i'm only given clues

Interlude 1

Ryan

She finds it at the airport before they leave for New York.

They're in one of those stores that has everything no one really needs and nothing that they do. She'd tagged along with Normani and Dinah to get away from the others but, while Dinah debates the candy bars and Normani flicks through magazines without reading them, she wanders off just to be alone for a while.

And it's not like she's actively been looking for one, but there's a huge cardboard box filled with books of all shapes and sizes hidden at the back corner of the store and she's drawn to it for no reason that she can figure out. She kneels down and starts rummaging through it, reading the covers of random ones, purely out of boredom, and listens to Dinah trying to decide what candy she wants out loud.

One sticks out to her, though, the author familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. She sneaks it to the counter before either of the other two can notice (not that they would anyway) and hands over her money without a word as she slips it into her bag.

She doesn't read it, though. Not yet.

/

She doesn't care that they haven't won. If she's honest, she really didn't expect them to after the year she's had. Winning felt like too much to ask, so much so that she'd already resigned herself to coming home disappointed before they'd even left.

Normani, however, obviously hadn't. Ryan sits beside her, listening to her try to calm herself down. Her fists are balled up against her knees and Ryan shakes her head at her.

"It's just a competition," she reminds her gently. "We've still got next year."

"How can you say that?" Normani beats her fists against her knees.

Ryan blinks. "Because it's true."

Normani scoffs at her and looks like she can't believe Ryan just said that. "It's so not just a competition. Winning meant so much more than that."

/

Later, she sees Normani's finger twitching to reach out and hold Dinah's, but she has that hopeless, struggled look on her face.

Ryan watches for a second before she realizes that, if they'd won, Normani would have been winning a lot more than a stupid show choir competition.

/

It happens almost subconsciously.

One minute, she's not really friends with her friends anymore and the next she is. She sits beside Normani and Dinah at the last meeting and Normani gives her a ride home without giving her a scowl too, and that's it.

The day after school ends, they go to the mall but Dinah mentions that she's going on vacation soon and Normani starts to distance herself from her. Ryan clings, however, desperate for that unending affection Dinah seems to have for everyone. They talk like nothing's different and Normani walks along beside them.

/

But they don't really talk like they used to back when they were the popular girls who everyone wanted to be. Ryan figures that there's no point in gossiping when they have nothing to gossip about. They don't know anything.

She drops by Normani's one day to ask if she has their reading list for English next year and somehow gets stuck watching an entire season of Cheers without even getting up to go to the bathroom.

And that's all they really need, the two of them, company without talking about it, so Ryan invites her to sit by their pool the next day now that the days are hotter and longer. They never actually get in the water and just lay beside each other on the loungers while remaining silent.