We were handed the shortlists. There was no point disputing the obvious fact that Grace and co would get the final say on who won what.

  Most likely to be a supermodel… Grace Langdon.

  “Oh my God, guys,” she said. I didn’t know it was possible to fake a blush, but Grace managed.

  Most likely to be a C.E.O.…Amelia.

  “I feel like I already am one,” she said, not even trying to fake a blush. The list went on. Any category associated with a) being attractive, or b) being good at sport, went to the populars. Sam even got voted most likely to win an Olympic gold, despite the fact this guy, James, in our year, was quietly an incredible gymnast – hardly ever in school because he was too busy travelling the country and winning tournaments. As I scanned through, I knew there was no chance I’d be nominated for anything. Yet it still panged, not seeing my name there. Not even for Most likely to write a novel, which went to this girl, Bella, who always performed questionable slam poetry at the school talent show. I’d done nothing in five years to make a name for myself, apart from working really hard to make sure I never made a name for myself. I’d achieved my goal and it hurt.

  I sat back and let them pick their winners. I raised my hand to vote for whoever Grace and co voted for. I thought they’d be beaming with joy and milking every atom of this moment, yet they seemed weirdly uninvested as they made their obvious choices. In fact, they seemed almost distracted. Amelia kept whispering in Grace’s ear, who giggled and whispered back. I watched them suspiciously but didn’t question anything.

  “Voila! Guys, we are done!” Ms Gordon punched the air with her yellow sleeve. “That’s the yearbook finished! Well done, well done. I’ve got us some chocolate to celebrate.”

  She reached under her desk and pulled out a decorated Easter basket filled with foil-wrapped bunnies and started passing them out. I’d made it. The yearbook was officially done. My involvement in it officially over. Though, as I unwrapped a foiled chocolate, ready to take a bite, I saw Grace whisper to Amelia again, and an odd feeling stirred in my stomach. The relief didn’t arrive, just trepidation. An instinct this wasn’t the end.

  On the last day of term, we had our Easter assembly to remind us, in explicit detail, of all the terrible stuff Jesus went through on the cross, and how he did it for us, and how we should remember that Easter is about so much more than chocolate eggs and remember his sacrifice, but also remember that these exams are the most important ones we’ll ever take in our whole lives so be sure to revise. The final bell rang, and we were dismissed for two weeks.

  I met Elijah at the gates. The air was warm. He stood under a blossom tree with his jumper off, T-shirt sticking closely to his chest.

  “We’re free,” he cheered, as I walked to meet him.

  I handed him a chocolate rabbit I’d saved from the yearbook meeting. “You can say that because you don’t live at my house.”

  “Sorry, I forgot.”

  “I’m joking! Well, I’m not, but it’s fine. I’m going back to Polly’s tonight anyway. Going dress shopping tomorrow actually.” I felt myself go red. “You know…for the ball.”

  Elijah raised both eyebrows. “Oh really? Whatcha gonna go for?”

  “Something simple, you know? Maybe a train that’s only four metres long? And I want there to be some kind of electrical component? Where the dress lights up? It’ll need pockets for all the battery packs I’ll have to carry around.”

  He barked out a laugh. “I can’t wait to see it. Cripes, I’ll need to hire a suit, won’t I?”

  “If you want to conform, yes. Which, let’s face it, is your favourite thing to do.”

  “I’ll get a tie that says I’m wearing this ironically.”

  “Damn. I was going to get that for your birthday.”

  We laughed together, walking home in the sunshine, the air easy. Whenever I thought of the ball, I couldn’t help but hope something might happen between us that night. If anything ever was going to happen, it would certainly be at the ball. In posh clothes, surrounded by fairy lights, perched on the hinge between the past and the future.

  It could be something amazing.

  But I needed to get through the holidays first.

  Luckily, Adam continued appeasing Dad over the break. The day he set off, he sent a selfie to the family group chat, grinning with all his new uni mates, thumbs up, a gigantic bag teetering on his back.

