Page 34 of You Say It First

The answer to that question was emphatically both, but there was no way to explain that to her. Instead, Colby just shrugged. “Neither,” he said, hoping his voice didn’t betray him. “We can go if you want. But I’m warning you, they’re literally hanging around in front of an abandoned office building. It’s not exactly a fun night of culture in the big city.”

“I love abandoned office buildings,” Meg deadpanned. Colby snorted, fully thinking she was joking, but she shook her head. “No, I seriously do!” she protested. “I love all abandoned places. Have you ever watched, like, those videos of abandoned amusement parks or psych hospitals?”

Colby had, actually, and they scared the shit out of him. He’d never been inside the office building for that exact reason, like at any second some scaly, red-eyed demon was going to dart around a corner and drag him off to Hell. “You’re kind of a weird chick, huh?” he said with a grin. He held his breath for a moment after he said it, unsure if she was the kind of girl you could joke around with like that.

“You like it,” Meg said, only she was already walking away from him when she said it, and he couldn’t see her face.

But yeah. He liked it.

He changed into a pair of jeans and fed Tris before they headed out, the sun already starting to sink behind the trees at the west side of the house. He tried to think of a way to suggest Meg put on a different shirt before they went—he could already picture the look on Micah’s face when he saw the one she was wearing—but couldn’t for the life of him figure out a way to do it that wouldn’t make things totally awkward, so in the end he just let it be.

He glanced at her across the driveway, watching as she unlocked her prissy little car in the pinkish twilight. She was even more of herself in person somehow, all noisy laugh and strong opinions, the kind of energy he associated with perpetual motion or a nuclear power plant. Colby kept catching himself staring at her like a total chump. He’d meant what he said, back at Paradise—she was pretty, with dark hair and skin so pale she reminded him of something out of a storybook, like Snow White or Briar Rose. She looked like somebody who had no business tooling around Alma, Ohio. She looked like somebody who wasn’t going to stay for very long.

Jordan and Micah were already in the parking lot when they got there, Jordan digging through his pockets for a lighter while Micah turned idle circles on his hands in the empty fountain. “Hey,” Colby called, getting out of his car as Meg parked the Prius behind him. He had no idea how to introduce her, really, finally settling on, “This is Meg.” The miracle of Micah and Jordan was that he knew they wouldn’t ask questions, would take what he offered at face value without pressing for more. It was part of why they’d all been friends for so long.

“Hi,” Meg said brightly, sticking her hand out like she was running for Congress. “Colby’s told me a lot about you guys.”

“Really?” Micah asked, his bushy eyebrows crawling.

“Quite the shirt you got there,” Jordan said as they shook.

“I could say the same thing about your hat,” Meg said, motioning at Jack Skellington’s hollow grin even as Colby winced a little. “I love that movie.”

“Oh yeah?” Jordan asked, brightening. “It’s the best, right?”

Meg nodded eagerly. “My friend Emily and I used to be obsessed with it when we were in middle school. I mean, actually I didn’t go to middle school—my school is K–12—but anyway, I actually just read this thing on Tumblr about how The Nightmare Before Christmas is a great allegory for cultural appropriation, you know? With how they’re trying to celebrate somebody else’s holiday but messing it all up.”

“Uh.” Jordan looked at her blankly. “What now?”

“Uh-oh,” Micah teased. “Moran brought his librarian to the party.”

“She just used, like, four words in a row I’ve never heard before,” Jordan said with a laugh.

“Oh, sorry,” Meg said, apparently undeterred. “Cultural appropriation is just when—”

“Did anybody bring food?” Colby interrupted before she could whip out her phone and offer to send them all a clarifying article from BuzzFeed. “I’m starving.”

“Did you bring food?” Jordan countered, and that was when Joanna’s car pulled into the lot.

“Shit, Moran,” Micah murmured—quiet enough so that only Colby could hear him, a curly, slightly pervy smile spreading across his face. “You forget to tell your girlfriend your other girlfriend was coming?”

“Neither one of them is my girlfriend,” Colby said, which was technically true, though he couldn’t help but feel a little bit queasy as Jo got out of the driver’s seat, her yellow hair up in a knot at the top of her head. It occurred to him that, in his effort to convince himself that nothing currently going on in his life was a big deal, he might have accidentally been kind of an asshole.

“Hey, Colby,” Joanna called, reaching back to take a six-pack of hard lemonade from her friend Maureen in the passenger seat. It seemed like a lot longer ago than just last night that they’d gone to Highland Burger Bar, which didn’t keep him from wishing a sinkhole would open in the middle of this parking lot and swallow him. “How’s your mom feeling?”

“What’s wrong with your mom?” Meg asked, frowning a little. Colby shook his head.

“Um,” he said, smiling across the parking lot at Joanna in a way he hoped was friendly but not friendly enough to get himself in trouble. Maureen didn’t bother to hide her stink-eye. “She’s better.”

Joanna nodded, glancing curiously at Meg. “Hi,” she said, holding her hand out. “I’m Joanna.”

“Meg,” Meg said, and they shook.

“How do you guys know each other?” Joanna asked, passing the lemonades off to Micah.

Colby didn’t know why the truth felt weirdly embarrassing to him. “We met dressed as furries at Comic-Con,” he deadpanned before Meg could answer, which made Jordan laugh his honking donkey laugh. Meg, Colby couldn’t help but notice, didn’t smile.

A couple of other cars pulled into the lot just then, thankfully; Jordan and Jo’s cousin Brady with the painful-looking acne and a couple of the girls Micah worked with at Dollar General, the sound level rising until it felt more like an actual party. Maureen dropped her phone into an empty plastic cup to make a speaker, Jay-Z echoing out into the darkness. Somebody else brought a thirty-rack of Bud Light. Meg sat on the bumper of the Prius with her ankles crossed and chatted with some girl Jo knew from the hair salon, both of them animated. Jordan finally got his joint lit while Micah held court in front of the empty fountain.

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