THEN

I never knew when I met Ella Walden that I would end up ruining her life. I just knew that she wasn’t the type of person I wanted to befriend in college. Her cheap, ill-fitting clothes and dated pastel eye makeup reminded me too much of Pennington. She wore openly the same trappings I was desperate to shed.

But sometimes, when nobody else was around, I talked to Ella about our hometowns, about our suburban upbringings. It was comforting, slipping into the past. From her high school stories, I could tell she was someone who was used to being passed up, and I found a counterpoint in her for that reason. But in public, I hated when she acknowledged our similarities and drew attention to the link between us.

Sully noticed, and it didn’t take long for her to comment. “Ella seems to think you guys have a lot in common,” she said, her lips curling up in a smirk.

“We don’t.”

“You might want to tell her that,” she said, dragging her finger across her throat. So I started to poke, ever so slightly, pushing back against Ella’s persistent commentary.

One night, washing our faces next to each other in the bathroom, Ella started talking about Wesleyan. “It’s just so different from home.” She scrubbed her skin with Neutrogena and a swath of zits poked through the foam, tiny mountains in a cloudscape. “Do you miss it?”

“Not at all,” I told her sharply. “That’s not who I am anymore.”

Ella leaned over to rinse her face, but not before I saw her wounded expression.

“My god,” Sully said a few days later, after Ella had accosted us in the lounge, where we were mixing drinks, and desperately fished for an invite to the Nics party we were going to that night. “I can’t believe you’re still friends with her.”

“I’m not,” I said quickly. “No matter what I say, she just keeps coming back for more.”

Sully took a drag of her cigarette. “You’re too nice. That’s the problem.”

Nice from her mouth was a hard dig, an accusation, something I had to disarm.

“I’m not nice,” I said. “She just doesn’t care.”

“You need to find her weakness,” Sully said, blowing a smoke ring toward the window. “We will.”

Her certainty was almost chilling. I nodded, already trying to justify what I had to do to earn my place. I didn’t owe Ella anything just because I knew things about her life, just because she had chosen to confide in me. I was with Sully. We will.

And then we did. Ella told me she was a virgin, something I swore I’d keep between us, something that never should have mattered anyway. I told Sully. I had no idea what she’d do with that nugget of information.

Then there was Ella, knocking on Sully’s door when we were getting ready to go out. Sully let her in, then offered her a drink. Ella smiled and took a seat beside me on the bed. I drank faster, trying to swallow what I told myself wasn’t guilt.

Sully applied eyeliner in her mirror and randomly blurted out, “I had the most explosive orgasm last night. It pretty much rocked my whole body.”

I bit back a laugh. Lauren, who was studying under a blanket on her bed, shook her head and ignored us. Ella stared at the ground.

“From who?” I offered, taking Sully’s bait.

Sully pushed the eyeliner pencil into the corner of her eye. She always went right into the waterline, the part that made me tear up. I copied her anyway, forever trying to make my eyes look bigger and more dramatic. “From myself, duh. I haven’t met a guy who can do that yet. When I do, it’s game over.”

Ella’s face pinked. She sipped her drink while Sully talked about her vibrator, just like on an episode of Sex and the City, which Toni had become obsessed with before leaving for college. I didn’t know if Sully was telling the truth, but I hoped she was, at least the part about not having orgasms with guys. I never had either. When Matt and I had started fooling around, he said he wanted to make me feel good and asked me to tell him what I liked, but talking about it was awkward, so I pretended I liked everything, moaning in the dark with his fingers rubbing against me.

The night it turned into actual sex—when his parents were out of town and it was a prime opportunity to ditch my virginity—it felt more like I was being speared than anything else. After that, we did it every chance we got, but I liked being twined with him afterward better than the actual act. I didn’t come until one night, alone in the tub, I touched myself until the water went cold, relaxing into my fingers. The buildup, the release, the shaking legs, the skin on my belly reddening. I finally understood the hype, but I could never bring myself to tell Matt exactly what I needed. I couldn’t voice all that want clustered in me, tight like a fist.

