Well, this is it, the last chapter of the prequel! I hope you guys like it... Comment, vote, etc. and let me know what you think!

OUT OF TUNE is out officially TOMORROW. Not just for pre-order. Like, it'll appear in bookstores as of tomorrow, which is awesome! It's out in paperback in the UK, ebook worldwide (so far as I'm able to tell - check your country's Kindle store for it, or else you can import the paperback!) - I'm trying to find out what's going on about the US publication of it so stay 'tuned' (sorry. I have a penchant for puns.)

Anyway, I won't keep you any longer! Enjoy!

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Chapter Six

Don’t do that, Ashley, it’s a horrible habit, my mother’s voice says in my head as I resist the urge to give in and grind my teeth. Instead, I slam my locker door shut so hard that the clang! echoes down the hallway and I get a couple of odd looks. The girl next to me, a sophomore called Ellie, looks about to ask if I’m okay – but I must look so angry that she doesn’t.

The bell rings.

I’m about to march down the corridor, but I have to open my locker back up, feeling stupid. I forgot my Chemistry textbook again. And somehow, I don’t think Allie will be so willing to share hers today.

It’s totally ridiculous. She’s being totally ridiculous.

I sat with her and our other friends at lunch, since my swim practice was cancelled, and I realized it had been a while since I’d eaten lunch with them, and without Josh.

‘Nice of you to join us.’ Her voice was dripping with sarcasm. Kelly elbowed her in the ribs and they looked at each other.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I asked, put out.

‘Where’s your other half?’ she asked, still snide.

‘Josh is—’ I broke off and glanced at where I knew he’d be sitting, across the cafeteria, near the most popular seniors and juniors, and the jocks and the cheerleaders. ‘He’s over there. Why?’

‘Well, it’s just so impossible to get you by yourself anymore, without him around. I figured the two of you had become a single entity.’

I scowled. Allie’s hardly ever like this. Lowering my voice, I said, ‘What’s up? Is everything okay?’

‘Everything’s just peachy,’ she practically snarled, tearing the peel off the orange in her hands so viciously that some juice spurted out onto her gray T-shirt.

‘I told you I was sorry I couldn’t come over last night,’ I mumbled, wondering if it was to do with that. We were supposed to work on our math homework together (we’re both pretty good at school, but math is a weak point for both of us), but I called at the last minute and cancelled, because Josh invited me over to have dinner with his family, since his grandparents were in town for a couple of days and wanted to meet me.

Which was a huge deal.

But, obviously, Allie was mad at me for it.

I tried getting her to talk to me, but she just glowered and tore up the peel without actually eating the orange.

Then Naomi came over.

‘Hey,’ she said, leaning over the back of my chair. ‘What are you doing this weekend?’

‘Uh . . . nothing?’

‘Great! You wanna come to another party? Christina Terrance – you know, her sister’s senior class president? – is throwing a huge birthday party on Saturday night. You can sleep over at mine after, if you want. Dan and Eliza are.’

‘Sounds – sounds great.’ It didn’t sound like it would be the highlight of my month, but I didn’t want to turn it down. How often did I get to go to parties with cool kids and sleep over their houses?

Naomi grinned at me, and said again, ‘Great!’ Then she looked at Allie, and back at me. Whispering, she added, ‘It’s okay if your friend doesn’t come, right? It’s kind of . . . um . . . invite-only.’

She gave me a look.

Like, your friend isn’t fun at parties and nobody really wants her there.

I remembered how awkward Allie had been at the last party. She’d hardly even made eye contact with anybody, she’d kept her nose in her cell for a significant portion of the night, and she didn’t even really try to talk to Josh’s friends much – at least, not that I saw.

She wouldn’t have much fun at another party where she didn’t really know people. She wouldn’t enjoy it much.

So I told myself: Naomi’s got a point.

And I found myself nodding.

When she left, I found I’d lost my appetite. I felt guilty for not including my best friend, but then I spotted the disgusted look Allie was giving me at that point so I picked up the Tupperware container of pasta salad Mom had made me that morning for lunch, and shoved it back into my satchel, uneaten. ‘I’ll see you later,’ I mumbled. ‘I have to . . . I have to go. I have to go to the bathroom.’

