Apex kept going off in Jude’s hands.
Jude’s face was lit up. Then she held the phone out so the other girls could see.
Penny snatched the phone, but the damage had been done.
She’d seen.
Jude knew.
SAM HOUSE
Today 9:11 PM
Yoyoyoyoyoyoyoyooyoyoyyoyoyoyo Come by
I baked a SHEETCAKE
Your favorite
Confetti emoji
He’d written out “confetti emoji” since he was trying to quit using emoji because he thought they were “emotionally lazy.”
“Uh,” said Mallory quietly. “What psycho sets their texts to preview mode?”
Penny grabbed her phone and shoved it into her pocket, plunging the girls into darkness.
Penny weighed her options.
Available means to ejector seat from crippling social trauma: 1. Jump into the car, lock the doors, race home, transfer schools before they return.
2. Lie her lying face off.
3. Just tell them everything. It was a simple (very long) misunderstanding.
Penny wondered if this canceled everything out, if them seeing the texts meant they weren’t friends anymore. Penny felt like her throat was closing. There was no escape. She felt nauseous. The waves thundered in her ears.
“Jude,” she said quietly. It was barely audible above the din. Penny wished she could sit down. Her heart was racing. “I’m sorry.”
“Wait,” said Jude. “Sam House, that’s Uncle Sam, right?”
Penny nodded.
There were rapid-fire questions of increasing volume.
“Uncle Sam is your secret Internet boyfriend?”
“No! Not exactly.”
“Are you guys dating?”
“We’re just friends.”
“Well, then, why wouldn’t you say something?”
Penny couldn’t tell her that Sam didn’t want her to. It would only make things worse.
“Were you hanging out this whole time while he was avoiding me?”
“No. We just text. We don’t hang out. . . . Okay, we’ve hung out once. Twice, technically . . .”
“Jesus, Penny,” Jude said. “He’s the guy, right? The guy you’re into?”
Silence.
And from Mallory:
“Why sheet cake though?”
“I told him it was my favorite. . . .”
For some reason the cake part seemed to piss Jude off the most. Mallory stood beside her with her arms crossed. Strangely, Mallory seemed more perplexed than mad, though there was no question whose side she was on.
“I’m sorry,” said Penny. She meant it.
They rode home in silence. This time Penny didn’t feel sleepy at all.
SAM.
11:02 PM
Where’d you go?
You ok?
Cake was bomb
Saved you some
11:49 PM
Hey
Can’t talk
11:51 PM
Sure thing
What happened?
Momstuff?
12:41 AM
LMK if you need anything
PENNY.
The downside to Jude being chipper and easygoing was that when she had it out for you, you felt it. By day two of Jude giving her the silent treatment, Penny was distraught. As soon as Penny entered their room, Jude glared at her, cranked up her speakers, and turned away. Often she blasted god-awful dubstep mash-ups neither of them liked, which is how Penny knew Jude really had it out for her.
When Penny left a banana on her desk as an offering, Jude rejected it. She refused it by putting it on Penny’s work chair, so when Penny went to write, she sat on it. As tiny passive-aggressive revenges went, it was adorable, and it killed Penny that they couldn’t laugh about it.
Penny hit up her mom that afternoon. She’d been dreading texting Celeste, but she had to bite the bullet.
I’m so sorry I won’t make it tonight I’m slammed with my creative writing final Need to write 3K words by Monday Will make it up to you
Happy birthday!!!
Celeste would barely notice Penny wasn’t there. Last she checked on Facebook, the sit-down dinner had transformed to a cocktail fiesta with forty-five guests and a norte?o ensemble, Los Chingones, that took requests for live-band karaoke. Live. Band. Karaoke. There was no way.
Sam texted:
She blew me off for lunch
Jude wasn’t talking to him either.
I called her.
And?
Nothing.
She’s so mad
Living in the same room
Is the worst
Celeste called.
Penny guiltily sent it to voicemail.
I screwed up big, huh?
Ugh I knew we should tell her The super-shameful part was that Jude’s rancor and Penny’s guilt had the unforeseen advantage of helping her write. Penny spent the next few hours consumed by her story and by 11:30 p.m. had completed whole new passages to send J.A. for her office hours the next day. When Jude walked in, Penny was startled out of her trance.
“Oh,” said Penny weakly. “Hey.”
Jude rolled her eyes. “Why aren’t you going home?” said Jude. She grabbed clean clothes and angrily packed them into a bag. “I accepted your mother’s friend request.”
Jude’s stabs at vengeance continued to be the best.
“Jude,” Penny begged. “Please talk to me. I know I should have told you. It wasn’t on purpose and nothing crazy happened. We’re friends. It wasn’t planned and then we didn’t know when to . . .”
“Oh, so you’re a ‘we’ now.”
“Jude, I’m sorry,” Penny said. “It’s a misunderstanding. . . .” Penny pleaded. “It’s not a big deal if you would let me explain.”
“I know it’s not a big deal to you,” said Jude, slamming a drawer. “I know intellectually that you’re allowed to be friends with whoever you want. Same goes for Sam. Which is why I don’t get it. If you’re just friends, if it’s no big deal, why go through all this trouble of hiding it from me? It’s like you’re just shady to be shady, and I hate that.”
She zipped her bag up. “You know, I made such an effort to be nice to both of you,” she said. “I invited you guys to lunch, dinner, movies. Would it have killed you to include me in your plans? You’re both from here. Other than Mallory, I don’t know anyone. Do you know what that feels like? God, you must’ve thought I was so annoying. That I couldn’t take a hint.”
Penny’s heart sank as Jude shouldered her bag.
Jude was right. Of course she was right.
“You know, you do this to everyone,” Jude said, swinging open the door. “You do this to your mom. You do it to me. Mallory, too, even if you don’t care about her. . . . You shut people out with no explanation. It’s so rude and mean. And for what? For a guy who you know doesn’t even like you like that?”
Penny blanched. Spoken out loud, Penny’s actions sounded pathetic even to her own ears.
“I make a good friend, Penny,” Jude said. “You didn’t even give me a chance.”
Penny’s phone rang. She glanced down at it as a reflex.
“Christ,” fumed Jude. She slammed the door behind her.
The number was a 210 area code. Knowing Celeste, she was drunk-dialing her, thinking she was slick by using a friend’s phone. Either that or she lost her purse. Again.
Penny answered.
“Hello?” A man’s voice.
“Hello?” Penny bolted upright.
“Hi. Is this Penelope?” Penny’s heart leapt into her throat.
“Yeah,” she said. “Is everything okay?”
She imagined Celeste dead in a ditch.
“Penny, this is your mom’s friend Michael.”
She tasted acid. “Is it my mom? Is she okay?”
She pictured twisted metal, deranged gunmen, torch-wielding neo-Nazis. . . .
“I’m with your mom,” the voice said. “She’s fine. We’re at Metropolitan Methodist. . . .”
Penny’s head cracked wide open and all she heard were the lambs screaming.
The hospital.
“I’m coming right now,” she said.
“Good, good,” he stammered. “She’s fine but . . . um, okay. I’ll be here.”
Penny did not know a Michael among Celeste’s fiends. Her mother had a rotating cast of besties, though Penny didn’t have their numbers. Truth was, she was her mom’s emergency contact, and despite that fact, Penny hadn’t been there for her. Penny stared at her phone. She couldn’t feel her face, and a wave of nausea engulfed her. Okay, she couldn’t call Jude. Mallory was Jude’s friend, so that was out. She called Sam.
SAM.