22

I barely slept that night, even with Michelle next to me, fidgeting and murmuring Lewis’s name in her sleep.

She’d swept into my room after their date, already in her pajamas, and climbed into bed next to me. She didn’t even ask how I was, just started telling me about the film they’d seen. She was obviously trying to distract me and it worked for a while. But then she turned out the light and, as soon as I heard her snoring, it was just me again.

Me and Nico’s mother’s voice ringing in the dark.

It’s for the best, I realized after replaying the conversation several hundred times. I probably shouldn’t commit this to paper, but maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that Nico couldn’t remember.

After all, there were some things I’d rather she didn’t remember.

About before.

About us.

There was a certain appeal to starting again.

Allowing ourselves to be exactly who we were, not who we used to be.

Besides, her mother was right. Perhaps remembering everything all at once wouldn’t be good for her.

We had no idea what would happen when she did.

When the wall Nico had put up between herself and what happened that night came down.

Maybe it would take her down with it.

So while it didn’t feel right to lie to Nico, to let her think I was just a stranger who’d found her notebook and not someone who knew things about her that she didn’t know herself, there was some comfort in knowing there was a plan. That I was doing as I was told. Doing what was best for her. She’ll understand, I’d decided by 4 a.m., when the night was at its most defiant and it felt like the moon would never surrender to the sun. If I told Nico that I’d lied to her because I had to, she might not like it, but she’d understand, wouldn’t she?

She’ll understand, I told myself again. But as soon as I felt that familiar fizz of excitement at the thought of seeing her that afternoon, it was swiftly followed by a pop of dread. Not because I was afraid that she was going to blow me off like she used to, but because I was afraid that Nico’s mother was right about that as well.

I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t lie to her.

By the time the sun came up and I could hear my parents shushing one another so they didn’t wake us as they got ready to open the café, I was weak with worry, sure that I was going to say something. Something to fracture the wall Nico had put up and it would come tumbling down. Something small—silly—that I’d barely register the weight of until I’d said it out loud. I’d know that she hated broccoli. Or we’d pass Beyond Retro and I’d laugh and say, “Remember that Camp Crystal Lake T-shirt you bought for Halloween?”

Then that would be it.

Nico would know that I was lying to her.

That wasn’t a new feeling. I always felt like I wasn’t being honest with Nico. Wasn’t being myself. I had to watch what I said. Not say too much. Not push her. Not ask why she hadn’t called in case that was the last time she did. But this was a pressure quite like any other because I might not be breaking us beyond repair.

I might be breaking her.

“You’re doing it again,” Michelle murmured, kicking me under the duvet. “Get out of your head.”

“Can I spiral in peace, please?”

“Fine. But can you at least stop hogging the duvet,” she hissed, tugging it away from me.

In the end, my spiraling was futile because Nico called to blow off.

If I’m being honest, I should have been relieved. Or at least expected it. After all, I knew she’d been sick the day before, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that she wasn’t well enough to meet me. But I’m not feeling great was her go-to when she blew me off before, so I felt an old wound reopen as I heard her say it.

But I did what I always did when she said that before.

I shook it off and said, “That’s OK.”

“I feel like shit on toast.” I’d heard that melodramatic groan so many times, but that morning it sounded different. Real. Her voice thin and far away as she said, “Don’t worry, Mara. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say that I woke up at one thirty this morning and it was like a scene from The Exorcist.”

“You poor thing,” I said, like I used to when she flaked on me before. But that sounded different as well, because thanks to that phone call with her mother, I knew she was telling the truth this time.

“By 4 a.m. I’d written my will. You’re getting my books, by the way.”

I shouldn’t have laughed, but when she let out an even more melodramatic groan, I couldn’t help it.

Michelle stirred, and when I looked over to find her eyes open, she immediately snapped them shut again.

“Was it something you ate?” I asked carefully.

I waited for Nico to groan again and curse the hot chocolate she’d had.

But she said, “I don’t think so. Mum made kale soup for dinner.”

