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I
force a laugh. “That teacher was an asshole,” I say.

Cat smiles. “Oh g
od, he so was. Remember his oversized moustache? Man, did that dude need to shave…” She pauses, gathering herself. “Or do you remember our freshman year, when that jerk-y kid Brian beat you out as the JV basketball point guard, and so we spent the whole night plotting how we would commit the perfect murder so you could get on the team like you deserved, and we laughed and laughed until it was morning and time for school again?”

“Or,” she says even more quietly
, and steps toward me, her body just inches from mine, “do you remember last year, when we visited France because your mom wanted us ‘to have some fun for once,’ and we sat on that bench in the middle of night, looking out at the city lights and hearing the sound of laughter bubbling all around us, and you touched my arm and joked to me how romantic this would be if we weren’t best friends? Do you remember that?”

“Yes,” I say. “Of course.”
And I
do
remember. I remember all of it and more. I think about those memories, about Cat, every second of every day.

She nods and drops her chin so it’s hovering just inches from mine. “T
hose,” Cat says, “were the moments I realized I was in love with you. I mean, I thought it was just a weird screwed-up platonic love at first, because I’m not the kind of person who is pathetic enough to fall for her own best friend, I’m just
not
, but the more I thought about it, about us, about
you
, I knew I loved you. Like, for real. And call me crazy but for once in my life, I didn’t have any doubts.” She looks up. Meets my gaze. I can’t turn away. My heart rate keeps slowing and then speeding up again and I don’t even know what to do. My whole face feels sweaty, my body a bundle of anxiety. “I knew I loved you,” Cat continues. “I knew with 100% certainty that you were the one for me. You know how I haven’t been dating for the past year? It’s not because I was too busy, like I told you. It’s because I was already in love with one boy.” She steps closer. Her side touches mine, and I’m flooded with her warmth as well as a sharp, tingling sensation down my spine. “And, West Ryder,” she whispers, “that boy was you. But I knew I couldn’t just tell you. Or maybe I could, maybe I
should have
, but I was too confused and desperate to do anything but hide it and pretend it never happened, and that it wasn’t real, because maybe I just had a bad day and was going crazy.” She sighs. “I knew about your vlog,” Cat says quietly. “I’ve known about it forever. You’re my best friend, West, and you’re an idiot for thinking you could keep it from me.” She forces a smile.

I stand there, my mouth hanging open, still trying to process everything she’s saying. Finally, I manage to
say, “How’d you find out? About the vlog, I mean.”

“Dude. You left your di
ary wide open, flipped to the page with all your vlog info. I saw it when I beat you home from school. You aren’t the best with keeping secrets, especially not from me. Hell,
no one
can keep secrets from me.”

I blush, and she continues
, the distant smile on her lips already fading. “And so there I was with love I didn’t know what to do with and a vlog I wasn’t supposed to know about. I was desperate, and I decided to combine the two, and I used your vlog to do it. I created a fake profile and started commenting. I didn’t know what I was doing—I was being stupid, that’s what I was doing—but I just thought… if maybe I could befriend you there, you would see how perfect we are together, without the confusion and weirdness of us also being best friends. And on top of that, you would see how I really do love you… and maybe, just maybe, you could love me back.”

There’s a long pause before Cat continues.
I don’t say a word, still dumbfounded like a fucking moron.

“I kn
ow everything about you, West, and you know everything about me. We’ve never had to hide anything from each other. But that day, and every day after that, I had to hide something from you, something most people would tell the whole goddamn world about.” She takes a deep breath, and our eyes lock. “I had to hide my love for you,” she whispers. “And that first meet-up, I or Harper or whoever the hell you want to call me, didn’t miss it because I was caught in traffic. I missed it because I was scared. Scared,” she says, “of this. Scared of
you
.”

Then, she stops, and
takes a step back. My head throbs, and I feel my blood getting hotter and hotter. Cat loves me. My best friend
loves
me. How am I supposed to feel? Shocked? Happy? Scared? I sure as hell feel none of those things, mostly just straight-up confusion, although my heart won’t stop beating and my mouth refuses to work properly. And, in the back of my mind I wonder: do I love her back?

But I don’t know.

I just don’t know.

“What do you want me to say?” I look up at her, and she
looks back at me. She’s tall, almost as tall as I am, her long red hair a major contrast to my dirty blond. I used to joke with her about how her head was like a red velvet cupcake, with that red-velvet-looking hair and pale skin and perfect smile to go along with it.

I love that smile.

It’s just a line now, though—a twisted, sad line.

Her eyes level with mine. Her breathing
is even and sounds somewhat pained as she whispers, “I want you to tell me if you’ll give this a shot.”

“Give what a shot?” I ask, but I already know the answer.

“If you’ll go on one date with me,” she says, “like we’ve never met before, and just… see. Just try to be together—as a real couple.”

I look at her, but I don’t speak. I
realize then that it would be so easy to say yes, to tell her I’d love to try this, to tell her what the hell and go for it because I can, because I don’t want to see her go and because what if I do love her and don’t know it? But somehow, I can’t find the courage to say it.

I still feel so sick, so empty and tired, and I have no idea if I’ll
ever be able to process all this. I have no idea how to respond to her, either.

“West, please
just answer me,” Cat whispers. “I’ve waited years for you. Just give me a response.”

I take a deep
breath, my jaw clenching. What am I supposed to say? Yes? No? Maybe? I’ll think about it and get back to you? All of the answers feel wrong, somehow, and I realize there is no way out of this but the truth.

