“Do we leave her behind? Our time-challenged friend? Who, need I remind you, we have known since Mrs. Raspberry’s class? Do we abandon her to the chaos of this line alone?”
We edge forward. Now only two groups of people stand between us and the security point.
My hand lifts into a rallying fist.
“Or do we wait? Yes, wait! For waiting for a friend is the most noble thing one can do! Do we wait, though we will be pissed off at the waiting, or do we abandon our posts?! Nay, we do not!”
“Go inside!” some rando in the line behind us yells, and people laugh.
“You, sir, will be the first to go when the zombie apocalypse comes,” I yell back.
“Nah, I’m a survivor!” the guy yells. His skin is dark brown and his eyes are warm with a we’re all here to have fun light. He’s wearing a T-shirt with a zombie chasing people that reads ZOMBIES HATE FAST FOOD.
“Okay, see you at the end, then!” I yell back, because if he’s a survivor then I’m a survivor, too.
Everyone chuckles along, and we all turn back to the front of the building as the line moves up again. We’re next.
“Seriously,” Imani says, still chuckling. “What are we gonna do? Siggy has her badge, she can meet us inside.”
I turn to the bored-looking guard standing to the side of the checkpoint.
“Excuse me, we’re waiting for our friend. Is it okay if we just wait here? Then when she gets here we can go in?”
“Knock yourself out,” he says.
Imani and I shuffle off to the side a little, and I wave a hand in front of us. It takes only a few repetitions of “Go ahead” and “We’re waiting for a friend” before the crowd gets it and we can just stand there grimly, smiling these pained smiles, and nodding as people give us generally sympathetic looks, as if we’re orphans asking for more gruel.
“Oh, no. Okay, June, don’t look.” Imani’s voice is first hushed and tight, then hushed and soothing, and that’s how I know what it is.
Or rather who.
“Just look at me. She hasn’t seen us, and we don’t have to see her either. Not if you don’t want to.”
I knew she was coming. Her and Scott both. I knew that. I know that.
“Scott’s not with her,” Imani murmurs, reading my mind like always.
That pain that wears Blair’s name lances through my heart again. Betrayal sharp as a sword. What it feels like to lose a close friend. After years. Because they were never your friend at all, it seems.
Shame and heat burn through my veins and I have to pretend now, that I don’t feel this either, this particular self-hatred of being so, so, so stupid.
And not about math, which, I already knew.
But a new kind of stupid. A stupid about people, when I thought I was good at them.
I know I’m not supposed to say that word. To use it. I know my mom would hate it if she knew I thought of myself that way. I know it’s a bad word, and inaccurate, and wrong.
But nothing else captures the way I feel. The worthlessness and shame of being . . . that.
“It’s okay,” I lie. “I’m fine.”
And so, I look around, even though Imani has twisted in front of me slightly to shield us.
Blair Whitley walks alongside the slowly snaking line. She’s taking long strides, like no one is going to stop her, not ever, why would they?
Her smile is tight on her face, like all her smiles are. Tense, forced, tightening her eyes and showing sharp teeth.
She’s pretty in the whetted way of a knife. Her honey-brown hair is wavy, like she might have used hot rollers this morning. Her eyebrows are perfect arcs accenting her freckled white skin.
Before I can wonder where she’s going in such a rush, when the line is so slow and we’re all just standing here like cattle, I see it. Around her neck.
A VIP badge on a deluxe, collectible, blood-spatter-design ribbon lanyard.
Air whuffs out of my chest with a sickening thump.
I mean.
Of course.
“Is that a VIP pass?” Imani murmurs. “Good lord. They cost what, a grand?”
I nod, and make myself look away from Blair.
“Or more. Depending on which level you buy.”
We were all supposed to go to ZombieCon! together.
“She must have upgraded,” Imani says. “I guess her parents coughed up the cash, as always.”
I feel an old surge of protectiveness, the light-tracings history of our entire, complicated friendship.
“Can you blame her?” I ask. “Especially since she knew she wouldn’t be coming with us.”
“Don’t you start punishing yourself.” Imani’s voice is a gentle reprimand.
I just shake my head.
I can’t help it. I met Blair in kindergarten, too. She used to play with me and Imani; they’d fight over me. Hard to believe, right? But I think it was because I used to be happy to play any game they wanted, not because I was so great or anything.
On the playground Blair would pull on one arm and Imani would pull on the other and they’d both be laughing and pulling at me, saying, “She’s my friend! She’s my friend!” and I would be laughing, too. I’m not going to lie, it felt pretty good to have them fight over me. But I’d say, “We can all play together!” and “I’m both your friends!” Which didn’t quite make sense grammatically, but I knew what I meant.
And eventually I was both their friends. We were like the Three Musketeers, one for all, and all for one! And when Siggy came to our school in third grade, she became our fourth musketeer. We would hang out together in our group of four, or we’d break off into pairs, or trios, but usually we were all together as much as possible, sitting together at lunch every day, meeting up in the courtyard at break, and we might make friends outside of our musketeering but we always knew that we four were the closest of friends and the “core” group.
I’m close friends with a few juniors and sophomores because of how I had to repeat first geometry and then algebra 2. Imani has two other tight friend groups, one with the student council kids and the other through the Multicultural Club (I’m in it, too, but I don’t go as much as Imani because I have tutoring after school. Right now the club is putting together an anime film festival). Siggy is hella into Botany Club and is of course close with Mark’s friends. Blair is big in the AV Club and the newspaper, and has other friends in those groups.
But for all of these other friendship circles, we all always knew that Imani, Siggy, Blair, and me were the innermost circle. The base. The core.