“Did you hear,” she asked, as we sat together on the bus home one dark, rainy afternoon, “that Grace and Sam tongue-kissed at Amelia’s party over the weekend?”

  “Eww.” I wrote the word eww in the steam of the window.

  “Do you not think he’s good-looking?”

  I pulled a face. “No. And I bet you didn’t think he was good-looking until you heard that Grace kissed him.”

  She was quiet the rest of the journey.

  “Want to watch TV or something?” I’d asked her as we stepped out into the bus shelter. I kept my voice neutral but I was always hopeful. She knew I used her home as a Safe House.

  “Actually I’ve got too much homework. Sorry. Maybe tomorrow?”

  But other than the odd burst of interest, and the odd tiff when I wouldn’t gossip with her, Ruby seemed just as happy as I was to weather the storm of secondary school quietly, side by side. We claimed a little spot in the library each lunch hour. Saw each other at the weekend. We were just those two girls – always together – nothing to be bothering with.

  Then the unthinkable happened.

  Ruby: Can I come over? My life is

  ruined!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  The message appeared one evening while I was hiding upstairs because Mum hadn’t put enough butter in the mashed potato.

  Paige: Better if I come to you. R u ok??? I’m sure

  it will be fine.

  Ruby: Let’s meet at the bus stop. Can’t be in my

  house a moment longer. PAIGE IT’S SO

  TERRIBLE.

  I was greeted in the night-time drizzle by a Ruby-shaped ball of snot and sobbing.

  “We’re…we’re…moving away,” she heaved and there was a moment’s delay before I realized what that meant. For me, as well as her. And my heart fell out onto the grimy, damp pavement, where it’s never really been picked up from since.

  It wasn’t just moving away. It was moving far away. To the Isle of Man. An island. An island. Something to do with her dad and tax. You had to fly there or get a ferry. She’d try and come and visit but the reason they were moving was because there was no family here – not since her gran died. As leavings go, it was the most far and dramatic and huge and terrible, and I hardly slept for weeks leading up to it as I was sobbing so hard, alone in my bed.

  I stayed over at her house on the last night, cocooned in sleeping bags laid on yoga mats, surrounded by her boxed-up life. We didn’t sleep, only cried, and made promises to stay in touch and always be best friends and for her to come and visit whenever she could.

  “It was awful, the first day back at school without her,” I told Elijah, on a bench in London, through falling tears that stung the coldness of my cheeks.

  I had no one to talk to. No one to sit with. No one to co-conspire with. No one to protect me. No one to roll my eyes at. It was Year Eight. Friendships had already been made. No one was in the market for anyone new to hang out with. Nobody wanted to befriend that weird girl who sat alone in the library. There would be many days when I’d go without saying literally anything out loud. Sometimes I’d sit in my room and speak to Adam’s old Alexa, cradling my voice box in my hands, reminding myself how to talk. Reminding myself I could still form words. Saving them mostly for Ruby.

  Paige: How was your first day at school? OMG I miss you SO MUCH. COME BACK NOW, THIS HAS STOPPED BEING A FUNNY JOKE.

  Ruby: School was awful! Everyone is a small-town nightmare. Like, they’ve all known each other since they were babies. So weird. Screw this. I’M ON A PLANE, COMING TO SEE YOU AND LIVE IN YOUR WARDROBE.

  Paige: AMAZING! I’ve put some cushions down in there.

  Paige: OMG. Gossip all over school. Grace and Sam got off again at the school disco. I didn’t go, of course, but it’s all anyone is talking about.

  Ruby: WHAT??? But she’s like three metres taller than him! Could he even reach her face to kiss her? Or did he just have to suck on her chin? I hope for both of their sakes he reaches puberty soon.

  Paige: I dunno. But if he did suck her chin, I know that everyone will be doing that in a week’s time rather than kissing the regular way.

  Ruby: LOL. God, everyone here does sooooo much more than kiss. Boredom bonking is what I call it. Very weird. They bypassed chin-sucking in Year Six.

  But as time went on, Ruby seemed less and less interested in my second-hand tales of her old secondary school. I’d listen out in toilet cubicles, keep my ears pricked up whenever someone gossiped in a quiet maths lesson. She was always so much more into all that than I was. Until she wasn’t…

  Paige: So Grace has declared all-out war on Lisa Heartly for no reason. She is a shunned person. No one is talking to her.