“No,
” I finally say, turning away from her. “I’m sorry, but no.”

All at once, Cat’s
smile slips, and she shakes her head a little. “Thought so,” she says quietly, in a way that’s so serious and empty at the same time that I feel like I’ve done something horribly, horribly wrong. Then, she turns, brushes past me, and walks down the street until she disappears out of sight.

I almost don’t see the tears in her eyes.

***

Everybody seems to
be watching me as I walk home. I keep my head down, not meeting their gazes, but I still see their eyes. All of them are strangers, dressed in business clothes or coats or whatever as they rush down the sidewalk to get out of work, but they all seem to be giving me the same disappointed look. It’s like they know what I did. It’s like they know I broke my best friend’s heart. I feel like they’re taunting me, guilting me, because these strangers, stares and all, must know what a hopeless idiot I am to turn away the one person I have left in the world.

I take a deep breath. Each step I take seems to fall in rhythm with my po
unding heart—
step, beat, step, beat.
The air is thick all around me, and I feel my mind slowly fade out. All I hear is the sound of my heart and each of my footfalls, and the background noise seems to disappear. I keep fast-walking until I reach my car, step inside, slam the door shut, and back out of the parking lot.

The only thing
I can think about on the drive back is Cat. Cat Cat Cat. I want to cry, want to scream and pound the steering wheel until this all goes away, until Harper ends up to be real and Cat and I can stay best friends and not… not this. Anything but this.

Cat is in love
with me and I turned her down.

Oh
shit. That really happened, didn’t it? I really turned her down. And she walked away like I’d just punched her in the face. Shit shit shit. I feel like I made a mistake somehow, like I should’ve done something more to fix this. I mean, she’s my
best friend
. Why couldn’t I have just manned up and given it a shot? What am I so scared of? I loved Harper, and if Cat is really Harper… what’s the difference?

I turn out of Main Street and make my way to the bac
k roads toward my house, kicking myself internally over and over again. But I can’t love Cat, right? We’re friends, best friends, but we aren’t the kind to date. We wouldn’t date. We
can’t
date.

I’ve only ever truly cared for four people in the world: my mom, my dad, Cat, and Harper. Now two of them are gone and one is just about gone to me. Cat is the only person left. I grip the steering wheel harder. I’m not letting her go. I’m not going to fall for her—like, for real—and only have my heart ripped to shreds again. I care about
her and I love her like a friend, but that’s all: like a friend.

I turn another corner. My head is throbbing again. I feel like
I should’ve known Cat was Harper, or at least guessed it. I should’ve prepared myself for this, thought about it, given her a real response. But Cat being Harper makes so much sense. They both talk alike, think alike, and they both make me feel warm and happy inside. I only mesh with one person in the world as much as I mesh with Harper, and that person is Cat.

Because
Harper isn’t real, idiot.

I still remember the night Mom died. I was sitting in my room, filming
for my vlog, when it happened. Dad and Mom went out for a date night an hour earlier. They’d been fighting so much lately that they said they needed to “reconnect” for a while, which so clearly would not happen, especially because they had a heated, hour-long debate on where to even go to dinner beforehand. They ended up compromising on some cheesy French restaurant, which served alcohol for my dad and wasn’t filled with screaming sports fans for my mom. I knew the night would end in them fighting some more, of course, so I distracted myself with my vlog, hoping it would all just go away and we could be a family again—a
real
family.

What I didn’t count on was for Dad to get drunk
or wasted or whatever the hell he was.

What I didn’t count on was for him to get so worked up that he forced Mom to let him drive because “that bitch
would try to kill him” if she were behind the steering wheel.

What I didn’t count on was for him to run a red light to “get home faster” and f
or a truck at their right to crash into the passenger door.

What I didn’t count on was for my mom to die.

When I got the news, it was late into the night—really late. Even after factoring in the time for them to scream at each other by the car after they stormed out of the restaurant (this happened a lot), I knew it was still taking too long. The air felt off, and when the doorbell rang midway through my filming, I could tell immediately that something was wrong. I knew it like you know how someone is watching you, or how you know the book you’re about to read is going to be the best thing ever. I knew it—
I knew it
—and I did nothing.

I
t was the policeman who told me the news. He showed up at my door, his eyes so empty of life, and he said my dad was arrested and my mom… well, my mom was dead.

At first, I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there, shaking, wanting to scream and cry until this all went away, but I couldn’t find the energy to do any of it. So then I did nothing. I didn’t cry, didn’t beg him to tell me he was lying, that this wasn’t real, that my mom wasn’t really dead. I just looked at him, my jaw set, nodded, said thank you, and shut the door. As soon as he left, though, I fell apart. I cried and cried and cried. The tears quickly turned to rage, then rage to exhaustion, then exhaustion back to tears.

I called Cat soon after. It was the
middle of the night and she had a big exam the next morning, but she still rushed over and spent the whole night comforting me, holding me close and telling me it was all going to be okay, that she was here for me and it was going to suck big time, but we would make it through—together. At the time, I didn’t believe her. Hell, I yelled at her more times that night than I have any other. But she was right. She gave me a shoulder to lean on. She made everything so much more bearable and asked for nothing in return.

I shake my head as I turn down
my street. It’s sunny out, cloudless and cool and the perfect autumn day. I pull into my driveway, hop out of Dad’s silver Chevy, and walk up the front steps.

Cat
was always there for me. Strong when I wasn’t. Positive when I felt hopeless. And the one time she needed me, I turned her down.

I never even gave her a chance.