KC didn't break my heart. That would be giving him too much credit. I was fourteen, I was stupid, he was cute and funny and whatever – KC hurt me, KC made me cry, but KC didn't destroy me. He did me a favor, in all honesty. As we moved on and grew up and became who we were meant to be, I realized how different KC and I had always been. I was thankful, in a terrible condescending way, that I had stopped dating him before he fully turned into a boy I barely knew, and didn't really want to. He wasn't who I thought he was – which, really, was fine. Who still loves their first boyfriend even a year later? Cares about their best friend when they were fourteen by the time they graduate high school?

That was how I wanted to remember KC, really: my first best friend at Degrassi. That was where he excelled. We'd had the best time giggling over math notes and watching dumb movies; it was only once we started touching each other that things sped rapidly downhill. But: we had, and then we'd stopped, and life at Degrassi had somehow marched on. It always does.

But he still played this weird role in my life: we barely talked. We moved on to different social circles. He, to Jenna and football players and cheerleaders and high school clichés; me, to Eli and Adam and misfits and eyeliner and, admittedly, more high school clichés. We had some classes together, were polite enough in group settings, smiled at each other in hallways, but nothing of note. Nothing of substance. Except for those few times when I would look up and he was there, staring at me, and suddenly it was intense and weird and heated and not even in a romantic way, just in an – I don't know. It wasn't romantic. I cannot emphasize enough how little I was attracted to KC Guthrie, after everything that had happened. But, try as I did to fight it, we were still always going to be – Clare and KC. It's like they say: you never forget your first love, even if your first love's an idiot.

I found out he was cheating on Jenna with Marisol from – of all people – Dave. We were barely friends outside of his perpetual sweeping romance with Alli, which is why I was so freaked out when he approached me at my locker after homeroom.

"Clare!" was his form of greeting. I closed my locker, and attempted to smile at him, even though I was mostly just confused.

"Dave!"

"Can I talk to you about something?"

"Looks like you already are..."

"KC dumped you because he liked Jenna, right?"

"Yes. Best days of my life. Thanks for the reminder—"

"He's doing it again."

"What?"

"At least, I'm pretty sure."

"With who?"

"Marisol."

"I don't even know who that is."

"Katie Matlin's best friend. Power Squad. She works with him at Little Miss Steaks?"

"Ugh. Marisol would."

"I thought you didn't know Marisol?"

"I don't. This is confirmed?"

"They flirt literally all the fucking time, and I saw them getting out of his car together this morning."

"Ew!"

"Yeah..."

I paused, peered through the haze of my own anger for a second, and turned back to Dave, eyebrows raised. "Why are you telling me this?"

"You're still, like, the only one who can keep him in check."

"What? Not really."

"You should try to talk to him."

"Why haven't you?"

"He doesn't take me seriously."

"Are you fucking kidding me, KC?" was my opening line. Not the most eloquent, I know; I'd planned out a huge, majestic speech in my head for after school, but when I ran into him in the courtyard before fifth period it all kind of just spilled out.

Needless to say, KC was incredibly confused. Fucker. "Nice to see you, too...?"

I leaned in, my voice a harsh whisper. "Marisol?!"

Fear flashed over his face – that's when I knew – but he quickly tried to placate it with stupid incredulousness. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't do this, you asshole. I say Marisol, and you know exactly what I mean."

His expression darkened. "How do you know?"

"Dave told me. He's not an idiot. How long did you think you could keep this a secret?"

"Oh, so Dave just like reports on my life to you, what, every week?"

"No, of course not," I snapped. "Dave and I barely talk. But he's worried about you. He's mad at you. He doesn't know how to deal with what a shithead you're being—"

"It's not his responsibility to care about my life—"

"He's you're friend. That's sort of the entire fucking point."

"I'm handling it, okay?"

"Handling it? Are you serious? You literally have a baby at home. You are actually a father. And you're just fucking around with some girl you wait tables next to?!"

"Why do you care—"

"I know how it feels! I know what it's like to be Jenna! It's so unbelievably shitty I would take days to explain how much I hated myself after you did that to me—and I thought you knew that. I thought you got that, and felt at least a tinge of regret in whatever black hole inside of you you call a heart – but you're doing it again. You did it again! And you don't even care!"

I was practically crying. Goddammit. I stormed off to save face amidst his desperate cries of, "Clare! Wait!" but I didn't look back.

The asshole cornered me when I was tabling for Student Council during fifth period a few days later – so I couldn't escape. He ambled over, pretended to care about our bake sale fundraiser, bought a cupcake.

"You could have stolen this after school and saved us all a lot of awkward silence, you know," I grumbled.

"Jenna found out. Dave told her."

"You didn't?"

"I don't know how to be a good person, Clare. I'm not kidding. I don't understand it. Sometimes I think that I'm, like, wired wrong—"

"It's not that hard. Kiss one girl at a time. Pay attention to your fucking kid."

"Jenna wants to give him up for adoption."

I paused. Stared at him. "And you don't want to?"

"No. I love him."

"Oh, because Jenna doesn't?"

"She's just giving up—"

"With good reason! Look at the facts! You're both 16! You're the worst! It's a baby!"

"I'm not proud of myself, Clare."

"You keep spouting these bad boy clichés as if they'll make it more okay. How you're the worst."

He blinked and looked away, smearing his eyes with a clenched fist. Oh, fuck. He was crying. KC was crying to me over the counter in The Dot. KC was a teen father. I was dating a boy who owned a hearse. Everything about my life had turned out completely opposite from how I expected it to go when I had my first kiss with the kid in front of me in Degrassi's gym when I was fourteen and lame.

