Page 86 of The Fangirl Project
A little change might be nice.
28
“All right, spill.”
“What? Where?”
I look around, horrified that I’ve just stained the fluffy white rug in Chloe’s humungous bedroom with barely-alcoholic mimosas, but there’s no mark on the rug, or on me, and I look back at her, confused.
Evie rolls her eyes, before leaning back on her hand and tossing her hair. “Not the drink, you gumball.You.What’s up with you lately? You’ve been acting super weird.”
The “weird” accusation hits hard, even if that’s not how she meant it, but I’m spared a moment to recover by Nikita letting out a noisy cackle and echoing,“Gumball?What the hell kind of insult is that?”
Evie grunts. “Ugh. Don’t even. It’s off this show my little brothers watch. I guess they can’t call anyone a ‘dickhead’ on TV for six-year-olds. It’s onconstantly,there is literally no escape. I keep singing the theme song all the time, too.”
She gives us a little rendition, cracking everyone up, but soon enough the attention turns back to me. Daphne gives me a look that I can only describe as “mumsy”—gentle but firm, and full of concern.
“Come on,gumball,” she says. “She’s right; even after we patched things up, you’ve been really quiet lately and not like yourself.”
“I—”
Crap. First Max, then Jake, and even Anissa figured out why I’d wanted to invite her to the Bonfire Night party. And now this! I need to take acting classes, or something. Practice my expressionsin front of the mirror.
Right now, it’s New Year’s Eve, it’s eight o’clock, and we’re all piled into Chloe’s bedroom for a much more low-key affair than Raf’s house party. We’re armed with a good playlist and mimosas that are more orange juice than prosecco, and they’re all looking at me like this is a very nice, obviously premeditated interrogation.
Then Daphne raises her eyebrows and jokes, “Not to keep rehashing the shitty boy drama, but…is it about Jake? You haven’t mentioned him at all lately. Did something happen?”
And that’s the question that finally makes me dissolve into tears. Daphne cries out wordlessly while Nikita says, “Oh, babe, no! What is it?” and Chloe, next to me, pulls me into such a big hug thatshespills half my drink over her lap.
It all comes pouring out of me in huge, gasping sobs. I work my way through half a dozen tissues before I have enough breath in my lungs to tell them the whole story.
And this time, I don’t hold back.
I tell them about The Fangirl Project, about the convention inSeptember and Max showing up in cosplay, and theOWARwatch parties he crashed and how, actually, I’d come to reallylikethe show, Anissa, and all the friends I’ve made in the Discord, but I’ve ruined everything.
I tell them about my parents dragging a divorce out for ages and how I’m sick to the back teeth of it.
And now I’ve lost JakeandMaxandit almost cost me my friendship with Daphne after the party, and it’s—
Nikita whistles, long and low. “You’re right, babe, that is alot.”
Daphne smacks her in the arm.
“Ow! It is! That’s not a bad thing to say, is it?”
“You should’ve just talked to us,” Evie tells me. “Especially to me. You know my mom and dad split ages ago, after he ran off with his mistress from the office. I’ve done the whole ‘family falling apart’ thing—ow,Daphne! Stop hitting us!”
I sniffle; I’d forgotten that whole drama around Evie at our old school years ago, but now I remember some boys teasing her about it and how she’d show up to school with bloodshot puffy eyes. She’s right, I could’ve talked to her about it—she probably would’ve understood.
“I never thought about it,” I admit.
“So all those times you’ve been busyworking on your art coursework,” Nikita asks, “you were ditching us to hang out with Anissa?”
“I haven’t beenditchingyou…” Hmm. “Okay, maybe I was a little bit. But wewereworking on our coursework, too. It’s just, you know, Anissa isn’t exactly…”
“Normal?” Nikita snorts.
“That’s mean, Nik,” Chloe tells her, but Nikita only shrugs.
