Page 59

Theo

Theo dug the heels of his palms into his eyes, the words on his computer screen having gone blurry an hour ago. When he blinked them open again, it wasn’t much better. It was only eleven at night, but he was already losing steam. Which was a problem, as his history essay was due tomorrow morning at nine, and he was only half done.

Theo sighed and did his best to block out the noise of Sawyer blowing something up in his video game. “Just ChatGPT it,” Sawyer said over his shoulder. “It’ll be fine.”

“Until I get caught for cheating and kicked out of college,” Theo countered.

“You won’t get kicked out. They’ll just fail the essay.”

“And if I fail my final, I probably fail the class. If I fail the class, I lose my scholarship, and then I have to leave school anyway.”

Sawyer shrugged, apparently out of unhelpful suggestions.

Theo wanted to pay attention to his essay—it really was an obscenely big part of his grade—but he kept stewing about Avery. He wanted to think about literally anything else, but he kept coming back to one fact that had occurred to him in the middle of the night two days ago. He had lost a game to Sawyer, as his weird roommate was slowly getting him into first-person shooter gamers, and Sawyer had shrugged at him. “Next time, don’t lose on purpose.” When Theo looked confused, Sawyer had rolled his eyes. “You weren’t doing great, so you tanked. On purpose, and not, like, strategically either. When it was obvious you weren’t going to win, you decided you’d rather lose on your own terms.”

Theo had blown him off, but two hours later he’d still been lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. Was that what I did with Avery? When things got tough, rather than fight for her, did I just let it blow up? Or worse, blow it up on purpose? He wasn’t sure that fit with what happened, exactly, since he liked to think he cared about his best friend a little more than winning a video game, but it had the ring of truth to it, like most of Sawyer’s observations. He probably could have told Avery how he felt, as scary as that was, especially once it became clear she wasn’t going to let Tommy’s hints go.

But even if that was true, he wasn’t sure how to fix it. Avery had her inexplicable Being Lied To thing, and he had undeniably lied to her, and to Izzy. He could apologize, but maybe that wasn’t enough. And if it wasn’t enough, then he hadn’t just lost the woman he loved, he’d lost his best friend. He wasn’t sure how to rebuild from that. But he couldn’t stop thinking about it, wondering if Sawyer, of all people, had a point.

Theo wrote three words of his next sentence and stared at them, wondering if he was going to fail the essay all on his own and end up having to leave college anyway. His phone rang with an incoming FaceTime, and he jumped, startled. When he looked at the caller, he almost jumped again.

Izzy.

He debated ignoring it, but that felt shitty, especially after how he left things with her. Cautiously, he answered. Izzy was sitting in what appeared to be an empty common room, in an old hoodie and glasses, which was a far cry from her usual art-girl chic style. “Hey,” she said, and at least she didn’t sound furious. “I was worried it might be too late.”

“He’s got a paper to finish, he’ll be up for hours,” Sawyer called. Several more monsters on-screen blew up and died gruesomely.

“Shut the fuck up,” Theo yelled back to him.

“Put your goddamn headphones on then.”

“You put your damn headphones on.”

Izzy looked mildly amused while they argued. Eventually both Sawyer and Theo put their headphones on and the conversation could continue. “He wasn’t lying, I will be up for hours with this paper.”

“Is it a bad time? Did you need to finish it first?”

Theo stared at his half-finished sentence and deleted it entirely. “No, I think a break would be good. Is everything okay?”

“It is, yeah. I just—I didn’t like how we left things in Itasca.”

Theo hadn’t either, but he also didn’t think Izzy wanted him to reach out to her, so he had made his peace with feeling like crap about it forever. Plus, the Avery Catastrophe had easily put the Izzy Blow-Up to shame. “I am sorry, Iz.”

“I know,” she said. “And I guess I am glad you didn’t lead me on this fall, even if it sucked to feel like you were leading me on all last year too.”

“I know,” he said, and decided against making any excuses. “How are you liking California, though?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “I hated it at first, but it’s not feeling so shitty now.”

“Because you hate me?” he asked drily.

“A little,” she agreed, and then laughed. “But that is part of it, I think. I think I kept hoping, you know? And that’s obviously off the table now, so I came back here and it just . . . felt better. Easier. I don’t love being this far from my family, but I’m going to give it another semester. If I still hate it, I can always transfer back.”

Theo debated telling her the next part, but decided he had gotten in enough trouble for keeping things from Izzy. “There’s something you should know.”

To his surprise, she laughed. “Is it that Avery dumped your ass? Yeah, I heard.”

Theo couldn’t laugh, since it still hurt like all hell, but—well, maybe it was good that Izzy thought it was funny. Good for Izzy, at least. Still shitty for him.