by Diana Urban
He asked me to come with him.
To Georgia freaking Tech.
I was floored. I loved him, and I wanted us to be together—but I always figured that if we ended up in different cities, we’d date long-distance, reuniting over winter and summer breaks. We each knew and respected each other’s career goals, and that was supposed to come first.
At least, I thought it was.
Caught off guard, I babbled incoherently about how I’d already had a list of schools in mind, but said I’d look into their music program when I got home. “They have a great program, I promise,” Robbie had said with a grin. “And I looked it up—tuition is half the cost of USC. Your dad’ll be happy about that. We can even move off-campus at some point to save you money. And hey, you can come to all my games, too.”
Dread bubbled in my stomach—any program of theirs wouldn’t match those at my dream schools. And when I Googled Georgia’s Tech’s offerings late last night, I quickly discovered they had no music program to speak of. None. Nor did any college within a fifty-mile radius.
But Robbie wanted me to come with him—to be together long term. To live together. He was serious about us. Part of me was elated. But my music . . . how could I drop all of my plans like that? Worse, how could he expect me to? He knew how much I wanted to go to music school. But would I lose him altogether if I said no? Was following him to school something I should consider?
Hence needing Priya’s advice. She was the one person I ever confided in, who knew all of my dreams, and how much work I’d done to accomplish them. If there was anyone who could talk some sense into me, it was Priya.
But she didn’t come outside when I rang the bell or knocked on the front door. Her car was in the driveway, but the two-car garage door was shut, so I couldn’t tell if her parents were home. Her parents always let me in if they got to the door first, so I guessed they’d already left for work. Did Priya go with them somewhere? She ignored my texts and Google chats: Where are you???
I kept checking my phone between classes. It wasn’t like her to ignore me, and I kept expecting some explanation to light up my screen. The longer my messages went unanswered, the tighter my stomach twisted.
I swung by Sasha’s locker on my way to physics. Amy and Maria huddled next to Sasha, watching something on her phone, tittering. Sasha and Amy were decked out in their cheerleading uniforms for tonight’s football game.
Sasha caught sight of me and stuck her phone in her locker. “Hey, lady, what’s up?” She stretched out a cheek to kiss the air on either side of mine. “You coming to the game tonight?”
I wiped sticky gloss off one of my cheeks when she turned back to her locker mirror. “Umm . . . I don’t know. I have orchestra practice.”
“Oh, well that’s good. They learned my new songs, right?” Her new songs? I nodded, watching Maria’s face fall. The orchestra had finally learned all of the new singing numbers. I’d never composed music to lyrics before, and it ripped me from my comfort zone. But I was especially proud of the haunting, mournful melody Juliet sings after discovering Romeo is dead. It showed off my range brilliantly alongside the other samples I’d be sending to colleges. So I took extra time to make it absolutely perfect to use it as my fifteen-minute recording from the play, along with the full PDF of the composition. Maybe if it blew the admissions boards away, they’d deem me worthy of a scholarship.
Maybe I’d get to go to my dream school after all.
“Yeah, they sound great,” I replied. “Hey, have any of you seen Priya? She missed our calc exam second period, and it’s not like her to—” I paused when the three of them exchanged furtive glances. “What is it?”
Amy adjusted one of her curls. “Priya’s probably going to be out for a while.” She cringed, biting her lip.
“Poor thing.” Sasha pouted, twisting her tube of lip gloss closed.
“Why?” I asked. “What happened?”
“She bit it at practice last night,” said Amy.
“Literally,” said Sasha. The three of them erupted into giggles.
“Oh my God,” said Maria, “stop it, that’s horrible.”
An uneasy feeling settled in my stomach. “What exactly happened?”
“Ugh, it was a disaster.” Sasha rubbed her lips together. “She couldn’t do a basic tuck flip.”
“A basic tuck flip?” I said, raising my voice. “Off someone’s shoulders?”
Amy wiggled her fingers. “Mine.”