I didn’t know why she was telling me what she had for dinner when she’d started vomiting before she’d had dinner, but I went along with it. “Kale soup would be enough to make me vomit as well, to be honest.”

“Right?” She stopped to clear her throat. “My kingdom for a Nando’s.”

I felt a flutter of hope then, because if I subsist on Cherry Coke and regret, then the old Nico was fueled by Nando’s and obscure music references. So I wasn’t surprised in the slightest that she’d rekindled her love for extra-hot peri-peri chicken. She would have eaten it every day, if she could have. Now I think about it, that’s probably why her mother put her on that awful vegan, gluten-free, sugar-free, caffeine-free diet.

Still, I was unreasonably proud of myself that I hadn’t commented on her Nando’s addiction. And, yeah, I knew it wasn’t the first time I was going to be tested, but I hadn’t failed, so maybe I could do it, after all.

“It wasn’t the soup,” Nico said. “Mum was fine until about ten minutes ago.”

“Is she Linda Blair-ing it as well now?”

“She reckons I have a virus that I passed on to her. Are you OK?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. Maybe it’s norovirus,” I suggested when she groaned again.

“That’s what Mum said.”

“Norovirus is super contagious. Once, my friend Erin was at a wedding and someone must have had it, because by the end of the evening, everyone was puking. Even the bride and groom. It was awful.”

“Maybe I picked it up on the bus on the way home?” Nico thought about that for a second, then grumbled, “I’d better not tell Mum that, though, otherwise she’ll never let me leave the house again.”

I waited for her to laugh, but when she didn’t, I frowned and asked her if she was OK.

“I’m sad,” she admitted, and I remember being taken aback that she answered so honestly.

“How come?” I asked with the sort of care usually reserved for stroking a stray cat.

When she was quiet a beat too long, I waited for her to do what she always did whenever she said too much—let me see too much—and shrug it off as though it was nothing, then change the subject.

But she said, “Mum just told me that she spoke to Brighton College on Friday.”

So you don’t go to Longhill? I almost said, but managed to bite my tongue before I did.

I was equal parts surprised and comforted because after the hours I’d spent devouring everything I could find about her—her grandmother’s obituary, that article in the Guardian about her father, those comments from her friends on Instagram—that was the one thing I couldn’t find about her: where she went to school.

I almost laughed because I couldn’t imagine Nico at Brighton College. I couldn’t even imagine her in a school uniform. All I could picture was a scene from The Craft: Nico all eyeliner and contempt as she swaggered through the corridors, sneering at everyone with their clean, neat hair and clean, neat nails as they clutched their violin cases and Latin textbooks and told themselves to keep their distance.

She must know Chesca and Charlotte, I realized then, wondering why they hadn’t told me.

“I can’t go back,” Nico said, and when I heard her sniff, I sat up and asked myself if she was crying. “I’ve missed too much. I can’t take my GCSEs now, can I? They start next month.”

“I’m sorry, Nico,” I said, which, while soothing, was essentially useless. I thought about what Michelle would say if she was trying to console me and asked, “So what’s the plan, then?”

“Focus on my recovery,” she muttered, but even through the phone I heard her roll her eyes. Clearly her mother’s words, not hers. “Then go back and retake the year in September.”

“There you go,” I said, careful to keep my tone light.

She sighed. “It won’t be the same, Mara.”

I tried not to sigh back because I’d hate that. Having to start again. Having to force my way into friendship groups that had been forged over years of gymnastics and sleepovers and fallouts over shared crushes.

I couldn’t say that to Nico, though.

So I said, “You’ll make new friends.”

“I don’t even have any old ones,” she said under her breath, and something in my chest pinged.

“You have me.”

As soon as I said it, I cursed myself.

Nice one, Mara, I thought.

We’d been talking for all of five minutes and I’d already messed up.

Mercifully, Nico was too distracted to notice.

“You’re so sweet, but I must have had some friends before but I haven’t heard from anyone. Not one person. I know I was only at Brighton College for four months before this happened. But what about my friends from London? Why haven’t they been in touch?”

I felt awful, because they had.

I wanted to tell her that, but then I remembered what her mother had said about being patient.

