He's Got Nothing to Do With Me

Sometimes parents just don't get it. My parents, in particular. My mama and daddy were loving, supportive, beautiful, intelligent people... but they really really did not get it. In this particular case? They didn't get that taking away their daughter, even if she was their own daughter and even if it was LA in December, during an entire school break was an awful idea.

They didn't get how much I would miss. My girls spending full long empty days together. Bonding. My best-friend-in-the-world-turned-boyfriend, who was still a stone statue of himself half the time and did not call me once while I was away. A U4Me concert. My first break from school with a real true-blue girl best friend of my own. Parents just don't remember how important these formative experiences are.

And they really really don't get that it's a really really bad idea to come home at ridiculously late-o-clock the day before school starts up so their only daughter doesn't have a chance to call any of her friends to catch up on the gossip before being thrown face first into classes again.

At least I had a really cute, really designer, new bookbag for the first day after Winter Break. It would give my girls and I something to bond and squeal over before the final bell rang.

My face aglow and surprisingly relieved to be back in my favourite pink winter sweater, I bounded down the hallway to Stacey's "M" locker. My new bookbag swung apparently haphazardly from my shoulder – but, of course, it was carefully perched to be the most visible it could possibly be. "Hey there, Miss McGill!" I chirped, leaning back against Wayne's locker beside hers. He was done with the locker for now, I had decided, and Wayne acquiesced – as he should – by ruffling my hair and shooting off to greet Marty. "I missed ya'll so much, please please catch me up on everything I missed while I was gone! How was the concert!"

It made sense to talk about my vacation second. People always liked to talk to themselves.

Except I was wrong. Or Stacey was the exception to the rule. Or something. Because she didn't wheel around and throw her arms around me and squeal about how excited she was that I was back... which to be honest, I was kind of expecting. I mean, after all of our moans about how much we would miss each other when I left? But instead, she slowly turned her head and gave me a withering look. The type of look Sheila gave chess club members when they asked her out on dates. "Funny, Andi," she replied flatly and my cheeks automatically sucked in.

"I'm sorry?" I stuttered quietly, my eyelashes fluttering spasmodically against my drawn face. "Is this a bad time?" Had I really misread invisible signs so badly?

"It's always going to be a bad time, Andi," Stacey sneered coldly as that babysitting girl – the tiny brunette one that showed up to harass her at the party we threw with Robert – drifted down from the "S"s like an itty bitty bodyguard. "Just leave it."

With no more explanation than that, she slammed her locker closed and turned her back on me, linking arms with the other girl and flouncing down the hallway. Her first period class wasn't even in that direction. She was just leaving.

Instinctively hugging my new bookbag against my chest, I sunk back against Wayne's locker. Sheila's presence was suddenly very apparent beside me and my stomach tightened despite my gratefulness that her locker was right by Stacey's. "I don't get it," I mumbled, turning my head to look at Sheila, my hazel eyes glimmering. Why, oh why, was I always a crier?

"Don't worry about it," Sheila murmured immediately, her pompoms crushing against my shoulder as she awkwardly dropped her arms around me. "It's just Stacey. It's got nothing to do with you."

"Then why is she—"

"Because Stacey's a fucking baby." Jacqui's voice – always the first of us to get crass – drifted over my other shoulder and I became aware of my girls nearly materializing around me, like a dramatic scene at the end of a teen soap drama episode. "That concert was a total shit show and it was all on her."

"She showed her true colours and totally let us down," Heather added, her fingers entangling with mine to squeeze the hand on the side that Sheila wasn't already holding. "She's a spaz, Andi, definitely not who we thought she was."

"You're just collateral damage." That was Mia, her voice deep, leaning against the locker next to the one I was on and tilting her head as she watched Stacey disappear around the corner. "It's shitty that she's treating you like that, just cuz she can't handle herself. You should forget it."

"We're enough, Drea," Jacqui summed up, using her secret special nickname for me as her hand snaked in to squeeze my shoulder. My shoulder that still shook under her hand. "You just need us."

But I couldn't forget it. And maybe I had them, but they all had each other... Stacey was my best friend. I bit down on my lower lip, the colour draining out of it even under my shiny pink lipgloss, as I struggled for the right question to ask so I could understand what was going on. My friends said it wasn't me, they said that Stacey wasn't the person we thought she was... but wasn't I supposed to know her better than they did? If she was my...? How could she just...?

That was when Robert Brewster, former basketball star and Stacey McGill's boyfriend and the person who could maybe maybe explain this whole craziness to me, materialized directly in front of my face. It was most likely that he had been watching the entire thing and had decided to step in when it became clear that my girls' best efforts weren't helping, but to me it seemed very much like he took one look at my face and realized I needed him.

Wait. Not him. Just someone who could explain.

"Let's skip Math, huh?" Robert said lowly, grasping my wrist and extracting me easily from the girls with a single motion. "Take a walk."

I had never skipped class before, as hard as it might have been to believe with Jacqui and Heather as friends. Overwhelmed with emotion and confusion, I blinked dumbly up at Robert. "I already have my Math book in my bag."

Robert's mouth crooked in a half-smile down at me and he easily plucked my brand-new beautiful bookbag out of my hand, slinging it over his shoulder. "I'll carry it for you." His arm slid over my shoulder and before I really knew what was happening, he was leading me away from my girls. "I'll explain," he added, his voice too quiet for anyone but me to hear. "They're right, there's really nothing you can do. But you deserve to know what happened at least."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alex at his locker and gave him a small wave. But I was still struggling against tears and he was too far away for me to see his face. Only... I didn't think he waved back.