I glared at Sasha. “You know she sucks at balance stunts—why would you let her do flips off someone’s shoulders?”
“Hey.” She slammed her locker shut. “It’s not my fault she’s a complete moron.” She set her hands on her hips and stuck out her chin, ready for a retort. “She’s had weeks to learn that stunt.”
How could she say that? Heat coursed through my veins as the warning bell rang. But concern for Priya trumped my anger. “So what happened to her? Is she okay?”
“It wasn’t pretty,” said Sasha.
“And probably still isn’t,” said Amy. “It was a hard fall.” She frowned. “It was actually pretty scary.”
“Ugh, I’m so glad I didn’t see it in person,” said Maria. “I would have thrown up.”
“Well, you freak out at the mere mention of blood,” said Sasha. My fingers and toes went numb. There was blood?
Maria shuddered. “True.”
Sasha glanced at her watch. “I don’t want to be late. Good luck at orchestra practice. I hope they’re on point.” She grabbed me for a quick hug. “Just three weeks left until opening night!”
I banged on Priya’s front door for the umpteenth time. Her parents were still at work, but I spotted her peeking through the blinds in her bedroom window on the second floor. “Priya!” I yelled at her window. “I saw you up there. C’mon, let me in!”
No response.
“I just want to make sure you’re okay! I heard about what happened.”
No response.
“C’mon, Priya! It can’t be that bad. So what if you have some cuts and bruises?”
No response.
I stood back from the house and contemplated checking the windows to see if any of them were unlocked. “I’m not leaving until I talk to you!” Squeezing behind the hedges next to the front walkway, I tried the living room window, but it was locked. “Priya! You don’t have to hide—”
The front door lock clicked, and the door creaked as it opened slightly. I scrambled past the shrubberies, back to the front stoop. “Will you shut up already?” said Priya.
“I just wanted to . . .” I trailed off when I saw Priya’s face. Her upper lip had been split, and a few stitches crisscrossed down the middle. Her right cheek was covered in deep purple bruises. I couldn’t see the rest of her—she wore a long gray sweatshirt over black leggings. “Oh my God, are you okay?”
Defeated, she opened the door a bit wider. “What does it look like?” She made a whistling sound when saying “does,” and I caught a glimpse of her front teeth—or lack thereof.
I clamped a hand over my mouth, holding in a gasp.
“Yeah. Come in.” She stepped aside so I could walk in, and led me to her bedroom. It’d been forever since I’d come over, since we always hung out at my place. Posters of David Thurston and old-fashioned diagrams of illusions still lined her walls, and her bookshelves were crammed with magic books and fantasy novels.
When she sat at her desk, I sank onto the edge of her bed. “Does it hurt?” I asked.
“No, Amber.” She covered her mouth when she spoke. “I literally fell on my face and knocked out my two front teeth last night, and it doesn’t hurt one bit.” I strained to make sense of her words through her new lisp.
“I’m sorry. Of course it hurts . . .” I paused when the tears pooling in her eyes spilled down her cheeks. “Will they be able to fix it?”
She dropped her hand and ran her tongue over the empty space where her teeth had been drilled down to nubs. “Yeah. The teeth
broke in half, but they’re going to cement on a bridge with fake teeth. Supposedly nobody will be able to notice anything changed.”
“Oh, good. That’s great. Still, that must have been scary.”
“Ya think?” she shot back, her eyes narrowed.
“I’m sorry. I was just—”
“Just what? You just wanted to come over to see what a freak show I am, right?”
My brow furrowed. Why would she think she’s a freak show? I’d think it’s pretty normal to fall while attempting a difficult flip stunt. It was rotten luck that she landed splat on her face, but nothing about the situation made her a freak. “Of course not. I was worried about you. I’d never think that about you.”
“Well, she does. All the time. Sasha’s constantly reminding me how I’m ugly, incompetent, a geek, a horrible cheerleader, and a fat useless moron.” I stared at her in horror, my mouth agape. “I heard her tell Amy I was a freak when she saw . . . when she saw . . .” She motioned to her mouth.
