I tried to interrupt her, but she didn’t stop. “I’m really glad you told Oliver, though. He’s been home, what? Two months? Six weeks? And yet he knows more about you than I do.”
“Oliver? Seriously, Caro? Is that what this is about?”
Caro stalked over until we were less than a foot apart. “It is always about Oliver,” she said, her voice low and venomous. “It’s been about him for years. I thought now that he was home that maybe we could move on, that we wouldn’t just be ‘Oliver’s old friends,’ or whatever the fucking press used to call us. But it’s still all about him.” Caro held up her hands like she was dropping the past ten years at my feet. “So fine. He wins.”
“This isn’t a competition!” I cried. “I’m still friends with you and Drew. I’m just . . . dating Oliver. That’s all.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me about college? Why didn’t you mention it to me? You’re not the only one who wants out of here, Emmy!”
“I didn’t even think I would get in!” I cried. “It just happened!”
“Okay, then here’s another question. Why don’t you call and ask me to do something? Or—crazy thought—ask me how I’m doing!”
I didn’t have an answer for that. It was no secret that I hadn’t been spending as much time with Caro and Drew now that Oliver was home. With Drew, it hadn’t really mattered because he was spending all of his free time with Kevin. But Caro . . .
“Caro,” I said. “Why don’t you hang out with us this afternoon? We were just going to go to the Stand and get dinner, but you should come with us.”
Caro just turned around and started walking away again. “You’ll have to forgive me if I pass on your pity date,” she called over her shoulder. “I know where I’m not wanted.”
“Caroline!” I yelled. “You can’t just walk away in the middle of a fight. That’s not fair!”
“Look who’s suddenly upset when things aren’t fair,” Caro yelled, and kept walking. She walked until she was just a speck in the distance, then she seemed to melt into the horizon. I watched her go, defeated, then turned around and trudged back to school where Oliver was waiting for me near the concrete statue of our mascot, a giant, soaring bird that looked like it was constantly deciding which student to gobble down first. (Go Hawks.) At that moment, I sort of wished he would pick me.
“Hey!” Oliver said. It had gotten cloudy out and he had tugged his hoodie up over his head so that just a few strands of hair were peeking out. “Where’d you go? I saw Drew and he said something about Caroline and stew?”
“Yeah, well,” I said, “Caroline’s not exactly happy about me getting into UCSD.”
“What?” Oliver frowned. “Why? She’s, like, your best friend. I thought she’d be running around the school, yelling at people and lighting firecrackers.”
“Yeah, well,” I said again. “Apparently not.” I didn’t feel like explaining that the problem had everything and nothing to do with him. “Ready to go?”
Oliver eyed me, then slung his arm across my shoulders. He didn’t answer my question; instead, we walked toward my car, with only one place to go: home.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The silent treatment from Caro went on for a week. My phone had never been so quiet. “Are you still not talking?” Drew said when he saw me at school on Monday, after a weekend with no Caro. “How am I supposed to have two best friends who are fighting? This doesn’t work for me.”
“Learn to adjust,” I told him. “And I’m happy to talk to Caro. She just doesn’t want to talk to me.”
Oliver, while understanding, was equally clueless. “Can’t you just, like, text her?” he said. We were both studying in his room while Maureen made approximately twenty-three separate trips from downstairs to the linen closet, which meant that she passed Oliver’s room every time. “No closed doors, you two!” she said the first time, in a teasing voice that all parents use when they actually mean, “No, seriously, we will strip the skin off your bones if you close that door.”
Luckily, one of the floorboards on the second floor squeaks, so we could always hear her coming. With the twins fast asleep in their room and Rick watching TV downstairs, it was pretty easy to make out between laundry trips. “How many sheet sets do you even have?” I whispered to him as the floorboard squeaked and we sprang apart.
He just shrugged and picked up his pencil. “Yeah, but so then why does cosine . . . ?” he said as Maureen passed. “I have no idea,” he whispered once she was gone. “You know she’s spying on us.”
“No, you want to figure out the tangent,” I said as she walked back, then waited to hear her footsteps on the stairs. I was supposed to be tutoring him in pre-calc since I had taken it the year before, but Oliver didn’t need too much help.
“Did you talk to UCSD yet?” he asked once the coast was clear.
“I have until May first,” I told him. “I don’t have to decide until then.”
“So when are you going to tell your parents?”
“Um, hopefully as my car pulls out of the driveway on the way to San Diego.” I wrapped my hand around his, still holding on to the pencil. “That should be a good time, right? They can’t run as fast as the car.”