  After two days…

  Ruby: Typical I guess.

  Then nothing.

  Months blurred to a year. A YEAR. Promises to visit got fewer and further between. We both knew it would be hard for her to come see me. She’d have to pay for a plane ticket, and then where would she stay? I mean, that implies there was even a question. I would never have dared ask. Time did that thing where it both moved super slowly and super fast – individual days feeling like drawn-out torture, combined with sending messages saying, How is it Christmas already? How has it been a year already? How is it Christmas again?! How has it been two years already?

  My window to absolve myself of my loneliness passed. I was too scared of everyone around me to be friendly. Ruby was the only one I could trust. I morphed from being That girl who’s always with that other girl to Who? Oh that one? The one who works for the paper but never speaks? What’shername?

  Paige: How are we in Year Ten now? How have I not seen you in so long? WILL WE EVER SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN?

  After several days…

  Ruby: I know. Weird huh?

  I pretended things weren’t different. Deluded myself that we were still best friends. That Ruby wasn’t clearly moving on. I needed her too much… And then, the perfect opportunity arose to win her back and remind her of how great we were.

  Paige: OK. Sit down. Put a nappy on. Because you’re about to pee yourself. GUESS WHO HAS A FREE HOUSE THIS HALF-TERM? AND GUESS WHO HAS LOOKED AT FLIGHTS AND SEEN THEY ARE LESS THAN FIFTY QUID THAT WEEK?

  I refreshed my phone. Refreshed again. Fizzing and whizzing with excitement. There were two ticks. She’d seen it. She’d read it. Why wasn’t she replying? Was she booking her ticket first so then I’d have to be the one peeing myself?

  Paige: Are you alive? Or have you died from excitement?

  Ruby: I’m alive. Soz. Cool. I need to check what’s happening that week tho.

  No caps lock. No reaction gif. No delight at the thought of seeing me. That should’ve been my first proper warning. A reason to build a fence around my heart. But loneliness does weird things to a person. You build a sandcastle out of hope, with turrets made of denial and desperation, digging a deep moat of longing. You collect crumbs from minor social interactions and squeeze them together and pretend it’s a cake. Then you scarf it in one and are starving again instantly. Eventually, I got a crumb of a reply from her, and lo and behold, I got out my cake tin, sprinkled the crumb into it, and put it into the oven, preparing icing to top it with once it had cooled.

  Ruby: So, actually, Mum and I are coming to London that week to see some shows, do some shopping. There are no decent shops here. We’re staying in a hotel, but maybe I can come for a night? Got anything exciting going on we can do? x

  It was my turn to take a while to reply. I stared at my phone and said, “Huh?” out loud. A night? Only one? We had so much to catch up on, even a week wouldn’t be long enough. I’d lied to my parents, telling them I was staying at Polly’s while they were away, to get the week free for her. And anything exciting we can do? What the heck did that mean? Surely our reunion was exciting enough? So many red flags were flapping but I was in my castle of loneliness, squeezing my crumb as hard as I could. So I wrote, I can’t wait! and we agreed Wednesday, and I decided we could try out the new pizza place in town, which would give us plenty of opportunity to chat. Once she got here, Ruby would be glad I hadn’t planned anything more extreme. I wouldn’t be able to anyway. She knew this. She knew who I was and why… She…

  …she arrived three hours late.

  She arrived not looking like Ruby.

  I ran downstairs, jingling with nerves from waiting so long. I pulled the door open and there she was. My best friend. My missing piece. My everything…

  Oh my God, she did not look like her at all.

  I mean, we’d sent each other photos and, yeah, I’d noticed from the selfies that she wore make-up now. But I was never on social media, so hadn’t witnessed the extent of her transformation.

  “Oh my God,” she said as we clasped eyeballs on one another. “Paige!” She seemed happy to see me, and I exploded with relief, dragging her in for a hug.

  “Oh my God oh my God oh my God,” I squealed into her perfectly-blown-out hair.

  We jumped up and down in the hallway, squealing squeals not even dogs could hear. When we broke apart, we both really looked at each other, and I think we were both surprised.

