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Chapter Eleven

“All ready?” Mom asks Friday after school.

I nod, excited, and haul my overnight bag down the stairs. Kashvi invited me to spend the night at her house before the game Saturday. My parents didn’t want me driving directly there after school because then I’d have one of the cars all of Friday and Saturday, so I had to come back home to gather my stuff before heading over. I’m a little nervous since Kashvi and I haven’t spent a ton of time alone together, but I’m also thrilled to get to know her better.

Mom looks up from her place on the couch, where she’s snuggling with Dad. I’m surprised to see Andrew in the living room as well. He’s playing on his Switch, so it’s not exactly quality bonding time, but usually he doesn’t hang out in the common spaces.

“I’m so happy that both you and Andrew have made such a seamless transition into your new school.” Mom beams at us, and Dad looks up from his magazine to give me a quick smile.

“Seamless” might be a bold statement, but it’s getting better. Even though I don’t see the D&D group much at school, Kashvi and I have started texting more, and I’ve been added to the D&D group chat. We don’t text about anything important, but hearing the others complain about school and joke around makes me feel like we’re closer. It’s nice to have people to text again. And then there’s Logan, of course, but no one else knows about that…whatever that is.

“Quinn, thanks again for helping Grandma with the attic,” Dad says. “I talked to her this morning and she’s still feeling okay after the fall.”

“I’m glad I was there when it happened.”

“This is exactly why she shouldn’t be living on her own anymore,” Mom says.

“Good luck with that,” I reply. “She’s already told me that she’s not moving under any circumstance. Except death.”

Andrew looks up at that. “Morbid much?”

“She’s told us the same,” Dad agrees. “I don’t want to fight with her, especially when we’ve just gotten here, but I’m worried. I keep my phone by the bed just in case a horrible call comes in.”

My chest tightens. I’ve never heard Dad say something so dire about Grandma. It’s easy to forget her age when she’s chatting and buying me ice cream and setting me up on weird attic hangouts. I don’t want to be reminded that she’s getting older.

Mom must feel the same, because she shakes her head and sits up straighter. “Enough of that. So, Barbara mentioned that this boy who helped is cute?”

“What?” Dad eyes me. “I hadn’t heard about that at all. Your helper friend was a boy?”

I roll my eyes. “Yes, he’s a boy and he’s not cute.”

That’s a huge lie and I’m sticking to it as long as I can draw breath.

“What’s going on with him?” Mom’s eyes sparkle with amusement. “Is he just a friend or…”

“Hold on, I don’t know if we need you to be this social. Andrew, do you know this kid?” Dad asks. “What do you make of him?”

It takes him a second to look up, probably because he’s trying to pause his game. “Huh?”

Classic Andrew.

Dad rolls his eyes and repeats his question.

Andrew frowns at me. “What’s his name?”

“Logan Weber,” I mumble. How did this conversation get so off topic?

He shakes his head. “I don’t know him. But you’re already dating someone? How do you know he’s not a prick like the last one?”

I can’t decide if I need to swallow down a scream or thank Andrew for caring about what happens to me. I didn’t realize he paid any attention to my dating life. I drop onto the arm of the couch.

“First of all, you’re dating, too, so don’t go lecturing me,” I tell Andrew. “And second, I’m not dating Logan. He’s part of my new D&D group.” I look to Mom. “No dating, remember.”

I told her all about the group and the rules when I first agreed to be part of it. I needed to make sure she and Dad would be on board with me being gone every Saturday afternoon, so I explained how serious the group was.

“I do remember. What group of teenagers makes a rule against dating?”

“A group of dorks,” Andrew replies immediately. He’s already back to playing his game.

“The most intelligent group of kids I’ve ever heard of,” Dad argues.

I rub my hands over my eyes so hard I’m seeing stars. Thank god Kashvi invited me over because I can’t take a whole night with these three.

“We care about things other than dating. Like defeating beholders and red dragons.”

“See?” Andrew says. “Dorks.”

“Can we please go?” I throw an angry glare in Andrew’s direction, not that he notices. Mom stands, clearly trying to hide her grin, and I head to the car with my bag. I’ll take a freezing cold garage over my brother any day.

Kashvi’s at the door when Mom pulls into the driveway. She waves me in, and we head directly to her bedroom.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she says, “but I thought we’d both sleep in here tonight. I know its small, but if we sleep in the living room, then Sanjiv will want to hang out with us all night. I love him, but I wanted this to be a girl’s night.”

I drop my bag just inside her door. “This is great.” It is a small room, but she’s painted it purple and covered most of the walls with bulletin boards and art prints. She’s already set up a twin-sized air mattress on the floor with cute, flowered sheets. My favorite part is her chandelier that looks like a cloud. She has a remote that can change the lightbulbs to different colors. She flips until the cloud turns pink.

“Do you have people over a lot?”

