The Hate U Give(19)
“I like the blue, Hails,” I say. “And the cut.”
“Yeah.” Maya grins. “It’s very Joe Jonas of you.”
Hailey whips her head around so fast, her eyes flashing. Maya and I snicker.
So there’s a video deep in the depths of YouTube of the three of us lip-syncing to the Jonas Brothers and pretending to play guitars and drums in Hailey’s bedroom. She decided she was Joe, I was Nick, and Maya was Kevin. I really wanted to be Joe—I secretly loved him the most, but Hailey said she should have him, so I let her.
I let her have her way a lot. Still do. That’s part of being Williamson Starr, I guess.
“I so have to find that video,” Jess says.
“Nooo,” Hailey goes, sliding off the tabletop. “It must never be found.” She sits across from us. “Never. Ne-ver. If I remembered that account’s password, I’d delete it.”
“Ooh, what was the account’s name?” Jess asks. “JoBro Lover or something? Wait, no, JoBro Lova. Everybody liked to misspell shit in middle school.”
I smirk and mumble, “Close.”
Hailey looks at me. “Starr!”
Maya and Britt crack up.
It’s moments like this that I feel normal at Williamson. Despite the guidelines I put on myself, I’ve still found my group, my table.
“Okay then,” Hailey says. “I see how it is, Maya Jonas and Nick’s Starry Girl 2000—”
“So, Hails,” I say before she can finish my old screen name. She grins. “How was your spring break?”
Hailey loses her grin and rolls her eyes. “Oh, it was wonderful. Dad and Stepmother Dearest dragged me and Remy to the house in the Bahamas for ‘family bonding.’”
And bam. That normal feeling? Gone. I suddenly remember how different I am from most of the kids here. Nobody would have to drag me or my brothers to the Bahamas—we’d swim there if we could. For us, a family vacation is staying at a local hotel with a swimming pool for a weekend.
“Sounds like my parents,” says Britt. “Took us to fucking Harry Potter World for the third year in a row. I’m sick of Butter Beer and corny family photos with wands.”
Holy shit. Who the fuck complains about going to Harry Potter World? Or Butter Beer? Or wands?
I hope none of them ask about my spring break. They went to Taipei, the Bahamas, Harry Potter World. I stayed in the hood and saw a cop kill my friend.
“I guess the Bahamas wasn’t so bad,” Hailey says. “They wanted us to do family stuff, but we ended up doing our own thing the entire time.”
“You mean you texted me the entire time,” Maya says.
“It was still my own thing.”
“All day, every day,” Maya adds. “Ignoring the time difference.”
“Whatever, Shorty. You know you liked talking to me.”
“Oh,” I say. “That’s cool.”
Really though, it’s not. Hailey never texted me during spring break. She barely texts me at all lately. Maybe once a week now, and it used to be every day. Something’s changed between us, and neither one of us acknowledges it. We’re normal when we’re at Williamson, like now. Beyond here though, we’re no longer best friends, just . . . I don’t know.
Plus she unfollowed my Tumblr.
She has no clue that I know. I once posted a picture of Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black boy who was murdered for whistling at a white woman in 1955. His mutilated body didn’t look human. Hailey texted me immediately after, freaking out. I thought it was because she couldn’t believe someone would do that to a kid. No. She couldn’t believe I would reblog such an awful picture.
Not long after that, she stopped liking and reblogging my other posts. I looked through my followers list. Aww, Hails was no longer following me. With me living forty-five minutes away, Tumblr is supposed to be sacred ground where our friendship is cemented. Unfollowing me is the same as saying “I don’t like you anymore.”
Maybe I’m being sensitive. Or maybe things have changed, maybe I’ve changed. For now I guess we’ll keep pretending everything is fine.
The first bell rings. On Mondays AP English is first for me, Hailey, and Maya. On the way they get into this big discussion-turned-argument about NCAA brackets and the Final Four. Hailey was born a Notre Dame fan. Maya hates them almost unhealthily. I stay out that discussion. The NBA is more my thing anyway.
We turn down the hall, and Chris is standing in the doorway of our class, his hands stuffed in pockets and a pair of headphones draped around his neck. He looks straight at me and stretches his arm across the doorway.
Hailey glances from him to me. Back and forth, back and forth. “Did something happen with you guys?”
My pursed lips probably give me away. “Yeah. Sort of.”
“That douche,” Hailey says, reminding me why we’re friends—she doesn’t need details. If someone hurts me in any way, they’re automatically on her shit list. It started in fifth grade, two years before Maya came along. We were those “crybaby” kids who bust out crying at the smallest shit. Me because of Natasha, and Hailey because she lost her mom to cancer. We rode the waves of grief together.
That’s why this weirdness between us doesn’t make sense. “What do you want to do, Starr?” she asks.