About trusting the process.

“They can’t get in touch, can they?” I reminded her. “You lost your phone.”

I closed my eyes and cursed myself for messing up again.

Nico hadn’t told me that she’d lost her phone, had she?

I’d worked it out for myself after speaking to May.

But Nico didn’t ask me how I knew that, she just perked up and said, “Oh yeah.”

“When your memory comes back you can reach out to them. I’m sure they’re worried.”

“When will that be, though? It’s been months and I still can’t remember a thing.” She sighed miserably. “Last night I almost googled myself to see if I had an Instagram, but Mum doesn’t want me to. She doesn’t want me to read anything before I’m ready. She keeps telling me to be patient. To trust the process.”

“No. No. Don’t do that. Don’t google anything. Your mum’s right.”

I hoped she didn’t notice the hiss of panic in my voice as I remembered falling down that rabbit hole of Twitter threads and subreddits. If she googled herself, she’d find it all. The sullen selfies. The videos people had taken of her singing outside the station. The ones she’d taken of herself, her voice like silver.

A detailed map of exactly who she used to be.

I couldn’t imagine what it would do to her to put her name into Google and find everything, all at once.

To find this person she didn’t know.

To find me.

Now I think about it, that was what I was actually worried about, wasn’t it?

That she might find me.

Then she’d know I’d lied to her.

Thankfully, I must have convinced her, because Nico gasped and said, “Wait. Someone did reach out!”

“They did?”

“Yes! Brighton College sent me flowers when I got home from the hospital,” she said. Usually, her voice had the depth and ease of a summer wave, so it was nice to hear her happy. Excited. “Hang on. I put the card in my journal.” I heard pages swishing through the phone, then she said, “Nico. Wishing you a speedy recovery. We hope to see you again soon. With love, Ms. Fisher and all your friends in Year Eleven.”

“Ms. Fisher? No way! My favorite teacher at Queens Park Primary was called Ms. Fisher.”

“I wonder if it’s the same one?”

“Let me check,” I said, reaching for my laptop from the bedside table and firing it up.

I searched for Ms. Fisher Brighton College, and sure enough, her LinkedIn was the first result.

“Nope,” I told her when I saw the photo. “Definitely not the same Ms. Fisher.”

My Ms. Fisher had a sweet grandmotherly energy that always made me feel better, no matter who stole my favorite pencil or how dramatically I’d fallen over on the playground. The perfect first teacher who had a smile for everyone and always had a Band-Aid in her desk drawer. But according to LinkedIn, the Ms. Fisher at Brighton College was much younger with that immaculate, rosy-cheeked Kate Middleton thing going on.

“That’s a shame,” Nico said. “It would have been cool if we’d had the same teacher.”

“Uh-huh,” I muttered, suddenly distracted by another photo of Ms. Fisher.

One of her cheering on the U16 squad at the South East Regional Indoor Hockey Finals.

And there, running across the sports hall in her navy, burgundy, and yellow kit, was Chesca.

I frowned at the photo as I asked myself again why Chesca hadn’t told me that Nico was in her year.

Or Charlotte.

Actually, I got why Charlotte didn’t want to mention Nico, but that didn’t explain why Chesca hadn’t.

“Mara!”

Nico said it so loudly, I suspect it wasn’t the first time she’d tried to get my attention.

“Huh?” I grunted, making myself look away from the photo of Chesca.

“I’m trying to thank you,” she said with that baby-pink chuckle.

Before I could tell her that she didn’t need to thank me, she said, “Oh! Before I forget. There’s an instore at Resident on Wednesday. If I preorder the album, I get two free tickets. Do you fancy it?”

I felt another flutter of hope then because that was something else she’d obviously rekindled. She used to go to every instore. She liked nothing more than to nod at a poster and say, “I saw them at Resident last year.”

But she’d never invited me before.

“It starts at six thirty. I was thinking, we could meet at your parents’ café beforehand.”

“Sure,” I said, like I had the last time.

And like the last time, it was such a tiny word, but it felt much bigger.

Like the start of something.

It was the start of something, wasn’t it?