We Are Disasters.

Chapter 1

I got back to Salt Lake one week before school started. I'd just spent eight months in the middle of nowhere in Illinois, and I had a strong sense that once I stepped foot into East High again, everything would come together. By the time I got to second period, that idea had already crashed and burned ten times over.

By second period, I had received all of this information from Seb:

All the theatre kids spent the majority of their summer at Carlos's house, hanging out by his pool.

EJ had thrown so many parties that Seb was now well-acquainted with everyone's drunk personas.

Seb and Carlos were officially official, soon to be in each other's Instagram bios.

Ashlyn and Big Red had something going on for like a month, but Big Red ruined it by spending significantly more time with Ricky than with her.

For the past month, whenever everyone got together, Nini and Ricky had separate excuses as to why they were too busy to show up.

Nini was supposed to go to the Youth Actors' Conservatory this year, but she never went, and no one knew why.

I hated myself for it, but I was way more interested in Ricky than anyone or anything else. It was all I thought about—what the moment would be like when we finally saw each other again. What he would say, what I would say, would we say anything at all?

After I moved away, Ricky and I talked on the phone every few nights. We actually confided in each other. I talked to him about things I hardly ever talked about, like how I'd never had any stable ground to stand on, how I couldn't get too comfortable anywhere I went because if I did, it would get taken away from me and how most people didn't understand what I was going through but for some reason it felt like he did. He talked to me about things he hardly ever talked about, like his parents and how much he resented his mother, how her new boyfriend treated him like he was eight years old, how he sat and ate dinner with his dad every night and they barely talked, but he stayed there instead of taking it to his room because he knew how lonely his dad was.

Then one night, about three months after I left, he called me in the middle of the school day. I went to the bathroom to answer it, thinking it was a weird time to call. I hoped he was okay.

"Hey. Gina," he said, his voice wavering like it did sometimes when he got anxious.

"Hey. Is everything okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it's just, uh... I don't know what to do."

"About what?"

"Nini," he said simply.

My heart jumped up to my throat when he said her name. We didn't usually talk about her. I knew they were back together because of Instagram, but he didn't bring her up often. And it made sense, because he knew I had feelings for him, and he was a nice guy who didn't want to hurt me. Thing is—he had feelings for me too. I knew that, I always did. It was undeniable, the spark between us. The difference between me and him, though, was that I didn't ignore it, and he did.

"What... about her?" I asked, confused.

"She got accepted. Into that. Conservatory school."

"Oh," I said.

There was a pause. I tried to think of something to say, but some really evil part of me was just imagining her finally being away from Ricky, immediately fantasizing that he would realize they'd grown up and grown apart, and he'd want to be with me. I knew it was stupid.

"I don't know why I called... I just wanted someone to talk to. I'm so happy that she got in, and I feel so guilty and selfish but I don't want her to go."