‘Where’s she going?’ asked Logan, one of the guys at our lunch table.

‘I guess she’s too good to eat lunch with us, now,’ was Allie’s reply. I gulped, and forced myself not to run out of the cafeteria.

I know I’ve been ditching Allie a lot lately, since I started dating Josh. But I haven’t forgotten about her, or anything. I still hang out with her, and I still talk to her every day, and I still want to spend time with her.

But she obviously resents me now for spending less time with her. Which is totally unfair! She’s got no right to be so mad at me for being happy, for having a boyfriend, for spending time with someone other than her. Just because she doesn’t have a boyfriend doesn’t mean she has to take it out on me. It’s not fair for her to be so reluctant to understand my side of things.

Before I was dating Josh, I had all the time in the world to hang out with Allie and out other friends. But now that’s changed, and it’s not my fault she can’t handle it.

It sucks, so badly.

Because I really, really don’t know what to do about it.

I shouldn’t have to choose between my boyfriend and my best friend. She shouldn’t be making me feel like I have to choose at all.

I’m angry – at her, and at myself, too, I can admit that – when I sit next to her in Chemistry class.

Then she scoots her stool to the edge of the table, putting as much physical distance between us as she can, and she gives me the cold shoulder the entire time.

Almost literally. I swear, I can practically feel iciness radiating off her.

But I’m not gonna make a scene in the middle of class, so I just pretend to be totally indifferent to her ignoring me for the rest of the period; and at the end of it, she disappears from her seat so fast to her next class that she’s almost a blur.

I have to wait until the end of the day to talk to her.

Her sister drives to school every day, and unless she has study period at the end of the day and leaves early, she always drives us home. And Allie and I meet by her locker before going out to the student parking lot every day.

I wait there for her.

The corridors empty quickly, with kids rushing to their cars or buses, desperate to get out of school as soon as they can. When Allie shows up she’s dragging her feet, looking down. Her hair hangs around her face like curtains, and she glances up through it at me.

My best friend looks so tired.

I chew my lip as she walks toward me. Time feels like it’s purposely moving slower to spite me, because it knows how much I want to get this over with.

‘You wanna talk?’ I ask.

‘Not really.’

I sigh. Not the answer I was looking for. ‘Come on, Allie. You’re obviously mad at me about blowing off our plans last night, and—’

‘It’s not just about last night,’ she says, her words slow and heavy. ‘I’m mad at you for a lot of reasons.’

‘Is this about Naomi in the cafeteria as well? Okay, so maybe I should’ve tried to get her to invite you too, and I’m sorry, but do you really blame me? You seemed to hate the last party, and—’

‘I didn’t hate it.’

‘Oh, really?’ I scoff, I can’t help myself. Who’s she kidding? She didn’t have a good time there in the slightest. ‘It sure as hell seemed like you did. You barely talked to anybody, and you—’

She cuts me off again, and this time her words are even angrier and snappier than mine. ‘I didn’t hate it, I just felt really uncomfortable because you left me with people I have nothing in common with aside from a couple of classes. And they didn’t exactly talk to me much either, but you were too busy playing tonsil tennis with your stupid boyfriend to notice. I wanted to have fun, but I didn’t know how. It’s not like there were a lot of freshmen there, or anything. They were all older kids.’

‘Well this party might be exactly the same.’

‘Except Christina is a sophomore and she’s going to invite freshmen to the party. Amanda and Logan are invited, because they live on her street. Remember them? They sit at our lunch table. Or, your old lunch table, I guess, now you’re always abandoning us for your boyfriend.’

I falter. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘You might’ve, if you spent any time with us anymore. You only have time for Josh now.’

‘I still hang out with you guys.’

‘You sit with us at lunch every so often, and you bring Josh, and you sit next to him laughing at his jokes and teasing him and making out with him and mostly ignoring the rest of us.’

‘I . . .’ I’m pretty sure I don’t do that. I don’t do that.

‘Yeah, see? That’s my point, Ashley! Everything’s all about Josh now! Even when I tried to talk to you about Steve, before that party the other week, you kept changing the topic to talk about Josh. I don’t think you even knew you were doing it, which was almost the worst part. It’s like he’s the only thing that even matters in your life anymore.’