I leaned forward, towards him. "When you started at Degrassi, you were this smart, sweet, sarcastic kid. What happened?"

"I'm never content with what I have. I can't stay still. I'm an idiot about everything."

I nodded: fair enough. "Just – grow up, KC. Take a break from the ladies, maybe. Just do school and sports and friends and shit. Be the kind of man that would make your son proud, you know?"

"I really think I was in love with Jenna," KC said, looking down.

"Loving her isn't enough if you didn't work hard to earn it."

"Yeah... I guess I should have learned that the first time around, huh?"

He flashed me a small grin – one that would have made my heart go all a-flutter in the distant and not-so-distant past. But I remained pretty stone-faced in response. KC would never learn if I didn't start staying mad at him.

"Well, you owe Jenna an apology. Or, like, five. And don't wait months to do it. I forgave you, but I'm an asshole."

"No, you're not, Clare," he said, tossing his cupcake wrapper into the trash. "You're the best. Always have been." He smiled at me: I smiled back. I was beginning to think these small moments mattered far more to KC than they did to me. I'd moved on, gotten other friends. He'd isolated himself in that small apartment, and was about to lose the only two people he really had left. One of whom was, you know. A baby.

I didn't know the last time I had a real conversation with KC would be it until way later – he, I imagine, didn't, either. We were in history class together, paired up randomly for a group project. I'd say Perino had no idea we had a history when he stuck us together, but the man was a sadist. He probably did.

We met up in the library after school to work on it – after my co-op but before his shift at Little Miss Steaks. We hadn't talked, really, since the whole Jenna thing. I had no idea how the Baby Adoption Saga had played out. KC and Jenna were both at school every day and decidedly not dating, so presumably not perfectly. Lesser Clares, younger Clares, would have smirked haughtily at the news of their break-up – but her present incarnation – ie, me – didn't really care either way. I'd broken up with Eli six times since we'd become official. He'd crashed his hearse, I'd cried, we'd cried. Who was I to judge anyone on the state of their love life?

We were both skimming books on Marxism when KC looked up at me.

"How's Eli? You two good?" he asked, pleasantly enough. It was a weird but well-intentioned question.

"Yeah," I replied, "we are. It's been a long, convoluted road, but I think Eli and I might finally be in a really solid place."

KC paused for a long moment, before saying quietly: "You love him a lot?"

"Yeah. I do."

"That's... really cool."

I figured I owed him an equally prying question: "Have you talked to, uh, your child—"

"Ty?"

"You know, I totally knew that at some point. But have you talked to him?"

"Sort of. I got a little – caught up. In being apart of his life, even though he has other parents now," KC paused. "Real parents."

"Ah. Yes. Well. "

"He's better off. It was something I needed to learn the hard way."

"You know," I continued, because why the fuck not, this was more interesting than communism, "you're going to be a good dad someday, KC. Just not... now. It wasn't meant to be."

"I know," he sighed.

"And, you know," I added, throwing him a bone, "two years later: I finally get it. Like, Jenna's pretty great. Is this just rubbing it in your face? I'm sorry. I was such a bitch about her, but..."

"No, she rules. I don't deserve how much she rules."

"You will, KC. You will."

He smiled, weirdly comforted, even though I knew nothing. "That means a lot."

"It shouldn't. I'm stupid, too."

"No, you're not, Clare, you're—"

"The best? You've said that before."

"Yeah, well, I still mean it."

"Well, KC – and I finally actually mean this – you're the best, too."

He left with his mom maybe a month later. I had no idea it was happening until I was standing on Degrassi's front steps, one-sixth of a group hug containing all of my first best friends at Degrassi. (And, well, Bianca, but she seemed lovely enough.)

We didn't have a moment. Not specifically. We didn't warrant one. I group-hugged KC, his arm flung around my shoulder, my hand just barely grazing the small of his back. We all pulled apart, tears in our eyes, as KC and Jenna stared dramatically at each other and hugged even harder and promised to keep in touch.

It was a surprise to even me, that I wasn't bitter: KC and Jenna were the love story that mattered, in that moment. And, soon, Eli'd be off to NYC and I'd be the dramatic asshole flinging myself around and crying. That Jenna managed to keep herself so composed was, honestly, really cool of her. She'd been the love of KC's Degrassi life – but I'd been the first, which both not as important but, also, enough. It had been two years, and, despite everything, I could still count on KC as a kind-of-sort-of-friend. In the wake of our atom bomb of a break-up, we'd defied the odds. We'd stayed friends, kind of. As much as you could, given everything. And KC had been a shitty boyfriend, sure – but he wouldn't always be. I knew that for certain.

And so he got into the car with his mom – I honestly didn't even really know the circumstances of his departure, outside of his shit father returning and being a shit – and waved at us, grinning broadly, tears shining in his eyes.

When I graduated high school a year later, I flung my cap into the air, laughing, crying, looking around to everyone around me – Alli, Connor, Adam, Drew, Dallas, even Jenna – and, for a second, KC's grin flashed in front of my eyes. He belonged there, with all of us. He was one of us. Degrassi's first class of Gifted Grade Nines, who'd gotten drunk and gotten high and sexted and fucked and fucked up and made an infinite and mind-numbing amount of stupid choices and, yet, somehow, after everything, after all of it – we'd made it. We'd gotten this far, and KC deserved a spot amongst our ranks. Surviving Degrassi is a badge of honor, after all.

Because, despite everything: I loved the kid. Not the way I did. Not the way I expected to. But, not matter what: he was one of us. One of mine.

I promised myself, as I futzed around on the ground, searching desperately for my graduation cap, that I'd text him within the next few days. Just to see how he was doing.