  Ruby could’ve walked right off a catwalk. Her whole face was plastered in expertly-applied make-up. Even her nose looked slimmer, which I later found out was because she “contoured” it. She redid it before we went out. Her body was long, lean and firm – like a yoga teacher’s. And, despite the cold, she had no coat on and wore a cropped top to show off her perfect stomach, with low jeans so tight she might’ve spray-painted them on.

  “You look so different,” I managed.

  “You look exactly the same.”

  There was awe there too, but not good awe. Judging awe. I touched my make-up-free face, with no foundation to cover my blush.

  “Umm, do you want a cup of tea?”

  “Do you have green tea?”

  “Umm. Maybe. I’ll have a look.”

  “Thanks. Regular tea’s not good for you. The tannins.”

  “Right.”

  We left her giant bag in the hallway and made our way into the kitchen, neither of us knowing what to say.

  “We’ve not got green, but we’ve got peppermint? No. Oh, okay. Decaff? No, it’s not loose-leaf. Okay, sure. Yeah, I can just put some lemon in hot water.”

  We took our steaming mugs up to my room and Ruby wandered around it with more judgemental awe. “Oh my God, this is exactly the same too,” she said.

  I tried to see my room through her eyes, shame joining my self-consciousness. I guess it hadn’t changed a lot. My bedroom was plain then and it was plain now – she knew why. I couldn’t do much without it drawing a nasty comment.

  “I’ve still got our photo up.” I gestured to my desk where a framed photo of us stood. It was taken at our Year Six leaving disco – both of us mid hysterical laughter as we did the Gangnam Style.

  “God. I wish you didn’t have that up. I was so fat back then.”

  “What? You weren’t.”

  “Puppy-fat-tastic. And our hair! What were we thinking? Trying to ombré it ourselves with that kit from Superdrug. God, we were losers.” She laughed and took a sip of her lemon-wedge tea.

  We sat and sipped our drinks in such a painful silence I’m surprised our eyeballs didn’t start bleeding.

  It was bound to be awkward, I told myself. It’s been years. It must be weird for her to be back. Make an effort.

  I put on my brightest voice. “So, what’s going on on the Isle of Man? You like school and stuff?”

  At that, Ruby sat up on her cushion. Her eyes came alive for the first time since she’d walked in. “Oh my God, yeah, school is great actually. Okay, so you know that girl, Delta? The one I used to hate?” I nodded even though I wasn’t sure. “Well, it turns out I was being silly, cos we’re best friends now, isn’t that funny? I mean, it was a bit touch and go last term when she got drunk at Lexi’s party and told me she fancied Jimmy. You know? That boy I had a thing with in Year Nine? But I reminded her of the girl code and she backed off. And yeah, we’re great. And then there’s Zara. She’s nice. A bit desperate, but harmless. I think she might be gay. Delta said that she’s always doing this heavy breathing when we get changed for PE. I mean, if she’s gay, fine. But, like, just admit it, you know? Don’t be all weird and heavy-breathing about it?” She laughed, flinging back her perfect hair and sinking again into her monologue.

  I sniffed hard, as I relayed all this to Elijah on our bench. He was listening patiently and wonderfully, arm still around me. “It was so, so weird,” I told him. “She was being cruel about people. And she’d lost all self-awareness. She just kept blah-ing on about all these people I didn’t know, and all these dramas I didn’t care about.” I shook my head into the cold, looking over at him sadly. “You know how you say nobody else cares about our school year? Well, none of those names meant anything to me. Delta, Zara, Jimmy…it meant nothing. And yet, to Ruby, it was everything. She talked about herself solidly for about an hour. She even pulled up photos of everyone to show me…and God, that was the first time I saw her profile. It was like…well…it wasn’t Ruby. It was all photos of her basically in her underwear, arching backwards to show off her body, acting like a semi-porn model, with flame emojis as captions that she had written about herself, and everyone underneath it had replied with more flame emojis.”

  Despite how upset I clearly was, Elijah still laughed at my description.

  “Sorry, I sound really judgemental. Maybe I am. It just…it wasn’t the friend I knew. Or maybe I didn’t know her at all…that’s what hurt so much. Maybe this was what she’d always wanted and, now she was free of the shackles of unpopularity, she was able to be herself…” My eyes pinched in more tears. A year ago now and just as painful.