I pointed a finger at her. ‘Okay, now that’s not true.’

‘Well, it feels that way.’ Her voice is raised, but it breaks on the last words. Her eyes are shining with tears, but she blinks and they’re gone again, replaced by a stone-cold glare that she’s never given me in her life. She’s given it to her mom, once, and her sister, and the ‘asshole on the paper who’s always correcting people’s grammar’ when he tried to cheat off her Spanish pop quiz and got them both in trouble.

It hurts a lot more than her yelling at me.

She hates me.

And, suddenly, I find myself yelling at her. How can she turn this all on me? ‘Why can’t you see how big a deal this is for me? Josh is my first proper boyfriend, and I really like him, and he really likes me too. He cares about me. He makes me feel like I’m not invisible anymore.’

‘And we don’t? I don’t? As your best friend?’

‘He makes me feel like I matter!’

‘That’s ridiculous! I didn’t think you were that shallow, Ashley, you know that? I thought you actually cared about the important things in life. But you obviously don’t. Why don’t you just go hang out with Naomi instead and gossip twenty-four/seven and laugh at the nerdy kids and talk about how stupid the rest of us are?’

There’s such venom in her words, and she clenches her jaw, her eyes blazing with anger. I manage, somehow, not to stammer and look totally pathetic.

She’s venting. She’s just upset. She misses you. That’s all.

But instead of trying to listen to the rational voice buried in the back of my mind, all I can think is one screaming idea that overpowers everything else and makes my throat feel raw and eyes prickle with the threat of tears.

She hates me. She hates me.

I’m not going to cry, though. I do the only thing I can manage right now.

I lash out.

Because it’s not fair for her to pin all this on me. It’s her fault, too. Can’t she see that she’s in the wrong? She’s been making me feel guilty for having a boyfriend and for spending time with Josh when she has no right.

I’m mad at her too. I’ve done a pretty good job of not letting on until now, but she’s about to find out just how angry I am.

‘You’re the one who’s being ridiculous. You’re my best friend and you should be a little more understanding about how difficult it is for me to try and spend time with you and Josh and make neither of you feel left out. You know what? You’re just jealous, that I’m hanging out with popular kids now and you’re still a loser. You’re a nobody.’

She takes a step back, like I’ve slapped her.

All the anger drains out of her face. Her shoulders hunch over, and her head drops, leaving her looking pale and small.

She doesn’t bother getting any books out of her locker to do homework from later tonight, or put any textbooks from this afternoon’s classes away there. She just turns, still hunched over, hikes her backpack higher up her shoulder, and walks away from me.

After she’s gone, I stand staring at the doors she just went through for a long time.

I take my cell phone out of my satchel, and dial my mom. By that time, I’ve started crying.

‘M-mom? Can – can you come pick me up f-from school?’

The next morning, my dad drops me off at school. We’re running a little late – later than I usually am, anyway – but I’ll still be at school in time plenty of time for homeroom.

I feel sick. I’m gonna puke oatmeal all over the dashboard.

‘You okay, kid?’

‘No.’

‘Everything’s gonna be fine,’ Dad assures me. ‘I’m telling you. She’ll be waiting just like always for you, and everything will go back to normal. So you had a fight. Big deal. You’ve had fights before. You always make up afterwards.’

‘Never like this, though. This fight was different.’

Dad brakes sharply as the lights go red. He sighs, rubs his nose and pushes his glasses up, looking at his watch briefly. ‘Things like this happen to people all the time. It’s just high school. Hell, it’s life. Friends fight, and then they patch things up. You and Allie are good friends. You’ll work things out.’

I nod, like his words make me feel any better.

They don’t.

I’m still doing my best to hold down this morning’s breakfast.

I shouldn’t have said some of the things I did. I should’ve at least tried to be a little more rational. Having had all last night to analyze everything a billion times over in my head, I know that Allie was probably acting so horrible because she was hurt. (And maybe a little jealous.)

I feel so horrible for saying what I did, for calling her a nobody like that. She didn’t deserve that.

I may not be totally ready to forgive her for handling this so badly, but I just want things to get back to normal with us as soon as possible.

Like I told my dad, we’ve never had a fight like that before, and now I’m scared that she’ll never want to talk to me again.

