"Fuck," was the first thing Blaine said after he kissed me.

Uh, yeah, "fuck" was right, my dude.

The boys' soccer team, still dressed in their practice clothes from earlier that day, burst into cheers. I looked up and saw the ball in the opposing team's net. We had scored.

"Dammit, we missed a goal because somebody couldn't keep his shit together," I said.

Blaine crossed his arms. "Sorry."

I didn't say anything.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. I wasn't thinking. Dammit, I said my feelings are canceled until further notice," he continued.

I sighed. "Calm down."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have kissed you."

"Look, Blaine. I get it. Viktor and Arti are a thing now, I think, and that just leaves the two of us. I'm not mad at you or anything. You can stop apologizing, and we can just go back to the game if you want."

He looked at me. "That's it? Nothing else?"

"If I give you a couple dollars, will you get me something to drink?"

He stood up. "What do you want?"

"Water, please." I tried to give him the money, but he didn't take it.

I watched him go down the bleachers to the concession stand.

Once he was far enough away that he wouldn't be able to hear my thoughts, all my energy was absorbed by my brain. Why would he kiss me? I narrowed down the options.

1. He was upset about Arti.

2. He was upset about Lukas.

3. He enjoyed pissing me off with his random outbursts of emotion.

4. He thought I was a constant fucking delight.

While all of them made sense, especially the first and fourth ones, I didn't want to push him any farther. Or pull him any closer. And I was certain that he didn't want that either.

I pretended to watch the game when he came back, and he handed me the bottle of water.

"Anything good happen while I was gone?" he asked.

I didn't look at him. Why didn't he take longer? "Uh, not really. They passed the ball quite a bit."

He took his seat beside me again.

So he thought that he could waltz right back and act normally? Perfect. I didn't want to have any discussions about feelings. Normal Blaine was the best Blaine.

The last thing we needed was to somehow mess up the friendship we had. Blaine was the only person who tolerated me all the time, and even though he was my loyal idiot, he was really so much more than that.

Besides, he was supposed to like Arti, which worked out great because he never had a shot with her.

I needed a distraction for both him and myself, and the best way to go about it was to ask Blaine to tell me a story.

"Can I ask you a question?" I asked.

"Go ahead," he replied.

"What's your earliest memory?"

He thought for a moment. "I have two, and they're both kind of sad. The first one is when my dad left my mom. The second is one that I choked on an apple peel and threw up on the new carpet. What's yours?"

"I don't know if this was a dream, but I remember one time, Matt and I were at our grandparents' house, and he locked me in a dog cage."

"Why?"

I shrugged. "Because brothers are mean. He used to hate me, but when the triplets were born, we had to form an alliance to make sure our parents still paid attention to us."

Blaine laughed. "I'd love to have a sibling, especially seeing your relationships with yours. It makes me feel like I'm missing out. Although, if anything, you and Arti are kind of like my sisters."

That's nice. Have a crush on one of your siblings and kiss the other. Classy.

"If you want, you can have Natalie. Her chaotic nature could even rival yours," I said.

"That's a bold statement, considering the fact that she's only six," Blaine said.

"She's seven. Try to keep up."

Blaine held up his hands. "My bad."

Yeah, your bad.

***

"How was the game?" Matt asked me when I got home. He was in the refrigerator, looking for a snack to get him through the rest of the evening.

Hockey players.

"Good," I said.

"What was the score?"

I thought for a second. "Three to nothing? Four to one? It was something like that. We won, though."

"You don't remember the score?"

I shrugged. "I was a little distracted. Blaine only stopped talking for like ten seconds throughout the whole game."

Of course, those ten seconds were spent kissing me (and then realizing that he fucked up spectacularly). I just hoped Matt couldn't read my mind. He would have probably killed Blaine. Everyone wanted to do that at one point or another, and this was his chance.

Two pairs of footsteps came down the steps, and I peeked over my shoulder to see who it was.

"Goodbye, Viktor. I really don't feel like dealing with your shit right now," Arti said, and even though Viktor tried to convince her to stay, she headed straight out the front door.