“We’re going to look for a guy for you tonight, Ella,” Sully said. “A magic guy. And one for Amb, too. If you come out with us, we’ll get you laid. I can find you something to wear.”

There was no way Ella would be able to fit into anything in Sully’s closet, none of the miniskirts that barely covered Sully’s hint of an ass.

“Where are you guys going?” Ella asked. The curiosity in her voice was cloying. It made me flinch, not just from secondhand embarrassment but because that so easily could have been me.

“The Nics,” Sully said. “Who have you hooked up with so far, Ella?”

Ella’s blush deepened to a blotchy purple. When her eyes flashed to me, I saw something besides humiliation. Hurt. She knew I had told Sully her secret. I made her look away first, even though I wanted to.

“Nobody special,” she mumbled. “Just a couple guys.”

Sully leaned forward on crossed legs. She wasn’t done playing. “Come on, Ella. Tell us their names. Or are you afraid we’re going to steal them?”

Ella must have known she was caught in Sully’s crosshairs. I willed her not to struggle, because that would just make the trap clench her limbs more tightly. I wondered how long she would try to keep the lie alive.

“Tell us, Ella,” I echoed.

“You know, I actually have so much studying to do,” she said, standing up. “But I hope you guys have a great time.” She put her drink down, unfinished.

To my surprise, Sully let her go. “We’re here if you change your mind,” she said, and when Ella was gone, her lips trembled with laughter as she put on bright magenta lipstick.

“There. We got rid of her,” Sully said. “It really wasn’t hard.” We got rid of her. She made it sound like we had dumped a body. I imagined Ella in tears and waited for the queasiness in my gut to pass.

“Thank you,” I said, which was the answer she wanted.

“You guys are awful,” Lauren chimed in. “I know she seems kind of square, but she’s actually really nice.” I had the feeling Lauren was only defending Ella because she had decided to hate me. Or maybe she was spending too much time with Flora and wanted to try nice on for size. When Lauren got up and shuffled into the hall with her shower bag, Sully raised both middle fingers at her back.

I reached for the lipstick, but Sully swatted me away. “Have another drink first. And what the hell are you drinking out of, anyway?”

I held up my Friend mug. “It was all I could find. Flora gave it to me.”

Sully yanked it out of my hand. I thought she was going to throw it on the floor, but she just inspected it, the bubbly font and excessive pinkness, and opened her flask of vodka to refill it.

“Drink up,” she said, her voice flat.

I despised the mug in that moment, and Flora for cursing me with it. I figured any headway I had gained in my cruelty to Ella had been lost with an ugly piece of porcelain. I was too scared at the time to understand that Sully wasn’t disappointed. She was jealous.

Several drinks and a bump of cocaine later, as the two of us stumbled up Foss Hill toward the Nics, Sully was quiet, and I had to break the silence. “I haven’t had an orgasm from a guy either. None of them know how to use their dicks.”

She threw her head back and laughed, exposing her milky throat. “Are you serious? That’s so sad. I’m the easiest person to get off. I was just making up shit so we could get rid of Ella.”

For a second I hated her. The clothes that hung perfectly on her body and the hair she never had to wash and her grades, the way she didn’t have to work for anything. She was the opposite of the cool girls from Central, forever trying to cultivate an image.

But mostly I just hated myself. For always slipping, just when I finally thought I had a solid foothold. For my defective body and sluggish brain. I would have to sharpen everything.

“Mission accomplished,” I said. “Now I just have to do something about Flora. She’s always judging me. Us.”

Sully knocked against my shoulder but didn’t link her arm in mine like she usually did. “Yeah. She’s so goddamn fake. Girls like that are actually the easiest to corrupt.”

Ella would have become wallpaper, someone in the background of my college scrapbook with a try-hard smile and dated clothes, if not for what we did. But she unwittingly played a role.

Maybe she’s playing a very different one now.