Page 57 of Nobody in Particular

I step closer, so she can hear me better over the roar of the shower without me needing to raise my voice. “Someone who claims to be from Bramppath told him. They didn’t present any evidence, but—”

The bathroom door handle starts to turn, and I freeze. I’m standing with half of my body inside Danni’s shower cubicle, talking to her while she’s soaking wet and wearing only a towel, and while I’m certain—or mostly certain—partially certain—that the anonymous informant is lying, what if they’re not? What if somebody at Bramppath already suspects we’re involved with each other, and that somebody happens to walk in on us like this?

I should spring backward and close the cubicle door. It’s by far the most rational move. There’s nothing all that suspicious about speaking to a classmate through a cubicle door, after all. The issue is, William’s tone has me on edge, and I feel watched by the wallsthemselves, and adrenaline isn’t a fan of the rational. So, to my dismay, it’s my central nervous system that chooses my next step for me, and it decides to fling me into the cubicle to hide from whoever’s entering.

The thing about these cubicles is they’re awfully small. Danni was barely avoiding getting her towel soaked while talking to me as it was. The space is not designed for the water to be running while students dry off. So, when my panic sends me launching past Danni, the only place to go is directly under the shower head. Still fully clothed in my uniform. I gasp instinctively as a powerful stream of hot water gushes over me, and clap my hand over my mouth before it escalates into a howl.

Danni lunges forward to turn the tap off—something that didn’t occur to me in my shocked state—but it’s too late. I’m soaked through. My clothes aren’t dripping onto the tiled floor so much as they’re waterfalling.

Next to us, another cubicle door closes, and the shower turns on. Danni looks over, and then back to me. Her mouth has twisted into a very interesting shape, as though she’s trying valiantly not to burst out laughing.

“What the hell did you do that for?” she mouths, and I jut out my lower jaw. Why does she think I did it? Because Iwasn’t thinking,obviously.

“Help me,” I mouth back, before holding my arms up to survey myself. Excellent. Wonderful. I’m holding my body weight’s worth of water in my school uniform, which is still attached to me. And my room is upstairs. Marvelous.

When Danni regains control of her facial features, she looks as though she’s reluctant to say something. I wring a flood of liquid out of my ponytail while she gathers the courage.

“I still have shampoo in my hair,” she whispers, pointing to her head.

I fix a cool gaze onto her, and I don’t need to speak to make my point known. She holds up a finger in aone secondgesture and darts out of the cubicle in her towel, leaving me cold, and sodden, and cursing William with everything I have.

TWENTY-FOURROSE

When I join Danni in her bedroom, wearing the baggy pair of sweatpants and scratchy hoodie she threw over the cubicle door for me, she’s still fighting laughter. “That’s a good look on you,” she says as I collapse on her bed.

“Ipanicked,” I groan, face down.

“Well, yeah, I figured. Can we rewind? Tell me from the beginning; what, exactly, is going on?”

Taking and releasing a deep breath, I launch into a summary of everything William told me about the anonymous Bramppath tip.

“There’s more,” I say, pulling out my phone while Danni processes. I bring up the links William sent me, and the screenshot of comments beneath Molly’s video. I watch Danni with wary eyes as she scans them.

“Okay, this isn’t so bad,” she says, and the fact that she’s echoing my initial reaction to William calms me somewhat. “There’s, what, three different people who actually buy it? Everyone else is just asking them for evidence, and there isn’t any. They’ve got nothing on us.”

“For now,” I say, and Danni gives me a gentle look.

“We won’t give them anything,” she says, awfully sure of herself for someone who watched me literally throw myself inside a running shower only fifteen minutes ago to avoid detection. “It’s justspeculation. Every celebrity gets queer shipping rumors. I’m surprised this is your first rodeo.”

“They do?” I ask, dumbfounded.

“Oh my god, totally. As soon as you’re in the spotlight, there are people who’ll convince themselves you’re in a relationship with anyone you’ve been in the same room with. I mean, look at the Molly reference. Speculating about whether a celebrity is in the closet is one of the great pastimes of the online queer community,” she says sagely, before pausing and adding, “right up there with discussing at length about how terrible it is to speculate about people’s sexualities and agreeing as a group to never do it again.”

“You seem to know a lot about online queer communities.”

“I know plenty about queer communities. They just don’t know about me yet.”

“Okay, you may be right,” I say, and Danni beams.

“I’m so right. Relax. We’re fine.”

I smile back weakly. “Sorry I tore you out of the shower. I just worried when William called. I’m supposed to hide this for a lifetime, and the thought that I may have already stumbled notweeksafter getting my first girlfriend—” I cut myself off when I notice Danni’s face, and that’s when I realize what I’ve just said. My face burns and prickles as I scramble for a way to recover. “I mean, not that we’ve… notgirlfriend.”

“A lifetime?” Danni repeats.

“Well, princesses obviously can’t be lesbians,” I say offhandedly. “Not when they’re next in line. I know we haven’t discussed labels for us,” I plow on. “So please don’t think I’m rushing you, or pressuring you. I’ve never done this before, so I don’t know how it works.”

How does one know when one has a girlfriend? Is the term automatically applied after a certain amount of time has passed? Does one propose? Are there gifts involved? Because I can sort that out if need be. Only if Danni’s open to the idea, of course. Which… certainly doesn’t seem to be the case… because she’s staring at me with an expression that can only be described as abject horror.

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