"It's been like that all evening. I tried to figure out what's up with them, but you know Arti. She's a lunatic and unpredictable sometimes," Matt said.

I bit down on my cheek. "She's not a lunatic."

Unpredictable, on the other hand, was completely true.

Viktor came into the kitchen, and I just had to ask about what happened. If they fell apart, Arti was all mine again, and Blaine would go straight back to where he belonged, thus fixing my problem with him. It was finally all coming together.

"What'd you do to piss her off?" I asked.

Viktor frowned. "I wish I knew, but she won't tell me."

I rolled my eyes. Bullshit. Arti always let everyone within a twenty-mile radius know what was wrong.

"What?" Viktor asked.

"I know Arti, and I'm smart enough to know that you're lying. You know exactly what you did," I said.

"Hey, dumbass, sit down and shut up. This doesn't have anything to do with you," Matt said.

Sitting down and shutting up was never one of my skills, and Matt knew that better than anyone else.

"It kind of does. Arti's my best friend when she feels like it, so I'll find this out eventually. You might as well make this easy for both of us," I said.

"Fine. I tried to kiss her just once, she didn't like it, and now she's really mad at me," Viktor said.

"You guys still haven't kissed?" I asked.

Viktor shook his head.

I laughed. Who would have ever thought that Blaine and I would kiss before the couple who was madly in love and strained all their friendships to be together?

"That was really mean, Candy Cane. I don't make fun of you when you're upset, which is all the time," Viktor said.

"You're the reason I am upset all the time," I said. "Is—has that not been clear?"

I really thought I made that clearer than the ice right after the Zamboni cleaned it.

"It's been clear. Viktor's just a dumbass too," Matt said. "And anyway, what would you even know about relationships? Literally no one likes you, Amanda."

I crossed my arms. "Some people think I'm cute."

"Really? Like who?"

I didn't answer that, and instead, I changed the subject. "I swear, nothing makes sense anymore. Arti's doing the exact same thing to Viktor as she did to Blaine and me." I turned to Viktor. "If she's going to abandon her friends for a guy, she better treat him like a god."

"I don't want to be treated like a god. I just want to understand math homework," Viktor said.

I covered my mouth before a laugh could slip out.

"You'll get there, man." Matt looked over at me. "You know, you could really help him with that."

"Yeah, I'm really good at not treating him like a god," I said.

I wasn't going to help the guy who stole my best friend without getting something in return. That probably made me selfish, but after the day's events, it was pretty obvious that the only person who cared about my sanity was myself.

Matt and Viktor didn't reply to that, and I heard a little bit of rustling on the other side of the wall.

"Hold on," I said, and I cracked open the door.

Melissa, Natalie, and Leah all stood on the other side and pretended that they weren't eavesdropping.

"What are you three doing?" I asked.

"Oh, hi, Amanda!" Leah said.

"Amanda, darling, how are you?" Natalie added.

"I'm just dandy. Why were you listening to Viktor, Matt, and me talking?" I said.

Natalie pressed her hand to her chest. "Us? Listening? We would never!"

"Isn't it past your bedtime?" Matt asked.

"See? I told you we shouldn't do this. You don't have a chance with Viktor anyway," Melissa said.

Natalie crossed her arms. "I was just curious about what's going on. There was a lot of yelling earlier, and Arti said a lot of bad words."

"Look, when you get older, you'll understand that sometimes boys are literally the worst. They'll try to kiss you when you're stressed out because they don't really care about your feelings," I said.

"I said I was sorry," Viktor said, but I wasn't even talking about him and Arti.

I shook my head. "I'm even going to bed right now. It's been a tough day."

***

I didn't get any sleep that night. I didn't really want to. I stared at the ceiling. I watched documentaries. I listened to songs I hated.

I looked like a mess the next morning with dark circles under my eyes and an ever-present frown. Sometimes the only comfort in being upset was not caring about anything besides what was causing it. It was stupid of me to get so worked up over one tiny kiss, but on the inside, I couldn't ignore it. On the outside, though, I pretended like I didn't give a single shit.

