So when we left off, Gwen was trying to stop Lindsay from committing suicide.

As soon as Lindsay heard Gwen's exclamation, she looked up in shock. "I'm kind of busy…" she said through a mouthful of pills. "This is private."

"You can't do this, Lindsay!" Gwen protested. "Is this all you want to be? Some statistic detailing the rise of teen suicide, like some new trend that everyone else is doing? That's not private at all."
"But Heather…" Lindsay protested. "And the boys…"

"Shouldn't have killed themselves either. 'Gwen told her. "Look, Linds, you don't always have to be happy. No one human is always happy. But you don't have to kill yourself over it. You can talk about it. Courtney might not want to hear what you have to say, but I'll listen to you. Just…just don't kill yourself. You've got a life ahead of you."

Lindsay seemed to be thinking this over. She held the pills in her dry mouth for a moment. Then, finally, she spat them all out into her hand, wrapped them in toilet paper, and dropped them in a bin. She quickly rinsed and dried her hand. Then she turned to Gwen.

"Thanks for coming after me," the blonde mumbled. She suddenly pulled Gwen into a hug.

Gwen flinched for a moment, before returning the hug. She'd never liked Lindsay all that much, but at that moment, something changed. They were actual friends for the first time. They had nothing in common, but their emotions bonded them. Somehow, one of the popular girls of the clique had become her actual friend.

"Why don't we get out of here?" Gwen suggested. "My house. I'll drop you home afterwards – and I can pick you up for school tomorrow, too. Then you won't have to take the bus."

Lindsay smiled at her. She still looked stressed and depressed, but there was some real happiness in there. "Thanks. And yeah, I could use some time off."

Since classes had been cancelled all afternoon in favour of the rap session, leaving early wasn't really bunking off school, so the girls weren't getting penalized. They went back to Gwen's house, and did their homework first (Gwen had to talk Lindsay through hers, as she never seemed to remember anything she learned in class), and then talked everything through.

"I guess…" Gwen said hesitantly. "I mean, I wasn't in your group for very long, but I know you and Heather were really close for a while. I guess you miss her more than anyone."

Lindsay nodded sombrely. "Uh-huh. Since sixth grade. We were BFFs. She wasn't always that nice to me. She'd borrow my stuff without asking and call me names, but I figured that was what BFFs were there for. They'd stick with you no matter what they did."

Gwen raised her eyebrows. How had Lindsay stood that for so long? But Lindsay read her expression and added "It wasn't just like that. We had good times. She only borrowed my stuff because I had the best clothes and nail polish and jewellery. Once we started shopping together, she got all the good stuff with my help and then she stopped borrowing mine. And then she started being nice. It was her idea for all of us to have, like, a…sig…you know, a colour that each of us wore. It started in sophomore year when Courtney became our friend. Heather said I was the only person she knew who could make yellow cool. I used to wear a lot of red and orange, but I had to stop when red became her colour."

Gwen actually remembered Lindsay wearing a lot of orange in middle school. She hadn't really noticed at the time because they weren't friends, but it was true. Lindsay looked good in warm colours, contrasting with her wide blue eyes. Yellow actually wasn't her best – orange suited her better.

"And were you and Courtney really proper friends?" Gwen asked. "I mean, she's been pretty mean to you recently."

Lindsay shrugged. "I don't know," she admitted. "We got on okay before Heather killed herself. She's only started being mean now. I guess she sometimes said stuff before, but Heather wouldn't let her get on my case too much."

Of course. Heather never let Courtney say much. There was a good chance Courtney had never liked Lindsay and just tolerated her to keep her spot in the group.

The two girls talked for most of the evening, until Gwen finally drove Lindsay home. When she got back to her house, she found her phone had five missed calls and two texts, all from Trent. The texts just said We need to talk and Please call me as soon as you get this message!

So Gwen did exactly that. "Look, I didn't know what I was doing this afternoon," she told Trent honestly. "And even if I had, I wasn't going to say a word about you. Absolutely not."

"I was a little worried about what could happen to you, though," Trent said, his voice sounding concerned. "What if people had taken you seriously? Do you know what they do to juvenile delinquents? We're still seventeen. You don't belong in juvie, and because of that, you wouldn't last in there, either. Even if we were in there together, they'd keep us apart and turn us against each other. We'd lose what we're working for. I thought you wanted us to be normal teenagers. I abandoned my crusade for you. If you don't put it behind you, then you're defeating that purpose."

"I can't stand it, Trent!" Gwen suddenly burst out. "I'm trying to be normal, but just because we put it behind us doesn't mean everyone else can! This afternoon was torture! For me and everyone else. You know what Lindsay was doing when I found her? Trying to overdose."

Trent sounded confused. "I didn't get why you went after her. Wasn't she one of the girls in the clique that you hated? I thought you'd want her gone. One less populette is a good thing!"

"I told you that she was nice without her friends, remember?" Gwen said, exasperated. "I mean, yeah, I wouldn't usually have hung out with her, but she didn't deserve to die alone like that. I actually like her."

"Well, if you're going to play God and save her," Trent went on, "Why are you letting Courtney live? She's the one who made Lindsay want to die. Losing her would be doing the world a favour!"

At that moment, Gwen knew what she had to do. She didn't want to do it, but she knew it was the only thing she could do. But before that, she wanted to know a little more. "We're not going to get anything hashed out by talking over the phone," she said, her voice a little hoarse from the realization that had just hit her. "We need to talk properly. Face-to-face. And once I'm finished, I need you to respect it."

She heard Trent groan a little at the other end. "Aw, please tell me this isn't what I think it is."

Gwen thought about it for a moment. "I don't know if it is or isn't," she said finally. "Either way, we can't do it on the phone. Tomorrow after school, at my house?"

"I guess. I'll see you there."
"Yeah. You might need to wait for me, though. I'm going to drop Lindsay off at her house before I head back. I'll see you after that. Bye." And Gwen cut off the call before Trent could reply.

There's a scene I haven't added in yet, and it needs to be there for the rest of the story to work.