Page 47 of Lesson Learned

“My mother’s on her third marriage and it’s getting rocky. In a last-ditch effort to keep this one intact, she paid through her finely sculpted nose to send me to school. My dad is bonkers rich, but he’s also inclined to keep most of it for his new family. He vastly preferred the son he had with his second wife to the daughter he got from his first.”

“I’m sorry. That sounds hard.”

She smiles at me, wrinkling her nose. “Sure, but at least mine was hard in a nice house. Pretty sure I still beat yours.”

“Now, now, girls,” I say in mockery of our shared economics teacher. “Not everything’s a competition.”

Floss clicks her tongue against her teeth. “Woman doesn’t know what she’s talking about. If there isn’t a winner or a loser, why bother doing anything at all?”

The competitive streak makes me laugh. Although I enjoy coming first as much as the next person, it’s not wired into my DNA like it seems to be with Floss. “Can I ask you something?”

Her posture stiffens and all the comradery between us dies a sudden and violent death. “Let me guess. Brooke sent you to cross-examine me.”

“No. I haven’t talked to Brooke today because somebody made sure she didn’t feel welcome at our table.”

Floss’s eyelid twitches. “That somebody has a lot to answer for.”

“Yeah, he does. We’re going out this weekend to celebrate my birthday and I’d like you to be there”—she hitches up her eyebrow in a show of disbelief—“but Marnie won’t tell me what went on between you, and I can’t tell if it’s appropriate to invite you.”

There’s sadness in her expression when she says, “Better not. I don’t think I’d be welcome.”

“But what happened? Can’t you tell me and let me decide?”

“If she didn’t tell you, it could be because she doesn’t want anyone to know.”

The evasiveness annoys me. “And is that what you want?”

“Just let it drop.”

I rub my palm over the edge of the chair’s armrest, trying to soothe the burst of itchiness I get when I’m stressed. “Did James do something? Get between you, somehow?”

Floss’s eyes flicker up to gaze over my shoulder, then widen with alarm. Before I turn, I already know who I’m going to see.

“Hey, Marnie,” I say with the casualness of someone not caught red-handed in the lion’s den.

“What are you doing?” she asks in a tight voice, completely unlike her usual tone.

There’s not much point in lying. “I want to find out what went wrong so I can fix it.”

Marnie’s eyes blaze at Floss. “And did you tell her?”

She gives a tiny shake of her head, looking utterly miserable.

“Floss tried to fuck my boyfriend.”

The accusation is so ridiculous, I laugh. “Sure, because everyone wants a piece of James.” Then when her stony face doesn’t alter. “Is that something he told you? Come on, Marnie. You must know that isn’t true.”

“It’s true.” Floss’s face is pale, just a few patches of blotchy colour high on her right cheekbone where she’s scratched. Her eyes move past Marnie, fixing on James who walks right up behind her. For a moment, she looks like she’s pleading with him, then her face turns blank. Her voice has all the emotion of a robot when she adds, “I chased him.”

“No, but—”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marnie says between clenched teeth. “So why don’t you just drop it now?”

I want to argue. To point out how unlikely this scenario is but when I turn to Floss, she won’t meet my eyes and when I look to Marnie, she’s seething with fury.

Only James appears happy, standing with his arm slung around his girlfriend’s waist.

“I can’t believe you went behind my back.”

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