Pepper never meant to lose her best friend. Lucas never meant to fall in love.
Yet the aftermath of broken hearts leads them to blur the lines of their friendship forever. When Pepper is dumped by her boyfriend and Lucas is led on by his crush, they...
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I MEET PEPPER in the theatre department a few hours after school.Lena is already at Martsia's waiting for our arrival while Pepper and I stayed late for rehearsals. She and Elliot are in the boy's dressing room, fitting him into a pair of navy blue slacks as I stride in. He's raising his shirt, exposing his pale, scrawny body as Pepper kneels in front of him, trying to hold the waist to his pants together.
Elliot's gaze lands on me, and his freckled face immediately brightens. "Hey! Pepper was just fixing up my costume, but we'll be ready in a minute."
"You're fine!" I grin as Pepper looks over her shoulder to see me.
"Hi. Sorry. Dress rehearsal is in a few weeks and I just want to get a head start on these costume adjustments."
"No need to explain yourself to me! Elliot is a skinny boy, so it's going to be hard making anything fit on him."
He responds with a playful roll of his eyes and flashes a blue tongue at me, evidence from eating his favorite jolly ranchers. Pepper snickers, one that's faint and lacks her usual bubbliness, and jots down a quick note on her clipboard resting on the table next to them.
Ever since we started becoming friends, I've noticed something dark hovering over each of us. Pepper seems to have lost her perkiness; same as Martsia. I've noticed several times that she skips lunch and possibly even breakfast. Every time she goes to the restroom, I want to follow her just to make sure she isn't throwing anything up. Lena is...well...she's Lena, but even she seems a little emotionally strained. And after my mother completely embarrassed me the other day, I've been trying my best to pretend that things are normal. They're not. I don't know what's going on with her, but her patience with me has been running thin, and we've been arguing more than normal.
"So, are you going to court warming this weekend?" I wonder aloud just to break the silence.
Pepper's shoulders rise and she keeps her back turned. Her voice is small, barely audible as she mumbles, "Um...maybe? I'm not sure."
"But you love dances," Elliot remarks. "That's you're thing, dressing up and being all pretty. Maybe you'll see Mason. I heard he was going."
"Eli," I hiss and cock my head to the side.
"Oh!" His eyes widen. "I'm sorry. I thought you guys were doing better after that one day... Then I saw you leaving together at the party."
"Nope." Pepper pops up with a placid smile. "I actually found out that Mason's family wants him to marry a Korean girl, so we were never going to work out. I'm just going to move on from him and try to love someone else."
"Aw." I scrunch my lips as a pitiful pang drops in my stomach. "I'm sorry."
Her smile widens, increasing in fraudulence, betraying the grief in her eyes. "You have nothing to be sorry for." She tosses her measuring materials down on the table with more force than necessary. "Sometimes the person you love is not who you're meant to be with."
