Mina came around the far end of B Wing and found Sofia talking with a bunch of other girls. It surprised her. So she kept straight on going toward the restroom at the end of the gym, where she closed herself into a stall.
She heard Sofia come in, heard her “Hey,” but Mina just spoke across the dividers. “You go ahead so you’re not late, I need to text my mom.”
“Man, your mother.” Sofia stayed where she was. Mina knew she would be checking her hair in the mirror, waiting—but Mina just stayed behind her door. After a minute, Sofia asked if she was nearly done.
“Don’t wait for me.”
There was silence, then Sofia made a little sound of annoyance and left. As the door wheezed shut, an ugly little thought snuck into Mina’s mind: Am I jealous?
Didn’t she want Sofia to have other friends?
Mina nearly ran after her, but there was the phone in her hand and the mother in her life. So she paused to hit SEND on “All fine here mom thanks for lunch luv M” before shoving the phone away and hurrying out of the bathroom—in time to see Sofia’s back vanish into room B18 across the quad.
But standing in the shade of the breezeway, she could see something else as well: Chaco Cabrera, down at the far end of B Quad. Sofia would have had the sun in her eyes, so she hadn’t noticed Chaco. Hadn’t seen him stop dead; hadn’t seen in his face a mix of emotions that even Mina, way down at the end of the gym, could follow: I should hate you but, oh…
Romeo must have looked at Juliet, the daughter of his family’s enemies, with exactly that expression. (Of course, Shakespeare just had to kill them both off, but still.) After a moment, the short kid with the scary family and the reputation for sullenness started forward again. Mina began to walk, too. As she went by him, halfway down the quad, she paid Sofia back for that moment of petty rejection by speaking into the air.
“She really likes you, you know.”
And walked on toward the cafeteria, grinning in mischief.