“She . . . she called you a fat useless moron?”
“Not exactly . . . she writes these nasty comments on my Facebook and Instagram posts for everyone to see. ‘Aw, Priya, you’re so pretty in pictures.’” She scoffed. “Like I’m ugly in real life. And everyone knows what she means.”
My lungs seized up. I’d heard Sasha say stuff like that before, but I thought Priya was just being overly sensitive. Sasha had been so nice to me, so helpful, I didn’t think she meant to be mean.
“After a while, it got even worse,” Priya went on. “She’d comment with links to makeup that would hide my zits, or dieting advice. Everyone likes all her comments, and some of them even chime in with their own ‘tips.’” She made air quotes. “‘Oh, Priya, you should wear your hair down like this more often so it covers your face.’ Or, ‘Ever heard of Photoshop?’”
“No,” I whispered.
“That’s not even the worst of it.” Oh, God. “Someone took a video of me at cheerleading practice yesterday . . .” She choked back a sob. “Sasha didn’t take it, obviously . . . someone else must have sent it to her. But she shared it publicly on every platform, under the pretext of a fucking safety lesson for cheerleaders. As if she was doing it to help people. And it’s going viral.”
“What?” My stomach curdled like sour milk. Sasha hadn’t mentioned that earlier. Priya grabbed her phone from her desk, scrolled for a moment, and tried handing it to me. I winced and leaned back. “I don’t need to see it. I . . . I believe you. I’m so sorry, I had no idea—”
“I know, I know. You don’t use social media. You’re the only person on the freaking planet who doesn’t use social media.” I’d deleted my accounts after Maggie’s death, afflicted with PTSD, terrified I’d see something I wouldn’t be able to unsee.
Just like Maggie had.
“Why didn’t you tell me what she was doing?”
“I tried. You kept rationalizing away her jabs . . . the ones you saw for yourself.”
“I . . . I didn’t realize—”
“And I know how triggering social media is for you. So there I am, trying to still be friends with her, like a complete idiot, because I still wanted to be friends with you. And you know what? I don’t even care anymore. I’m done.”
I shook my head, unable to comprehend her words. “What do you mean, you’re done?”
“I’m done,” she repeated. “With all of it. Starting with cheerleading. I already quit.”
“But you can’t quit now. You’ve worked so hard . . .” But I glanced at her busted lip and swallowed hard.
“Oh, please.” Priya shook her head. “I’m quitting cheerleading, and I’m quitting Sasha, and I’m quitting you.”
My heart went numb. “What?”
“You heard me. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t compete for your time.” My mouth opened and closed a few times as I struggled to find words. “Let’s just face it, Amber. We’ve drifted apart.”
I stood. “No. No we haven’t!”
“It’s like you’re in your own little bubble. All you care about is your play, and your perfect friend, and your perfect boyfriend. You chose them over me. And I’ve always been there for you. But I can’t stick it out any longer.”
My eyes watered. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Priya . . . I know you’re upset about the video . . .”
“It’s not just the video. Honestly, I should have done this months ago.” Oh, God. She must have been bottling this up, and nothing could stop the explosion. “But I didn’t want to lose you. And I did want to be on the cheerleading squad. I wanted to live out my pipe dream, just like you were living yours. I wanted you to be proud of me for coming out of my shell. I wanted to be friends with whoever you were friends with, so we could be best friends together, always.” She choked on the word “always,” tears slipping down her face.
“And it’s not just that she was awful to me. She made me do awful things, too. I drank at school when I didn’t want to. I stole an exam for her. I bullied Phil Pratt to try to fit in, and then he brought a freaking gun to school—”
I grabbed for her hand, but she pulled it away. “That wasn’t your fault. You didn’t bully him, Priya. It was one time.”
“What if that was his breaking point? Maybe if he thought even dorky Priya Gupta could insult him like that . . . well, maybe that was his last straw. What if he went on a murdering spree, and I was one of the people who’d made him feel like crap? All of that blood—maybe even my own blood—would be on my hands.”
