Chapter 24: Match Day

I read them all, sitting on the edge of my bed in his hoodie.

The pool one.

The never-got-thin one.

The Christmas party one.

Forty of them, with "lol" and thumbs-ups under mine, and none of the nights after June.

He'd cut it off at June eighth.

By seven-thirty, the post had two thousand reactions.

Beck sat beside me and didn't touch my phone.

"Tell me what you need," he said.

"Breakfast," I said. "I need breakfast."

He looked at me for a second like I'd said something in a foreign language.

Then he got up and went to find some.

Betsy came through the door at 7:20, still in her scrubs and hairnet, with her phone in her fist.

"I saw it on the bus," she said. "I'm going to commit a crime. A real one. A felony."

"You're going to take a shower."

"After the felony."

"Betsy."

She stopped.

She looked at me, and then at Beck's hoodie, and then at the second pillow on my bed.

Her face did about four things at once.

"We're talking about that later," she said. "In detail. Right now I'm still doing the felony."

"Nobody's reporting it. Nobody's commenting. Nobody's fighting anybody in the comments."

"Why not?"

"Because tonight I'm doing it myself."

All day it was everywhere.

In the dining hall, phones turned toward me, then away.

A girl I'd never met stopped me outside the union and said, "I cried about my thighs at a pool too," and hugged me before I could say anything.

A guy on the quad oinked at me, and the waffle boys, all four of them, walked him into the bushes.

At five, Beck's grandpa texted me for the first time ever.

It was one line, all capitals.

"PRESS THE CRUST WITH A GLASS. SEE YOU AT 7."

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