  Adam: What the hell am I doing? Miss you

  guys x

  It was enough. Dad came home from work acting like Adam had announced a pregnancy. “Did you see the pic? Looks so excited, doesn’t he? What an adventure, eh? What. An. Adventure.”

  The updates continued. A minimum of one a day. Selfies of him looking glum as he waited by a rainy roadside in France. Photos of the weird food he was trying for the first time. He even knew to give regular stats on how well his team were doing on the challenge (second since you’re asking) so Dad had even more material to beam at.

  Paige: Thank you for sending all the messages. I can’t tell you how much easier it’s making everything.

  Adam: I thought it might. He’s so fucking predictable.

  But none of Adam’s anger at Dad was evident in the group chat. He played his part of perfect son, on a perfect adventure, totally perfectly. My shoulders loosened whenever my phone pinged with a new update. And they provided the perfect amount of safe conversation topics for the nights I ate at home. Mum seemed relieved too, her shoulders a foot lower as she brought in the dinner plates. Sometimes even recreating the dishes Adam had sent us messages about.

  “I made ravioli, so we can pretend we’re in Italy, like him,” she said. And, excited to strengthen the bond between father and son, Dad lapped it up, sometimes literally. Greedily slurping up the last of the sauce in his bowl with the last bit of garlic bread.

  Regardless, I spent as much time away from home as I could, attempting to revise. So many subjects seemed utterly hard and utterly pointless, especially as I wouldn’t be studying them ever again after the year ended. I mean, did I really need to know about the nitrogen cycle? Especially when I could just google it if life required me to know it? I’d quietly looked up the local sixth-form college online and started filling out an application form with my four chosen subjects. It made the rest of my curriculum seem pretty pointless but I made myself work nonetheless. I revised at Polly’s, who kept asking me test questions while pumping me full of “brain food” (chocolate biscuits dunked in tea). Occasionally, Elijah and I would revise together at his house, lying on his bed, our feet sometimes brushing as we lay on our fronts, blushing and pretending they hadn’t. But when that got too distracting, I hid upstairs in my house, chatting to my old pal.

  “Alexa, seriously, what is algebra?”

  “Alexa, how come I need to know about shanty towns for geography but I haven’t been shown where anywhere is on a map?”

  “Alexa, do employers really look at GCSE results for the rest of your life? Or is it a conspiracy?”

  On Good Friday, two days before Adam was due home for a whole twenty-four hours, I went to the park with a library copy of a poetry anthology. Apparently “wider reading” got you better marks and English was my only safe-ish bet of getting above a seven. I turned to the section on Simon Armitage, a poet we were studying. And then I smiled so brightly I’m surprised I didn’t short-circuit the sun.

  The pages were filled with red pen in familiar handwriting. One poem was called It Ain’t What You Do, It’s What It Does To You but it had been garishly retitled in red ink.

  I shook my head and laughed into the surrounding symphony of chirping birds and kids playing football. I ran my fingertip over the dents his pen had made in the paper and felt so much love run through me. Towards this boy, towards his words, towards how meeting him through the margins of other people’s stories had encouraged me to start telling my own. Slowly, quietly, but getting there.

  I reread his annotation and let the red pen work its magic, feeling way too emotional all of a sudden. Two young girls ran past as fast as their legs could manage, giggling into the warm breeze, one yelling at the other to wait. I smiled as they blurred past in the giddy joyful deliriousness of children in summer. Then I got a giant pang remembering Ruby and the summers we’d shared together. I blinked and saw us running together, playing together, learning from each other, in this very same park. We grew up together and now we hadn’t messaged in over a year.

  It hurt, it hurt so much and yet I had never said anything.

  It’s all about what you do, and what it does to the people around you…

  I closed my eyes and inhaled the warm breeze and the lasting memories and Elijah’s words, and when I opened them, I knew what to do.

  Her number was still one of only seven on my phone.

  I heard it ringing, the pause before our two storylines connected again, taking up stage-space in the play of each other’s lives once more. Though something told me this would be the final scene.