“Never. I mean, when I was younger I did sometimes, but I hardly talk to those girls anymore. And Sloane’s not exactly a sleepover type of person. So it’s fun to have someone over again. It feels like middle school!”

“In a good way, I hope,” I reply as I wander around her room. “Middle school was rough.”

“True, but we can make it the best part of middle school. Movies, popcorn—I even pulled out all my nail polish. I’m pretty good.” She grins and points to her desk where a half dozen bottles sit in a row.

My stomach clenches. Paige’s big dream after school was to become a nail tech and open her own salon. She was obsessed with nails—we used to watch hours of reels to learn techniques and then Paige would use me to experiment on. She was very artistic and could pull off the coolest designs. My favorite were probably the 3D gold suns and moons she created to match one of my favorite shirts. If I scroll back far enough, half of my pictures are of my nails. Now I never paint them.

I glance past the polish on her desk to a stack of papers from Kashvi’s AP classes and a framed picture of the D&D group. I point to it. “Oh, you all look so cute.”

She comes up beside me. “That’s from a couple yearsago.”

Sloane’s hair was longer and Mark’s cheeks still had a kiddy roundish quality to them. Kashvi’s hair was straight, and Logan also looked younger, but just as attractive as always. My stomach wobbles as memories of the attic rise to the surface of my mind.

“So, I’ve been wondering what led to you all deciding to make the no-dating rule for the group? Was there fighting or weirdness between you all? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“It’s because of me,” she says, and makes a face. “I liked this guy—Wyatt—and we started dating, so I invited him to be a part of our D&D group. I figured it would be another way to spend time together, and everyone else really liked him. But then we got more serious and he freaked out about it.” She rolls her eyes. “He texted me to break up! It was impossible to play across from him every week after that. And don’t get me started on Sanjiv—he wanted to destroy Wyatt. It got ugly when we had to kick him out, and after that we decided we couldn’t have any more dating in the group.”

“That makes sense,” I say, careful to keep my eyes off her photos in the hopes she won’t read too much from my expression. I have to admit I’m relieved that it didn’t have anything to do with Logan, but her experience sounds enough like mine that I can absolutely empathize. “I’m really sorry that happened.” I turn to her. “Guys can be the worst.”

“Seriously, the worst. But not these guys.” She points at the photo. “I really lucked out with this group.”

At Kashvi’s words, any thoughts about sharing what’s been going on with Logan fade away. I don’t want my inclusion in the group to bring any drama or problems. And it’s not even clear what Logan wants from me. He said he came to Grandma’s because he wanted to see me alone, but what now? He hasn’t texted, and he said it was a bad idea for him to come there. Maybe he doesn’t want anything else. It’s not like he said we should start dating in secret. If experience has taught me anything, it’s that boys are fickle.

What I should be thinking about are my friendships. Seeing them all together with their old hairstyles and goofy grins and arms slung over each other’s shoulders reminds me of how new I am. I want to be that comfortable with them—I want to think of them as friends without wondering if I actually fit in. I want us all to be close enough that I never have to think about my old friend group again.

We leave the photos behind and go downstairs to say hi to Kashvi’s parents and Sanjiv, who are all in the kitchen. Her mom points to pizza boxes on the counter.

“For tonight. I don’t have the energy to cook, and we don’t have enough leftovers for all of us.”

Sanjiv hands us both plates before taking a slice for himself. “What are you two doing tonight? We could watch BattleBots together.”

“What’s that?”

“Sanjiv and I have watched it together since we were young,” Kashvi says with a shrug. “Basically, teams build robots and then fight them.”

“It’s very violent and very fun,” Sanjiv explains. “It’s the reason I got into robotics.”

“Although I’m still hoping you’ll do more with your skills than build fighting robots,” their dad says with an eye roll. This is my first time meeting him. He’s quiet and adorable with his ’80s-style colorful sweater stretched over his potbelly.

“There’s no greater achievement than getting your robot on a reality show,” Sanjiv argues. “What do you think? Do you want to check out an episode, Quinn?”

It’s sweet that he’d be open to letting me join in on something that’s clearly special between him and Kashvi, but she’s quick to shake her head.

“I kinda wanted to just do stuff with Quinn tonight, if you don’t mind?”

“Yeah, fine, I figured. I’ll be playing Baldur’s Gate with Logan, then.”

“He’s coming here?” I blurt out.

I’m not ready to see him tonight, even if he’s already on my mind.

Sanjiv tilts his head in confusion. “No…we play online.”

“Oh right. Duh.”

We both fill our plates and grab drinks. “Tell Logan we said hi,” Kashvi says in a cheery voice before heading upstairs. She leans her back against her door after shutting it.

“My parents don’t let us have locks on the doors, but hopefully we’ll hear them coming.” She sits down on the rug in front of her bed and I follow.

“I like your family. Just be grateful your brother isn’t annoying like mine.”

