Page 28 of Always Been Yours

“You and Selena spend too much time together. Busybodies, I swear.”

Knox stops before turning the corner into the hall and gives me a wide smile, “You could be a busybody with us if you ever attended dinner at my house. We love to gossip.” I give him an exasperated look, but we both know I don’t mean it. “This will be the year, Vivi. You will be my friend. Not my work friend, myrealfriend.”

I shake my head but can’t hide the smile that blooms on my lips.

Sometimes I hate Brody and Molly, not even for what they did with each other, but for what they did tome.They ruined the trusting girl that I had been and helped create the secretly cynical woman I am.

A mixture of terrifying nerves and unconditional hope fall into the pit of my stomach as I think about what it would be like to bereal friendswith someone like Knox Barker.

Maybe this will be the year I push through my distrust of… well, everyone.

I don’t know how many times she walks by my door before I notice her from behind my computer.

“Daisy? Do you want to come in?”

She looks up with wide eyes, as if she’s surprised that I saw her. She gives me a small nod and walks into my classroom.

“Bring one of those chairs over here.”

She quickly does so and takes a seat. “Hi,” she says quietly, a solemn look on her face.

I don’t know what she needs in this moment, but I don’t love it when people force me to talk about things before I’m ready, so I go for subtlety.

“My day was craaazy,” I drag out the last word for emphasis. It was actually pretty calm, but I can see that it piques her interest. “How was your day?”

“Hm.” She’s quiet for a second and swings her short legs in the chair. “It’s been okay.”

“Oh. Okay, like boring? Or okay, like not very good?”

“Not very good,” she whispers.

“Do you want to talk about it? Or do you want to hear about how I bought popsicles for my class and now I have sticky messes everywhere and even a few stains on the carpet over there? My year is off to a great start, too.” I give her a little wink.

She gives me a genuine laugh, but it ends too quickly. She looks out the window and I almost can’t hear her. “All of thegirls in my class already know each other. No one asked to play with me all day.”

I’m quiet for a second because I’m worried I might actually start crying for her, and working with kids has taught me enough to know that crying in front of them only makes them cry harder.

She continues, “I saw Stella at recess, but I didn’t want to bug her… She looked like she’d made a lot of friends.”

I take a steadying breath before talking, “Yeah, that must have been really hard, Daisy. I’m sorry your first day wasn’t what you had imagined.” I give her a sympathetic smile. “I bet a lot of the kids in your class were feeling the same way.”

She gives me a disbelieving side-eye, “Really?”

“Really. Starting kindergarten is scary, even when you know people. It can be weird trying to meet new friends and a big school can be really confusing. I’m sure that at least a few of them were just as nervous as you. Give it a few days and you’ll know all the kids in your class. And they will want to know you, too.”

She looks at me for a few seconds. “Are girls mean? In Phoenix there were some girls who made Stella cry.”

I love kids. I work with kids. I’ve never wanted to push a few kids down a hill more than right now.

“Sometimes, yes, girls—and people in general—can be mean,” I answer honestly. “Butmore often than not, when someone is being mean it’s because there’s something going on with them. It probably doesn’t have anything to do with how they feel aboutyouand more to do with how they feel aboutthemselves.Does that make sense?”

She stares out the window for a long moment. “Yeah, I think it does.”

“You met my best friend, Lexi, the other night at dinner. We used to not get along at all. Not until after we graduated from highschool. We never played together, and we would compete against each other all the time. It was really exhausting.”

“But she’s your friend now?”

I think back to how Lexi and I became friends. Everything I told Daisy was true. We fuckinghatedeach other from the moment we met in kindergarten. Most young girls would bond over having the sameLisa Frankbackpack but not us. The winter recital was announced a few weeks later and we were the only two kids in the class who wanted the solo. We ended up splitting it, and that was the beginning of twelve long years of emotional warfare.

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