It had been a week since Jeremy dumped Michael. And I had been left to pick up the pieces. I had come over to his house every day after school, much to the suspicion of both Mrs. Mells, who thought that I was his new girlfriend. By now, we had a schedule that we went through whenever I went over. We would start by playing video games and listening to music on vinyl and ended with my comforting him as he cried.
I surprisingly found him crying oddly comforting. Whenever he cried, I would go and hug him. We would sit there for as long as an hour, just his head resting on my collarbone and his arms wrapped around my waist. Sometimes I would stroke his hair, which was weirdly soft, or murmur comforting words, but usually we would just sit together, listening to the muffled sounds of him crying into my shirt.
It was the day before Halloween and I was going over to Michael's house, yet again. My foster mom had texted saying that she missed seeing me and Michael better just be a friend and we shouldn't be having sex. Yeah, thanks, Emma. Michael drove me home in his PT Cruiser, a pleasant change from the bus. We got to his house, greeted Mrs. Mell, and headed upstairs to his room.
We plopped down in his beanbag chairs in front of his TV. "What are we playing today?" I asked him.
Michael showed me the game before inserting it into the console. We played a little bit before I spoke up. "I'm sorry I'm so bad at this."
"You're not that bad."
"Yeah, I am."
Michael sighed, nodding his head. "So, I heard that Jake's having a Halloween party."
"Yeah, he invited the whole cast after rehearsal yesterday," I said, not taking my eyes of the screen.
Michael paused the game. "You're invited?"
"I'm not a part of the cast."
He sighed, unpausing the game. "So, I figure Jeremy will be there."
I paused it. "You don't really want to see him, do you?"
"I need to talk to him. It's important."
"Really, Michael? He's a crappy dude. He threw away your friendship for no reason, and all you've ever done is be a good friend to him. What possible reason could be important enough for you to want to see him again?"
Michael sighed. He seemed like he was considering saying something.
"Well?" I asked.
"This is gonna sound dumb."
"It can't be any dumber than you wanting to see Jeremy."
Michael sighed. "Okay...here it goes. Jeremy bought this pill called a SQUIP, and it has a supercomputer in it that tells him what to do."
I stared at him. "Haha, very funny."
"I'm serious."
I studied him. He didn't seem like he was lying, but he could always deceive me more than I expected. "Okay," I said slowly. "Say this was true. Where did Jeremy get it?"
"Back of Payless."
I snorted. "Naturally. Where did Jeremy even find out about this?"
"Rich."
My heart stopped. "Rich?"
"Yeah, he has one. He told Jeremy about it and about how it turned him from some little kid with a lisp into a super popular, cool guy."
"He had a lisp?" That's adorable...
"I don't know. Anyways, there's, like, nothing on the internet about it. Which is like weird. So, I started to ask around, right? And some guy I played WarCraft with told me his brother got one. And it didn't end up well with him. I found out how you can--"
