and want to punch something.”

“You always want to punch something,” he said, flopping onto his bed.

“Not true…just most of the time.” There was another pause. “How are you and Tiffany?”

The way her tone hardened, making the T sound of her name more pronounced, he could tell she was gritting her teeth.

“Are you jealous?”

“Hardly. I just hate the name.” Hearing that she wasn’t jealous hurt more than he’d like to admit. Then again, she did have a boyfriend. But still…

“Well, we’re fine.” He winced at his tone. He hadn’t meant to sound so sharp.

“Hmm. Well, at least she’s pretty.”

“You already said that Luce.”

“I just really hate her name!”

Cyrus burst out laughing, which made Luci become defensive over the phone before she was laughing with him, each of them teasing the other, as if miles didn’t separate them.

Matthew sat in his bedroom typing up a paper for his lit class when his phone began buzzing. Rolling his eyes, he snatched it up. He didn’t recognize the number, but it didn’t ring as spam.

Curious, he picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Hi!” The voice was female, chipper, and not one he recognized. “Is this Matthew? Cyrus’s friend?”

“Yeah, who is this?”

“This is Tiffany, his girlfriend.”

“No kidding,” he said, leaning back into the chair. “How can I help you?”

“Actually, I was thinking we could help each other.”

“How so?”

“Well, I’m the Tiffany that Lucita sent away. You know, that girl. I’m sure you’ve heard of me.”

What the hell? “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. My parents shipped me off to this stupid private school after Blake set up that fight between me and Lucita.” He heard her ground out every word. “Anyway like I was saying, I think we can help each other.”

“Help with what?”

“Well, I hate Lucita, and from what Cyrus says, you do too. I want to make her pay. You in?”

Matthew mulled things over in his head, trying to figure out what to say to this girl before finally settling on a decision. As the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy right.

“Well, Tiffany, what do you have in mind?”