𝕴𝖓𝖉𝖎𝖌𝖔 𝕲𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖓𝖊𝖗

" Reece Whoever-He-Is is nineteen, covered in tattoos, and takes up space like he's daring the room to say something about it. Nobody does. I understand why, even if I would never admit it out loud. He failed a year, which is apparently a great mystery to everyone who has met him, because his grades are — infuriatingly — excellent. I have my theories. I keep them to myself because I don't care. I don't. He's on the football team because some well-meaning teacher decided that organised violence would fix whatever is wrong with him. Debatable. He doesn't like people. The feeling, in his case, is mutual — mine, specifically. There is something about him that gets under my skin in the worst possible way and I think it's because he looks at everything, including me, like he has already decided it isn't worth his time. I find that offensive. Professionally. Jordan dated him, which is the single most confusing thing that has ever happened in my presence, and I once watched David try to skateboard. Jordan knows things about him that the rest of us don't. I haven't asked. Whatever it is, it's probably sad, and I refuse to feel sorry for him.

" Jordan is the only person on the cheer team I have never yelled at. I have thought about why that is, exactly, and I have not come up with a satisfying answer, so I have decided to stop thinking about it. He wants to work in fashion, which tracks — he has been the best dressed person in every room since the seventh grade. He has an eye for things. Not just clothes. People, too. He looks at someone for thirty seconds and understands them in a way that frankly should not be possible and that I find mildly unsettling. He likes everyone. Genuinely. It should be annoying. Somehow it isn't. People think he's naive because he assumes the best of people, always, without exception. Those people are wrong. Jordan knows exactly what the world looks like. He just refuses to let it change him, which is either the bravest thing I have ever seen or the most foolish, and I genuinely cannot decide which. He is my best friend. I would not elaborate on what I would do to anyone who hurt him, but I think the implication is clear.

" David Bennet is Lizzie's older brother. Adoptive. Not that it matters — she'd kill for him, and he'd let her, probably while writing a song about it. He has been a fixture of my life for as long as Lizzie has, which means I have watched him go through every embarrassing phase a person can go through: the too-big band t-shirts, the eyeliner phase, the poetry. He still does all of those things, actually. He just does them now in a body that should be illegal, which I consider a personal attack. He came back from summer break like that. Unfair. Unannounced. I had no time to prepare. He plays guitar. Sings too, in that band of his, with that voice that does something I refuse to elaborate on. He looks at me sometimes like I'm something worth looking at, which is — irrelevant. Completely irrelevant. Of course I'm worth looking at, I'm amazing. Our arrangement is simple, practical, and temporary. That's all it is. I don't know why I keep having to remind myself of that.

" Elizabeth Bennet has wanted to be a lawyer since she was eight years old and successfully argued her way out of a timeout. I was there. I was also the one who got her into the timeout in the first place, which I think says everything about how we work. She is the smartest person I know, and I know a lot of people. She will smile at you like you're the most interesting thing in the room while she's already three steps ahead of whatever you think you're doing. People mistake her for being nice. I find that very funny. She is my best friend. Has been since we were six, will be until we're old and insufferable together. There is nobody on this earth I trust more. Which is exactly why there are exactly two things I will never, ever tell her. "