A group of friends tries to piece itself back together after losing its glue.
*****
It's a quiet October morning in Palo Alto, California, when the news break out--June Beaumont was...
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XENA
People were staring at me as we made our way into the Physics lab.
Okay, fine, in all honesty, they were probably staring at all three of us. I had never been one to enjoy being the center of attention and highly preferred to let other people be in the spotlight (my mothers, both fashion designers, had never been too thrilled over me not following in their footsteps), but my height made it harder for me to hide. All three of us were tall—with Felix being one inch taller than my five-foot-nine height and with Sofia easily hitting five-foot-eight—so it was easy for anyone to find us in a crowd.
Now that everyone had seen the drama unfold and seen Leon get slapped in the face—hard as hell, if I dared to quantify it—there was no way people weren't talking about us. If they hadn't been before, they were now.
I clutched my textbooks close to my chest, took in a sharp breath (breathe, Xena), and quickly crossed the lab towards my designated seat. Next to me, Sofia fiddled with her graphing calculator and, when I risked a glance towards her, I found her playing a particularly intense game of Super Mario.
"Are you okay?" I asked, half-scared of what she might say. She didn't pause the game. "Sof, I'm sorry; I know I ask you the same question every single time we're in Physics class, but it honestly feels like everyone keeps dumping new information on you. I just want to know how you're holding up."
Sofia waited until she finished the level to pay me the slightest bit of attention. By the time she did so, the lecture had already started and most of the class had begun to doze off. That was the status quo I had gotten used to, and the one I wasn't willing to let go of.
It was almost a perfect replica of our first day back at school after June died—the whispering, the stares, me trying to talk with Sofia, Felix hinting that I should drop the subject.
"I just don't understand," she confessed. "I've been trying to make some sense out of everything that has happened since June died, but I can't find a logical conclusion. I can't find anything reasonable regarding the reasons why she did what she did. I don't know why she texted everyone but me. I don't know why she called Meridian. I don't know why Leon is blaming me for what happened. I don't know what is going to happen to all of us, now that it seems pretty likely we won't be friends by the time graduation comes."
My stomach sank.
It was one thing for me to think it. It was a completely different one to hear someone put my thoughts into words, and it made it so much scarier.