I sat down in my first period class, and I already knew damn well that I wasn't going to absorb a single word in that class.

"Good morning Amanda," Eleanor said. Her hair cascaded in neat curls, her makeup was done, and she wore a pink dress that fit perfectly with her porcelain skin.

My sweatpants wanted to hate her, but my head and my heart wouldn't allow it. She was nothing but kind to me.

"Good game yesterday. I didn't realize how good you girls are," I said.

A smile formed on her face. "Thank you. We're on cloud nine right now. That was the number five team we beat yesterday."

"No way. That's incredible." I tried to sound happy, but not sleeping for a million hours straight made it difficult.

"Thank you again for coming. It was the icing on the cake for us."

I smiled. I was certainly glad she was happy, because it only cost me my sanity.

She must have caught on that I wasn't in a talkative mood, and she took out her Spanish notebook and began flipping through her notes.

The day dragged on and on, and seemingly days later, it was time for lunch.

I didn't want to sit there with Arti and Viktor, but Blaine was my loyal idiot and Eleanor was too kind to leave behind. But while I expected the table to be awkward, Arti chatted with Viktor like nothing even happened the night before.

Maybe she was faking it, just like me.

"I have a question for you, and I'd like for you to answer it honestly," Blaine said to me.

"I'll try," I replied.

"Am I the reason you look like garbage water?"

Eleanor covered her mouth to keep her chuckle from escaping.

"You're about four percent of it," I said.

He smiled. "And is the other ninety-six percent those two?" He nodded his head to Arti and Viktor.

"They're, like, eighty-eight percent. The last ten is because I want to."

Blaine laughed.

Eleanor thought for a moment. "That's more than a hundred percent."

I sighed. "I'm such a wreck I can't even do math. Someone please kill me now."

"You're not a wreck," Eleanor said. "Really, you're not. You just seem really tired."

I didn't reply to that. I was, in fact, a really tired wreck, but I didn't want to talk about that.

Blaine must have picked up on that, and he made sure to grab everyone's attention at the table.

"Arti, Viktor, you guys gotta hear this story. So there's this pond by my house, and I swear on my life, it's haunted. Like, a few months ago, I was driving past it, and I heard this high-pitched, repetitive noise coming from over there," he said.

"That's the only basis you have for saying it's haunted?" Arti asked.

Blaine shook his head. "It was a full moon."

Viktor looked at Arti. "That's pretty convincing."

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Arti said.

"I think it's legit. Taco probably needs someone to avenge his death since you murdered him," I said.

Blaine rolled his eyes. "I can't tell you anything."

"Who the fuck is Taco?" Arti asked.

"My neighbors' chihuahua that I hit with my bike. He died," Blaine said.

Eleanor rose her eyebrows.

"Even if the pond is haunted, which it isn't, that's the least scary thing ever. One time, when I was eight, my cat had to get an exorcism," Arti said.

Viktor blinked. "What?"

Arti nodded. "My cat was getting a little old, and he started having these fits where he'd shake and have no control. The vet called Albert's fits seizures, but my dad called them demons. So he made my cat get an exorcism."

I couldn't even tell if that story was a lie. Her dad was pretty religious, and it sounded exactly like something he would do. On the other hand, I was pretty sure I would have known about the cat before.

"Was your cat okay?" Eleanor asked.

Arti shook her head. "He died the next day."

Eleanor frowned. "I'm sorry."

"It doesn't really matter. Albert was an asshole anyway. He pissed on the floor a lot."

I couldn't hear any sadness in Arti's tone, so I figured she was okay.

And if she wasn't, she would let me know as soon as possible, most likely when she told me all about her argument with Viktor the night before. I was still waiting on that.

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Hello, and thank you so much for reading! I am very caffeinated right now (but that's pretty much normal for me at this point), so I'm not entirely sure that this is a decent chapter, but I'm just going to roll with it for now. Like always, don't hesitate to tell me your thoughts.

So for today's question, what is something you'd like to see in the book in the future?