  Ruby picked up, and there was giggling down the line, followed by a “Shh”. She was with people. “Hello? Who is this? Shh, I’m on the phone. Sorry. Who is this?” she repeated.

  I shook my head in the park. I still had her number, but she didn’t have mine.

  “It’s Paige.”

  “Oh…” A long, shocked pause. “Oh my God! Hi! It’s been ages. Sorry. I dropped my old phone down the loo when I was drunk and lost all my numbers. Paige. Wow.”

  “Are you free to talk?”

  “Umm. Sure. Hang on, I’m just out shopping with Delta. Give me a second.” I heard her make excuses and step away and I kept taking deep breaths, gulping in air like it was courage. It was so strange hearing her voice again after so long. I loved her still. I wanted to hug her. I’d forgiven her everything the second she’d said “Hello”, but, also, I needed to say what I needed to say.

  “Right, sorry. I’m outside now.” Ruby sounded shaken too. There was no snideness like the last time I’d seen her. I’d shocked her out of it. “Is everything okay, Paige? This is…er…a bit out of the blue.”

  “I’m fine. And you?”

  “Yeah, good. Great. I was just shopping for last-minute ball stuff. I don’t like the shoes I picked any more, and my dress is gold so it’s kind of tricky to find another pair that match, but, you know, otherwise I’m all good.”

  I chewed on my lip. “Sounds like quite the challenge.”

  “Yep. But I think I’ve found a pair on ASOS. The shops are crap here, to be honest. You’re so lucky to live near London.”

  Here we were, chatting about shoes, when I was supposed to be having some grand kind of moment. I wasn’t sure how to steer things back to what I wanted to say without it sounding dramatic and mad…but then we both knew I hadn’t rung to talk about shoes. And, Ruby, to be fair, called it.

  “Why have you rung, Paige?” she asked quietly. “It’s been for ever. I never hear from you.”

  “I never hear from you either.”

  “Well, that’s life sometimes, isn’t it? It’s not my fault I moved away.”

  There it was. The defensiveness. The spiky shield. She sensed criticism was coming and was mentally running to the barricades. I closed my eyes once more and told myself there was nothing cruel about telling the truth as long as it was only your truth you were telling. I wasn’t going to make it hers. I wasn’t going to make her story my story. But I needed to say…

  “Last time I saw you, you really hurt me,” I said. Just saying it – a year of pain and humiliation and self-loathing and anger condensed into one sentence. I almost laughed at how easy it was, how much lighter I felt. “That’s why I stopped messaging. Look, Ruby…” I paused for another breath and, probably stunned, she let me continue. “I get that you moved away and it would be hard to stay friends. And we’ve obviously become different people…or maybe only you have, I don’t know. But you hurt my feelings when you came to stay. I felt very…judged, and then I heard you…” I swallowed and forced myself to keep going. “…calling me a loser to your friends on the phone that night, when you thought I was asleep. And that was very painful to hear, and I needed to tell you that.”

  A long pause. Just the sounds of her Isle of Man shopping centre down the line. I longed for an apology, or a reconciliation, a reconnection, and dared myself to hope for the five seconds my old best friend was quiet.

  “O-kay…” Ruby eventually said. Her voice was patronizing. Cold. And the hope died. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t listen to people’s private phone conversations if you’re not going to like what you hear.”

  I raised both eyebrows as the bullet hit.

  “Look… I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, but I wasn’t doing anything wrong. You were the one skulking about and listening in…spying on people, like you always do.”

  It hurt so much less than it would’ve done six months previously. I mean, it still hurt, but it was expected, lesser, an obvious response. Just like that, my friendship with Ruby ended for ever – but I’d already known this, already grieved for this. This phone call was just the autopsy to confirm the cause of death – and I was sure both Ruby and I would come to different verdicts where we weren’t the one to blame.

  “Ouch, Ruby,” I replied honestly. “Look, maybe I shouldn’t have listened in, you’re right. I was just so confused when you came to visit, as you didn’t seem to like me very much when I thought we were best friends, so, yes, I eavesdropped to find out what was going on.”