“But he didn’t!” I shook my head—I had no idea this had been weighing on her so heavily. I was the one who encouraged her to be fun and silly around Zane, which led her to taunt Phil. If anything, that was my fault. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this earlier?”
“When?” she cried. “When could I? Sasha’s always around. And you’re never online, and you suck at texting. If she’s not around, you’re hell-bent on focusing on your music. And honestly, I wasn’t sure you’d choose me over her.”
I wiped the tear slipping down my cheek. “I thought she was a friend. A friend to both of us.”
“But you saw her yelling at me! You saw it!”
“I thought she was just cracking under pressure, or high, or something.” But stress and drugs didn’t excuse what Sasha was doing to Priya.
I’d been selfish these past months. I got my wish to score the play, the most popular girl in school befriended me, a baseball jock fell for me, and I was considered one of them now. For the first time in forever I felt part of a group, accepted by people I always considered “above” me. But I’d deserted the person who truly mattered, and let them steamroll her. It had to stop. I couldn’t lose Priya over this. I couldn’t let her continue getting hurt.
“I can stop hanging out with her. Right now.” My voice shook. “She has to go through with the play now, anyway—”
Priya slapped her desk. “There it is. It’s always about the play, or what Robbie wants, or what Sasha wants, but never about what I want. Don’t you see that? It’s never about how I feel. It’s too late. I want my sanity back. I’m done with you. With all of it.”
No. This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t mean this. I couldn’t lose Priya. “I swear, I’ll stop talking to Sasha.”
“You won’t just walk away. I know it.” Priya shook her head. “You’re so ingrained in that group now. That never happened for me. They won’t miss me at all.”
“I’d miss you. Every day. You’re my best friend, Priya.”
“No I’m not. She is. She took that honor months ago. And I’ve had enough. I’m done.”
22 Minutes Left
“Priya!” I scrambled to her side after she hit the floor.
Diego rushed over as I turned Priya to lie flat on her back. She’d been shaky and off-balance for a while, but I thought it was out of fear, and maybe the heat. I knew about her blood sugar problems—I should have been more insistent that she eat something earlier. This was al
l my fault. My fault.
In a panic, I stood and grabbed a pepper shaker from the table. “Should we put this under her nose?”
Diego took it from me. “What, pepper?”
“Yeah. You know. To wake her up.”
Diego shook his head and handed it back. “That’s not a thing. You’re thinking of smelling salts, which we don’t have.”
“Well, we have to do something!” I threw the pepper shaker across the room, and it shattered against the fireplace, pepper spilling everywhere. “This can’t be happening.” My stomach clenched, and I swallowed hard. It should be one of you to die. I couldn’t have understood Priya properly. The heat must have been muddling my brain. Sure, we’d had a falling-out, but she couldn’t mean she wanted me to die. Tears blurred my vision.
Diego wiped his own forehead and glanced at the shattered window, a panic-stricken look on his face. “I didn’t think it’d get this hot. How is it so damn hot in here?”
“Something must be wrong with the boiler,” suggested Robbie.
“Robbie, break the other window,” I said. “Let’s try to get more fresh air in here.”
He nodded. “It’s worth a shot.”
“Priya, wake up.” I gently shook her shoulders, and her head lolled feebly from side to side. “Dammit, I told her to eat something. She’s hypoglycemic.”
“Maybe it was a combination of that and the heat,” said Diego as Robbie dragged a chair to the intact window, lifted it over his head, and bashed away.
He hopped aside in time to avoid the glass raining down and waved his arms like a lunatic, trying to circulate the air. But the windows were so small, and the room was so hot, it wasn’t helping. Everyone looked exhausted, and we were all sweating profusely.
Panic racked my body, and I trembled despite the heat. There was no way out of here. There was no way to get Priya to the hospital. There was no way that door was opening until the hour was up, and we still had around twenty minutes left. What if the heat made us all pass out?
