Page 123 of Did They Break You

Me and Sloane both skipped classes.

I sigh at her question and close my eyes as she attacks my face with more cream.

“Fine,” I lie.

Everything is just fine.

“I’ve got this assignment that I haven’t started. To write a snapshot memoir.”

Sloane’s fingers come to my jawline, feathering more of the mask over my face.

I force down the memory of reading those texts on Cortland’s phone. My face burns with the thought and I’m thankful for this green shit covering my cheeks. It’s been nearly a week since I’veseen him, and I don’t know if I’m grateful or anxious or pissed off. He’s texted me a few times. I’ve ignored him.

“You love writing,” Sloane points out, then her fingers drift over to the other side of my face. I tilt my head, letting her work.

“Yeah,” I agree. “Fiction.” I don’t want to write about a pivotal moment in my life because they all kind of suck. I wonder if that’s always true. If the biggest lessons come from the greatest pain. Does happiness ever teach, or is it always sorrow?

Sloane finishes up and I feel her shift on the bed as I blink open my eyes.

“So I guess I really fucked up your present then…” She trails off, glancing at my desk.

A slow smile curves my lips as I draw up my knees to my chest, still in sweatpants and a hoodie, so she can’t see the cuts on my arms. I threw it on as soon as I got up this morning and she had already trekked across campus for iced coffee for us both.

“Depends,” I tell Sloane, grinning at her. Her green eyes spark as she wipes the excess mask on her own face. Then she snatches up the plastic bowl she used to mix everything and leans way over on the bed to set it on her desk. “If you got me a guidebook on writing memoirs, you might want to return it.”

She straightens, closing the grey silk robe she’s wearing, a purple pajama set underneath, laughing as she folds her arms over her chest. “I didn’t,” she says, the green in her mask complimenting her eyes as the sun shifts through our open curtains.

I clasp my fingers together, dangling in my lap, my wrists on my knees.

She swings her legs off the bed and jumps down, forgoing the little ladder. Ducking under the bed, I hear the sound of what I think is a bag, then tissue paper. She straightens and places amatte black bag on the bed. She steps back, folding her arms and nodding toward it.

“Come on,” she says. “Open the damn thing.”

I glance at it. “Slo, you better not have spent a?—”

“Open the bag, Remi.”

We’ve had this conversation before. She insists on paying at every meal. Buying me clothes even when I don’t need them, telling me they were for her but she doesn’t want to return them. Bullshit, because they always fit me even though we’re no longer the same size.

Silas brings in more money than her family.

The difference is her family loves her.

For Silas, love and money are one. Transactions to deposit and withdraw.

I sigh, a nervous flutter in my stomach. Then I shift onto my knees and reach into the bag, pulling out black tissue paper.She knows me well.

I keep tossing it out, wondering if there’s something cute like a Reese’s package in here with the amount of paper I have to clean out. But it’s a deep bag and finally, after I’ve created a small mountain of tissue beside me, I see what it is.

My heart drops to my stomach and I sink back on my heels without even taking it out of the bag. “Sloane, I’m not taking this.” I cross my arms and turn to face her.

But her brows rise, the green mask on her face crinkling in the small lines over her forehead. “Remi, you are.” She nods toward the bag. “And there’s something underneath it so you need to pull it out.”

I stare at my best friend, shaking my head. “Dammit, Sloane.” I reach into the bag, pulling out a brand new MacBook Pro, still in the plastic wrap. Underneath it is a matte black hardcover caseanda laptop sleeve. I tug it all out and set thegifts in my lap, sitting on my heels. “This is way too much,” I tell Sloane. “Seriously, you can’t do this.”

Sloane grins at me, beaming as ifshejust won the lottery as she steps closer to her bed. “Yours was screwing up,” she says, shrugging. “And seriously Rems, Dad had already bought this for a new employee who never started. It was too late to return it, so he gave it to me.” She glances over her shoulder at the laptop she just got over the summer for her own birthday.

I gave her amethysts and her favorite pair of workout pants.

---