  “Well, yeah, that is quite creepy.”

  “Come on, Ruby! We used to be best friends. What happened? You know why I’m quiet. I’ve told you about my dad. Look, you don’t owe me your lifelong friendship just because we were childhood friends, but it hurt for you, of all people, to speak about me like that, when you know what my home life is like. You were the only person I ever told…” My voice cracked up and I thought about trying to hide it, but I didn’t. Let her hear my grief. I was not ashamed of my emotions.

  Further silence down the line as my old friend tried to find her own words. Her own truth. I could picture the exact face she’d be making as she figured out what to say. She always used to chew on her bottom lip while she thought things through. Finally she said, “You’re being very weird.” I knew then the conversation was over. There would be no great redemption arc, no realization and apology, no Scrooge waking up in the morning and ordering a giant goose for everyone in the village.

  “You’re being incredibly defensive,” I countered. Never in the history of my life had I ever countered, but out it came, quick and sharp.

  “What am I supposed to do? You just ring me up, after years, to tell me I’m a horrible person?”

  “That’s not what I’m doing at all. I’m just telling you how I feel.”

  “Like a weirdo.”

  I laughed so loud that the two girls playing in the park turned to look at me. “Cheers, Ruby,” I said. “That’s so kind of you to say.”

  “Since when did you do sarcasm?”

  I could hear tightness in her throat. I knew her so well. A tiny part of me had got through, but not enough. She was too far gone in her own story to want to listen to mine. And, you know what? That was okay. Because at least now I’d scribbled in her margin with the red pen of my own experience. She couldn’t forget what I’d said, and it was important that I’d said it.

  “Look, Paige. This is all a bit…much, and I really have to get going. We were kids, okay? People grow up and change. I’m not going to apologize for that. And I’m not going to let you make me think I’m a terrible person.”

  I laughed quietly again and shook my head. The words fell from my mouth effortlessly. “People always believe they’re nice in their own heads,” I said. “That’s what makes it so scary when you look at the state of the world.”

  Then I hung up.

  I chucked my phone to the grass for a second and slumped forward, putting my head onto the scratchy warmth of the ground. Within five minutes, I was upright again, the sun on my face.

  I’d told Ruby how I felt.

  Finally.

  And Ruby had revealed who she really was now.

  The most important thing was… I didn’t believe what she’d said about me. I wasn’t creepy, and I wasn’t weird. Everything about me made sense, considering the story of my life, and she was in on that whole story, so it was horrible of her to say such a thing. If she wanted to be a worshipped wax model, so be it. I wanted nothing to do with someone who used my own story against me. It was surprisingly easy to let her go. I shook my head one more time, and she faded. Leaving space for better people and better things.

  Speaking of which.

  I turned over on my stomach and got out my poetry anthology again. It had only been fifteen minutes since I’d found Elijah’s inking, yet it felt like years. A deep smile relaxed its way through my body, and I held up my phone to take a photo of the page.

  Paige: Some idiot has trashed this book.

  Elijah: Oh my God. Simon. My old pal.

  Paige: How am I supposed to pass my exam when you’ve done this?

  Elijah: I will have you know, actually, that my critical analysis of his text got me a freakin’ NINE last year. You are SO welcome.

  Paige: Anyone ever told you you’re smug, Elijah?

  Elijah: Only every day.

  Elijah: Anyway…

  Elijah: What are your thoughts on Armitage’s stuff?

  Elijah: Oh, favourite sifter of my heart?

  Paige: I would say that his poetry is the opposite of your approach to sifting. I think what he writes about is how you can never really condense one person down into one action, or one sentence. How we are all more complicated than that. It’s reductive to even try.

  Elijah: FFS.

  Elijah: You’re so going to get a better mark than me. A ten? Do they give out tens yet? Can you come over and lend that pretentious brain of yours to my philosophy revision?

  Paige: Won’t I distract you?

  Elijah: You’re distracting me now. I may as well get the chance to look at you as you do it. X