The Right Side of Wrong

Girl Talk

My head felt like mush as we walked through the school. I was limping slightly, but no one seemed to notice. Evie had wrapped Ben's jacket around my calf to both lessen and hide the bleeding.

"Hey, Carlos?" I started. "Did you talk to Jane before you left to get me?"

"Talk to her?" he repeated. "Yes. Ask her out? No."

"What happened?" Evie questioned.

"Well, instead of asking, 'What did you need?' or 'What do you want to talk about?' when I first got there, like I expected... the first thing she said was, 'Do you think blue streamers or green streamers would look better at Cotillion?'... I spent five minutes talking about the pros and cons of each before somehow relating it to past struggles with my mom. She left about halfway through my rant about Cruella's obsession with specific kinds of fabrics."

Evie lost it, both her and Carlos catching up to Jay, when Ben and I were stopped by no other than Jane herself.

"Ben! There you are." She beckoned him over, so I paused, figuring that I could talk to him as soon as he cleared up whatever Jane was working on now. "The Cotillion is tonight."

She showed him something on her tablet, murmuring in excitement.

Ben glanced at me, solemnly, then leaned over and said, "Do you want to cancel?"

My eyes widened. It hadn't really crossed my mind. Once I had made the decision to go back to the Isle, I hadn't considered what would happen with that. It would probably just... not happen, but now everything was complicated. I was back and no one was sure whether I planned on staying, least of all myself. And I had basically broken up with Ben on the Isle. If we weren't dating anymore, there was no reason to name me a Lady of the Court.

"Um, you know what?" Jane said loudly. "I can come back. Um... but like, really really soon."

"No, no, no, no," Ben insisted. "No. Now's fine. Um..." He looked at the tablet once more. Then to me, he said, "Do whatever you need to do."

I was frustrated. I needed time to make my decision, but I didn't have that. I needed Ben around to make my decision, but apparently I didn't have that either.

I wanted to yell at him. I wanted to scream at him to just stop worrying about all of that and have a real conversation with me, but that wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to Jane and it wasn't fair to him, seeing as all I'd done recently was lie to him and avoid him.

Evie was the one who prevented me from saying all that, though, as she circled around and linked onto my arm.

"We need to talk," she whispered.

I followed her, somewhat mindlessly, when Carlos interrupted us.

"No."

Evie flipped around, her eyebrows knitting together. "No?"

Jay looked just as confused as Evie, looking Carlos up and down as he argued. "You guys are always going off in a huddle, whispering your 'girl talk' stuff, or whatever..." He took in a deep breath. "And Jay and I are tired of it."

"I'm not," Jay butt in.

Carlos glared at him before continuing. "We're your family, too. We've been through a lot. Together. We're not stopping that now, okay?"

He looked at me and I nodded sort of dumbly. I was exhausted, but for once, I was glad to be able to sit with all my friends and just put everything out on the table. I had wanted to get away from them for so long, but it didn't change the weight of the secrets I was carrying.