  I told Elijah how the wretched night progressed. How much Ruby’s nose wrinkled when I told her about the new pizza restaurant. How, once she’d got over that disappointment, she’d spent an hour in our bathroom, and come out looking like she was dressed to go into the VIP section of an exclusive nightclub. How she’d asked me to take photos of her, but didn’t ask me to be in them. Then, throughout dinner, how she’d spent most of the time on her phone.

  “She did ask me the odd question,” I explained, “but she’d be checking likes as I replied.”

  And, over my capricciosa, I came to the haunting realization that I’d been waiting two years for this one evening. Holding my breath, putting my life on hold, until she came back to me. Putting no effort into meeting anyone new. Whereas Ruby had moved on, maybe become the person she’d always wanted to be. She’d moved forward while I had stayed just the same, nursing a shrine to what we used to have. And even though I was in a bustling restaurant, with a queue of people waiting for a table by the door, I felt utterly alone. The humiliating isolation in realizing you don’t only have the wrong end of a stick, you’re holding a different stick entirely, and you’re the only one holding it…

  We made small talk while she ate her superfood salad. She had come, I reminded myself. She was still here, and trying, and had got on a plane and given up an evening in London to see an old friend, even if I had let her down by staying myself. The stupid pointless slug.

  Well, that’s what I thought.

  “We went to bed weirdly early,” I told Elijah. “She said she was sleepy. Honestly, it was lights out at eleven. Then I was woken by the sound of her whispering in the hallway. She was on the phone to someone. I know it was wrong but I went to the door to listen, and…she said…she…”

  Elijah’s arm tightened around me. It was so embarrassing to tell someone what had happened – especially a boy who I kept thinking about kissing. Yet I couldn’t not share it. I’d wanted to tell someone for so long. To not carry the burden of hurt alone any more.

  “She was complaining. To that girl Delta. She was saying things like ‘Oh my God, it’s so boring here. I wish I hadn’t come. My friend is such a loser now. It was so embarrassing to be out with her. She’s, like, so pathetic.’”

  I closed my eyes and felt my heart break once more as the memory played out. I had never felt pain like it, with my ear against the wood of my door. Pain like a white heat. Too painful for colour. My family had always seen me as a boring loser, but Ruby never had. She’d seen more in me. Loved me. But now she saw what they saw. What everyone saw.

  “I cried quietly on the floor as I’d given her the bed,” I said. “And I came to the realization that maybe I am a loser. If it’s the popular opinion, maybe she’s right? Maybe they’re all right?”

  Elijah interrupted me for the first time. “No! You realize that she’s the loser, right? You must realize that.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I was stupid enough to hold onto her, even though she clearly wasn’t holding back. Too naive. Too pathetic. Too…”

  Desperate, I wanted to say, but I didn’t dare. Not wanting to put that particular word out there in connection to me.

  But Elijah was still shaking his head. “It’s not pathetic to want to keep connected to the people you love,” he said, sounding a bit like he’d swallowed one of his mum’s psychology books. “Or to want to be loved for who you are, rather than some weird act you put on.”

  His words worked and the grip around my heart loosened a little and I was able to smile.

  “You know what? I do know that,” I said, turning to him. “It’s taken a while but I’m getting there. But that’s not the only thing that’s sad about it. What upsets me is that girl wasn’t Ruby.” I shook my head. “She wasn’t real. She was this weird…recreation. Like a wax model.” I shrugged, remembering the air vanishing in Madame Tussauds. “It’s fake. The whole thing is fake. Ruby. Everyone at school. My dad… It’s like, in order to get on in life, you have to be wax. Perfectly carved, and staying relevant enough to not be shoved into storage. Kicking everyone else down so you’re not the one being stored away. But all of us have imperfections. We all know this, yet everyone’s so desperate to hide them so they can be important, feel superior…” I sighed and watched my breath spiral into the blue sky. “We prefer fake,” I said, thinking, painfully, of my mother for a second before quashing it. “We prefer fake stories to the real ones. The wax to the reality. Like, in Madame Tussauds…nobody minded that none of it was real. Like Ruby didn’t seem to mind that none of her was real. In fact, she seemed to prefer it. And she also didn’t seem to mind that she hurts people…that she hurt me. It’s so messed up. It’s like, let’s all turn ourselves to wax and be terrible to people who point out that we’re made of wax so we can feel superior, even though our whole existence is a lie… God, what am I going on about? I’m sorry. I’m babbling.”