“One more week,” Dr. Hawkins says, “And then we will decide whether to continue the treatment as before. She is doing better.”

As if to show it, Skittles barks. Izzy claps.

I stare at Skittle’s dark eyes. Her white fur looks healthy. Almost shiny. Unlike that time, I picked her up from the street two years ago.

Cardiomyopathy. They had said the first time I bought her here. She’s on heaps of medicine, yet that’s not enough. Sometimes I have to grab her and run to the vet when she starts coughing and vomiting.

“I’ll check back tomorrow,” I say. Izzy is running her hand over Skittles. Skittles licks her face. Izzy laughs.

That’s my dog, not hers. I want to scream. Don’t touch her.

But I’m not insane. Yet. I was never good at sharing. Only child and all that. Now I have to share my dog too.

“We’ll see you tomorrow,” Izzy tells Skittles.

I frown, “Not we. Only me.”

Izzy whines, already prepared to blast me with another puppy eye, “Please. Please.”

“Let’s go home.” I take her small hand into mine. I have to drag her out as she says bye to my dog.

“Thalia,” Izzy shakes my hand as we are about to get in the car, “I want choco-choco.”

“What?” I give her a look as I buckle up her seatbelt.

“I want choco-choco and I want it now!”

“We can’t always get what we want, Izzy,” I start the engine.

“Thalia, you’re mean.”

I adjust the rear-view mirror. “Good. You’re smart enough to realize that.”

“Is that because I’m your st-s.. stepsister?”

I sigh.

“You really know your tactics,” I murmur as I get out. There’s a grocery store around the corner. Izzy gets out of the car with my help. There’s a spring in her step. She’s getting what she wants.

She walks in front of me. I let her walk inside as I wait in front of the empty register.

She comes back with both hands full of sweets. It’s a good thing her stepfather is loaded.

I drop the chocolates on the counter, as someone walks in to scan. I look up.

It’s Caiden manning the register.

He scans the items. He tells me the bill. I hand him my credit card.

He gives me the bag. I stare at his face. Izzy watches us.

“Gina is a better partner,” I say. “You should be partnered up with her and let me take the other one.”

He doesn’t respond. He stares at the computer as if there’s something else there, other than product names and prices.

“She’s smart. You helped me. I don’t think you wanted to do that.”

“Do I know you?” He glares at the screen while he says.

“Nope,” I say with sarcasm laced in my voice. “We have only been sharing classes— for what—almost four years now. That’s all.”

“Unfortunately,” He mumbles under his breath but I hear.

“What?” I ask.

Caiden looks up, his eyes shooting glares at my face, “Are you going to buy anything else? If that’s not the case, I’d have to request you to move from the register, Ma’am.”

He says in his perfect service voice.

I grab Izzy’s hand. With one last look at him, we walk back to our car.

“Was that your friend?” Izzy whispers.

“No.”

“He’s pretty.”

I open the car door and help her in. “And you didn’t realize how he was meaner than me?”

Izzy pouts, “But he’s handsome.”

Another girl is growing up to like red flags.

“Yep. And that solves all the problems.”

“So, can you like be friends with him?” Izzy asks.

I shake my head, “No.”

“Please. Then he can come over and he can play with me.”

I try to imagine Caiden playing children’s make-believe games. Almost two years ago, that image would have been possible. Because he was one of the good guys.

But this Caiden? I don’t even know him.

***

I am in class when I see him walk in. His clothes are so badly rumpled that you’d think he picked them up from a laundry basket on its way to wash. His jeans are battered and I don’t think that’s a fashion statement. It’s because he didn’t simply have any other pair of jeans that he could wear, or he couldn’t care less about what he was wearing. He looks around the class and I see him register the fact that there are no empty seats.

As luck would have it, the only seat available is beside mine.

He makes a face. A slight annoyance that curves his perfect pink lips into a frown. The frustration gives lines around his eyes. I have this thought that he will leave because he refuses to sit beside me.

But Caiden takes it. He slumps down in his chair, almost with too much force, and slams his bag on the desk. Then without a word, he goes to sleep, resting his head on the desk, in the crook of his forearm.

