Rules for Being a Girl

I’m expecting her to laugh, or at least be really into it, like she was back in September when we spent the full duration of a Harry Potter marathon on cable trying to figure out if he had a secret Instagram, but Chloe only shrugs, winding her scarf around her neck and nodding toward the exit.

“Come on,” she says, “let’s go. They don’t have anything I want here.”

“Okay.” I follow her out onto the bustling rush-hour sidewalk; it got all-the-way dark while we were shopping, a raw, icy snap in the air. “Who are you shopping for, anyway?” I ask her, tucking my hands in my pockets to warm them.

“Nobody,” she says, and forges ahead of me into the crowd.

Chloe’s weird mood lingers all through the hipster bookstore and the fancy coffee shop, though she perks up when we wander into the big mall on Boylston Street, her glasses fogging up in the sudden warmth. She leads me up the escalator and directly into Sephora, her expression faintly beatific as she weaves through the rows of mascara and bronzer, picking up my wrist and spritzing me with perfume samples until I cough.

“Thank you for that,” I say, sniffling a bit in a slightly suffocating cloud of vanilla and jasmine.

“You’re welcome,” she replies sweetly, breathing in deeply and setting the bottle back on the shelf. Sephora is Chloe’s own personal happy place. “Come on, I need new lip stuff.”

“Speaking of lip stuff,” I say, following her through the crowded aisles, “you and Dean seem pretty friendly lately.”

“Say what now?” She stops in her tracks beside a stack of metallic eye shadow palettes, her face crinkling up like I’ve lost my mind. “Me and Dean?”

“What?” I ask, kind of put off by her tone—after all, it’s not like I’m pulling the idea out of nowhere. He was hanging around her locker literally this morning in an against-dress-code hoodie, munching a family-size bag of trail mix with M&M’s. “What’s wrong with Dean?”

“I mean, nothing’s wrong with him,” Chloe concedes, shrugging inside her puffy black coat and turning toward the M•A•C display. “And yeah, I guess he’s been sniffing around or whatever since homecoming.”

“Okay,” I tell her. “So?”

“So, nothing.” Chloe turns toward the lipsticks.

“Is this about Frank with the Sweatband from the Deli?” I tease. Chloe broke up with Frank with the Sweatband from the Deli back in the summer—which, come to think of it, makes this the longest she’s gone without having a boyfriend pretty much since we met. “I mean, sure, he always kind of smelled a little like Genoa salami, but I’m not judging. The heart wants what it wants, et cetera.”

“Oh my god, he did not!” Chloe smacks me in the shoulder, but she’s laughing, which was the whole point. “And no, thank you, this is not about Frank with the Sweatband from the Deli. I don’t know. I just kind of feel like I’m over high school boys, that’s all.”

“Oh yeah?” I say with a snort. “Gonna start trolling the Saint Xavier’s parking lot, maybe pick up a sixth grader or two?”

“Wow, you are just on fire over there.” Chloe makes a face. “I’m just saying. We’ll be in college soon, and then . . .” She trails off, plucking a pot of lip stain off the rack and holding it up to the light. “I don’t know,” she says again. “Like, do you think you and Jacob will stay together?”

“I—” Haven’t thought about it really, but it feels messed up to say that out loud, even to Chloe. “I guess it depends where we wind up going,” I hedge, examining a tube of concealer instead of looking directly at her.

“You mean how close he is to Brown?” she asks with a grin.

“Don’t even say it!” I make a face. “We don’t know that I’m getting into Brown.”

“I know you’re getting into Brown,” Chloe declares, then ho

lds up two red lipsticks. “Which one?”

I squint. “Those . . . are one hundred percent identical.”

Chloe huffs. “They are not!” she protests. “Ugh, they have completely different undertones. You’re useless, you know that?”

I hold my hands up like, What can you do? “You love me.”

“I do,” she admits, linking her arm through mine and tugging me toward the checkout. “Come on. I’m getting them both.”

Six

I’m heading for my locker after the last bell on Friday when I pass by the newspaper office and spy Bex lounging cross-legged on the sofa.

“Hey,” I say, rapping lightly on the open door.

Bex doesn’t have an office, per se, but a lot of times he hides out in here if he’s got grading to do and doesn’t want to deal with the teachers’ lounge.