“Have you met Sanjiv?” Kashvi asks.

I laugh. “He has his moments.”

She nods emphatically.

“But clearly you get along or you wouldn’t play D&D together.”

She shrugs. “He’s one of my best friends in the world…but he can also drive me insane. What’s your brother like?”

“He’s…popular? It’s weird how different we are.” I take a bite of pizza and then realize how that might be misinterpreted. “Not that I’m saying you aren’t popular. Only that I’m not!”

She laughs. “It’s fine. I’m not popular and I don’t want to be.”

“Agreed. We just got here three weeks ago and somehow he managed to find an enormous group of friends. He’s always being invited out to stuff, and he’s even gone out with a few different girls…. It’s wild.”

“Meh, I think it’s easier for guys to get dates. Sanjiv never seems to have trouble.” She lifts an eyebrow. “Have you seen anyone at school you’re interested in?”

To my horror, Logan immediately flashes into my mind. Dusty from the attic, grinning at me over boxes of junk, saying he needs to keep his distance from me. I shove the thoughts into a tiny closet in the back of my mind and lock the door.

“Um, I barely know anyone at school yet. And my last experience with dating was less than fun, so I’m not eager to jump back into that.”

She leans forward with her elbows on her knees, pizza forgotten at her side. “Oh, what happened?”

In another context, I might worry she was just looking for some juicy gossip, but she seems genuinely interested. And it’s only fair that I share since she told me about Wyatt.

“More dating and D&D drama.” I shake my head and mess with the shag rug rather than look at her. “Our group had played together for over a year, and it was so fun. The campaign wasn’t like ours at all—it was way less serious. For the others it was sometimes more about talking and eating and…flirting, rather than playing.” I glance up quickly and Kashvi nods but doesn’t say anything. “Caden was the DM, and he was funny and kind of cute, and after a while he started flirting with me during the games. It seemed harmless—I didn’t think it meant anything.”

I’m mildly nauseous recounting this after having tried to push away thoughts of them for so long, but I’m too far into the story to bail now. It’s almost harder remembering the fun times than it is to remember the fallout at the end. If I think about how horribly they turned on me, it’s easy to feel grateful we aren’t talking any longer. But remembering the better times reminds me of how much I lost.

“I’m guessing it wasn’t harmless?” Kashvi asks. The interest in her expression has turned to worry.

“Caden asked me out and I said yes because he was a friend and I thought maybe there could be something more between us. I’d never had a real boyfriend before. It was all exciting at first.” I squirm. “But as soon as he and I were alone, I knew it wasn’t going to work. We were the kind of people who worked better in a big group. When it was just the two of us, there wasn’t much to say and everything felt forced and awkward. And the kiss…” I shiver. “He was not a good kisser. Let’s just say we were meant to stay platonic.”

Kashvi’s hands fly to her face to cover her pained laughter. “I can imagine that revelation didn’t lead to anything good.”

“Oh my god, it was horrible. When I told him I thought we were better as friends, he was shocked. I guess we walked away from that first date with really different impressions of how it went. Then he accused me of being a tease. I didn’t mean to do any of that, but he was so pissed and he turned the whole group against me. Especially my best friend, Paige.”

Kashvi runs a hand through her hair, letting the curls fall everyplace, and looks at me with sympathy. “That’s so messed up, Quinn. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks. I guess we’ve both been through it, huh? It wasn’t a big loss in terms of Caden. He showed his true colors and I was glad to be done with him. Even losing the D&D group wasn’t the worst part of it. It was losing Paige.” I have to take a second to swallow and make sure I’m not in danger of crying. The way she turned her back on me without a second thought…I’m not sure it’ll ever hurt less. “I thought we were so close, but we weren’t.”

“She liked Caden, didn’t she?”

I laugh in surprise. “Wow, it took me way longer than you to figure that out. It turns out she was already secretly jealous that he was interested in me instead of her, but then for me to reject him? It was like I was rejecting her too.” I blow out a breath. “She might have taken it harder than he did. She decided he was the innocent boy with a broken heart of gold and I was the devil incarnate. It all worked out for her since she got him in the end. I guess nothing brings two people together like mutual hatred.”

We sit in silence. I play with my nails rather than study her expression, wondering if I’ve shared too much. I wanted to be honest with her, but that’s a lot of friend trauma to unpack when we haven’t even finished a slice of pizza.

Kashvi jumps to her feet and puts out a hand to pull me up. “Caden sucks and Paige really sucks, so thank god they aren’t around anymore. Now you have us, and we’re a billion times better.” She grins. “I think between your story and mine, we need dessert and a movie. Yeah?”

“Absolutely. Flawless plan.”

We climb onto her bed with our pizza and a bag of chocolate, and she pulls up Netflix on her laptop. I sink into her copious pillows, feeling more relaxed than I expected. No more looking back or worrying about what happened with my old friends. It’s time for something much better.

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