Mom told me I was blowing things out of proportion, and I hope to God she was right.

The drive to school doesn’t take long enough, and all too soon I have to get out of the car so my dad can go to work, and he reassures me one last time that everything will be fine and that I should just talk to her if all else fails – we’ll work things out, he’s sure.

And then I have to go into school.

When Allie and I don’t come into school together, we meet at the doors at the front of the school. Lots of people hang out there to wait for their friends to show up. This is where we wait for each other.

She’ll be there. She’ll understand that I was angry, too, just like she was, and that this whole thing will blow over. She’ll be there waiting for me.

I’m late. By three minutes.

She’s not here.

She’s not waiting for me.

I wait there until the bell goes. I wait there until the tardy bell goes and everyone but the stragglers are in homeroom. And then I stop waiting for her.

She’s in homeroom already. She didn’t wait for me.

And she’s sitting somewhere else today.

I sit in my normal seat, and on my way there I try to catch her eye – she doesn’t even acknowledge me. She’s obviously making an effort to do anything but acknowledge me.

Deflated, I swallow the lump in my throat.

She’s not at my locker at the start of lunch either. I sit with Josh in the cafeteria, which is no big deal.

He notices how down I am though.

‘Has Allie talked to you today?’ he asks. I’d called him last night, crying, because I needed to talk about it. His parents were out so he couldn’t get a ride over, but I didn’t really want him here: I didn’t want him to see me looking like a total wreck.

‘No. She’s completely ignored me.’ I sigh. ‘She won’t even look at me.’

‘I always thought she was a bit of a stuck-up bitch,’ Naomi says. ‘I know she’s your best friend, or whatever, but it’s like she comes off kind of pretentious sometimes’

‘I thought that too?’ Eliza pitches in, making it sound like a question, like she’s asking permission to think that.

‘She’s not pretentious, she’s just . . . Just . . .’ I hesitate, not finding the right word.

‘Pretentious,’ Naomi finishes for me, and they all laugh. I decide to ignore it: I’m not in the best mood to defend Allie right now, but neither do I want to hear them say things like that about her.

I turn to Josh instead. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

He kisses me softly. ‘She’ll come around, babe. It’ll be fine.’

But I know how stubborn she can be, and I’m not so sure.

I see Allie disappear through the cafeteria doors and the sight suddenly makes my blood boil.

I clench my jaw.

I’m so mad at Allie now for ignoring me so long and being so selfish about this whole thing. She doesn’t want to be my friend anymore. She really does hate me.

Well, fine. I lean into Josh, taking a deep breath and smelling his cologne and the washing detergent on his red T-shirt. His arm wraps around me, and I feel safe. I suck in another deep breath, and let it out slowly, feeling all my anger drop away.

Filling the space where the anger was, something settles heavy in the pit of my stomach, at the realization that I’ve lost my best friend.

No more sleepovers giggling about boys we had crushes on and flicking through magazines and puzzling through math homework together. No more discussions about the school paper and swim meets and big group trips to the cinema with our friends.

Then it hits me: if I’ve lost Allie, then what about all my other friends?

I steel myself. I can’t hang out with them and face her every day when she hates me so much. I couldn’t stand to do that.

Losing my best friend is a huge deal; a much bigger deal than I’d originally realized.

But, hell.

No turning back now.

Besides, look what I do have.

I look up at Josh and smile, and he kisses me, before pressing his nose against mine and saying, ‘Boop!’ making me laugh and smile properly for the first time in a couple of days.

I might have lost my best friend, but I will not lose my boyfriend too.

And later that day, when Allie walks past me with her nose in the air and not glancing my way even a little bit, I tell myself I don’t care until I believe it.

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Well? Huh? What did you think? What're your thoughts on these characters? Please comment or message me and let me know, I love the feedback you guys give me! :)

OUT OF TUNE is out on July 3rd and if you get a copy, Tweet me a photo @Reekles of it!

The external link goes to my blog page for Out of Tune, by the way, so you can find any info about it that I have there :)

To find out what happens in Ashley's junior year, and how things turn out with Josh, Allie - and the new boy-next-door Todd, too, download or buy a copy of Out of Tune :) xo