Mr. Taylor starts class with partner work surrounding "Self-Reliance," and since I don't know anyone else and we're sitting beside one another, even though we haven't spoken in days, Gina and I team up.

"So, I guess we're together?" she asks after literally everyone else in the room has paired up.

"Yep," I say in a tone that lands somewhere between disappointment and relief. I guess that's where my feelings land too. She has been so toxic, but there have also been plenty of times when she's been a great friend to me. And with everything happening with Paige, Gina actually may be the perfect person to vent to. If she'll let me after how our last interaction went.

"Alright, now that everyone has a partner," Mr. Taylor starts, stepping back up to the front of class, "I have four key points from Emerson's essay, and each group will receive one of the key points. Your job is to find textual evidence to support this point as well as to reflect on how you see this point playing out in your own lives. Questions? Comments? Concerns? No? Okay, great, let's do this."

He moves around the group to pass out key points from the text, starting with us. We receive, "Emerson wants his readers to be honest with themselves and with others with whom they are in relationships."

"Oooh," Gina says, "he wrote whom, what a show-off."

Mr. Taylor overhears this, smirks, and says, "Darn right," before continuing on.

Gina laughs. "He's, like, one of those teachers people have crushes on," she whispers.

"People like you?"

She pushes her turquoise hair from her shoulder. "Please, I have a boyfriend."

I chuckle. "Okay, so anyways. We need to find evidence of this key point. 'Emerson wants his readers to be honest with themselves and with others with whom they are in relationships.'"

Gina shrugs.

I guess it's up to me then. But even though I've become more confident with my dyslexia, I'm still dyslexic. I try to employ one of my strategies: finding key words.

"Let's skim for keywords then. How about you look for 'relationships' and I will look for... 'friend' or something."

She groans. "Okay." Gina has always been smart, but lazy. Her laziness now is not at all surprising to me.

We quietly begin searching the document. I find 5 instances of the word 'friend' before I find something that looks like it could be what we're looking for, since the word 'truth' always appears in the sentence.

"What about this part here?" I ask, pointing to it. "Can you read that out loud?"

It occurs to me now that maybe Gina doesn't know I'm dyslexic. Did I ever tell her? We weren't really talking when I was diagnosed, and it didn't come up afterwards. But she and I used to always do our homework together, and she would read out loud then, so... maybe she doesn't need to know. I don't exactly want to broadcast my struggles, especially not to someone who has made fun of me for struggling.

"Sure," she says, sliding my paper out from under my hands so she can read it better. "It says, 'Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be'... blah, blah, blah... okay, here: 'I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should.' Ugh, do you think we need to write all of this? Because this whole paragraph is basically saying the same thing."

"What else does it say?"

"He goes on, like, 'If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth.'"

"Okay, so we should definitely write down the thing you said about needing to be yourself. Where did you read that?"

She points to the sentence, and we both silently copy it onto our papers. The irony of this section being assigned to us, at this point in our strained relationship, is not lost on me. I feel tense, like somehow, even though her head is down, she is watching me, wondering when I'm going to bring up that she and I have never had this conversation Emerson is suggesting we have. Instead, we've passive aggressively communicated it through unread texts and betrayals and sass.

In fact, the only person I've had this sort of conversation with ever was my mom when she banned me from theater and I had to defend myself. Everyone else I've just sort of hoped things would go away, not spoken up for myself, and dealt with whatever happened, even if it hurt me. Like with Paige. How much stress did I force on myself before she drunkenly told me that she would do her best not to like Thatcher again? And how much stress am I feeling now not being entirely honest with myself, Paige, and Thatcher about my insecurities? Why haven't I allowed myself to explore the truth of why I'm insecure? I haven't even been fully honest with myself.

"Okay, so the next question we have to answer is how we see this playing out in our lives," Gina says.

She finishes writing the quote before me, so I wrap up the sentence before I can even think about how to summarize my inner monologue about being honest with myself and others out loud.

"Um," I start.

She smacks her lips, either in thought or in anticipation for me to say something, I can't tell.

"So, like... honestly?" I say.

"Mm hm."

"I haven't really been truthful with myself and with others, I don't think. There have been lots of times when I should have been, when I should have said, 'Hey, this is who I am, this is how I feel, deal with it or peace,' but I haven't."

"Yeah, me too."

"I feel, like, maybe... like, maybe I should have been more honest with you."

"Finally!" Gina says, throwing her hands up.

I grimace. "Sorry."

"Like, I get it, Janie. I am not the easiest to get along with. I'm stubborn and I do my own thing, I'm a free spirit. But you were my best friend in the whole world, and I don't know what it looked like from your end, but from mine... it looked like you dropped me. It looked like you found different friends and then you didn't need me anymore. And, I don't know, maybe other things were going on, maybe if you had told me your 'truth' I would have been able to continue being your friend, but you didn't give me a chance. It made me feel really... I don't know... small? Pointless?"

"I made you feel pointless?"

She nods. "I mean, yeah."

That one hurts. I've felt that small before and that insignificant before, and I never meant for anyone else to feel that way, no matter how cruelly they reacted to it.

"I'm so sorry," I say.

She shrugs. "It's okay."

"Can we start over? Like, from our 'truths'?"

"You start," she says.

I must be myself.

"Okay," I agree. "No offense, like, I'm really not trying to start anything, I'm just trying to be honest."

"Just say it, girl."

"You were a really judgmental friend, and that made me feel really anxious to be myself or be different around you. When I met Thatcher, Patti, and Moth, I felt like I could be myself around them, so that's why I sort of... well, no, you were right. That's why I stopped hanging out with you so much. I wanted to explore who I really was, because I honestly didn't know. And that's not your fault, it's mine. I hid for a long time, because I was afraid that anyone would judge me. I have... I have dyslexia, and I found out during theater last year, and they accepted me. It felt good to be in a class where I didn't feel like I was the strangest person in the room."

She smiles at that. "There were definitely stranger people in the room."

"So, I guess, like, here's my truth: I'm dyslexic and I want to be an actress and I love Thatcher Gorsky and I'm terrified I will lose him."

She nods. "I hear your truth and I accept it. I promise I will try to do better about not judging so much. I'm, like, kind of a bitch, though, so... it'll slip out every now and then. Just call me out on it."

"Really? You'll let me call you out on it?"

She rolls her eyes. "Yeah. But back to your truth... why are you scared you're going to lose Thatcher? You're totally cute and he's Thatcher, plain and tall."

"Judgey."

"Sorry, I told you, it'll slip out. But seriously, why are you worried?"

"You do your truths first," I say.

This is all nice, but Gina is Gina and she's not going to change with one excerpt from some old guy. I need her to contribute to this catharsis too.

"Ugh, fine," she says, rolling her eyes again. She shifts in her seat. "Okay, so my truth is that I also don't really know who I am, so I think that's why I judge other people, because like... I don't know, they know who they are? They aren't afraid of who they are? I'm not sure, read into it what you will. And I was really hurt by what happened last year, and I'm doing well now, but honestly, I miss you. I want to be friends again."

"Okay," Mr. Taylor says, "it sounds like our conversations are winding down. Let's come back together as a class and discuss our key points."

Gina and my reconciliation is cut short by other groups, not ours, sharing out what they talked about. What Gina and I talked about will stay private from the class, but it was important for us. We leave class with plans to get coffee next weekend.

To be continued in the next part...