It wasn’t always like this.

In our sophomore year, Caiden was a star footballer. A jock, as you would say, one of the populars. There is no getting around the fact that he is the best-looking of them all.

It isn’t one of his features that makes him stand out. But a combination of that dark brown hair, the blue eyes, that sharp nose, and pink lips arranged in a face with a defined jawline and cheekbones that make everything so symmetric and pleasant to look at you can’t look away once you spare him a glance.

He wasn’t loud or boisterous or full of himself like all his other teammates. He was pleasant to be around. Charming. Well-spoken. He smiled easily and complimented others that seemed genuine.

He was, in my opinion, what you would call a good-natured person. He was well-liked and I didn’t know a guy who was jealous of him. If they were, he’d have a way to befriend them and pull them into his magnetic force field.

He was so gentle about it too.

I wasn’t anyone outside of that force field. When I still had an interest in life in general and thought about myself and did the normal things, I had gone to watch every single football match he had played in. I had, in secret, worn his number underneath my school jersey.

Life was pretty normal. Gossip, dating rumors, parties, football games, going to movies. I had attended all the games and seen him winning one match after the other. I had gone to parties with my friends and seen him charm everyone’s panties off with a smile or a compliment. I had smiled to myself, admiring him from afar. Sophomore year passed by slowly but wonderfully.

Then as the end of the year approached, Caiden caught me. Every time I looked over at him, he raised his eyebrow in acknowledgment. I used to look away quickly. I used to try to steal a glance.

We used to play a game. My goal was to stare at him undetected. His goal was to catch me whenever I did. Across the canteen. Across the classroom. Across the football field. In practice. In the hallways. In the parking lot.

Then one day, he texted.

Unknown number
Alr enough
Thalia Jamieson

Thalia
Who this

Unknown number
The boy whos
about to change
ur life

I had giggled, rolled my eyes when I caught myself giggling and told him he was cringe. Caiden had told me to save his number. And then we had texted every other hour.

At school, the game changed. It was no longer about stealing glances. It was about finding the other person first when another walked into a room.

On the last day before summer, as I was walking with my friends, Caiden Walters walked past me and brushed his hand against mine while whispering my name.

I sometimes still hear it, in his voice, shooting sparks down my spine.

Thalia.

I had blushed so hard then that I had almost fainted.

Then the summer came. My life was upended. And when I came back to school, I couldn’t give two shits about people around me anymore. I ghosted my friends. I stopped caring. I didn’t care about any boy who brushed past me.

Mr. Barrymore walked into the classroom that moment, pulling me out of my thoughts. I didn’t need to be alert. I had mastered the art of staring into spaces while thinking about nothing at all.

So I never got into trouble in classes for not paying attention. Because I would stare at my teacher’s face, looking like an attentive student hungry for information while my mind ran in all sorts of directions. If at the end of class, somebody asked me what the lesson was, I wouldn’t even be able to name it.

But people who were on the phones, or as I glanced sideways, slept in class like idiots always got in trouble.

I kick his shoe.

He hisses under his breath.

“Get up,” I whisper.

I don’t want to care about him. I just don’t want the teacher to pay attention anywhere near where I was sitting. The people at the front and the people at the back are where most teachers pay their attention. So I always sat in the middle. And now Caiden will ruin that for me.

“If you don’t—”

“I got it, Jamieson,” He says with conviction as he sits up straighter.

“Didn’t you say yesterday you don’t know me?” I can’t help but bring it up.

I’m being an annoying bitch.

His jaw clenches.

Then I hear him mutter, “Shouldn’t be sitting here.”

I wonder how quickly everything changes.

I also realize we have changed and turned into these versions of us at the same time.

When I came back in junior year, burying my mother, Caiden had come back to leave football and withdraw from everything he once loved. He no longer played, no longer had the same friends, not his teammates, not a fan club or admirers who worshiped him.

If this was two years ago, he and I were partnered up for an assignment, we’d be texting using it as an excuse.

But now? I don’t give a fuck and he hates my guts.

***