We were sitting on one of the long benches outside the cafeteria. It was just the two of us. The gang was late or were doing some other things, I couldn’t remember. She sat beside me.

“Dex, it’s been months now and you’re still a mystery to me. You don’t talk a lot. You always just tag along. And whenever it’s just the two us, we just goof around and never talk about each other.”

“What would you like to know?” I said nonchalantly, fearing she would ask about that goddamn coin toss.

“Oh, nothing,” she shrugged. “Just stuff about you.”

“Like my favorite color and my personal motto in life?” I teased her.

“Yes, something like that, but better.”

I grabbed the notebook she was doodling on and took her pen. I drew a small dot and kept shading it until it was full black, with only a sliver of white inside. “That’s me,” I said. Then I drew a big circle around the dot. “That’s the me I show to everyone.”

“So it’s all just lies, the you that we know?”

“Not everything. I mix truth with the lies.”

“And you do this with everyone?”

“Mixing truth with lies? Yeah,” I said thoughtlessly.

Her face fell. “Even with me?”

I then realized what I said and at that moment I wanted to tell her “No, only with you have I been fully truthful with.” But I held my tongue. “Yeah, I mean, you’re not that special,” I teased.

She punched me in the arm so hard I had to bite off a scream.

“Ow! Emma, what the hell?”

I saw she was getting ready to leave when the gang arrived and sat down beside us.

“You know Dex, you’re the only one who calls Rosie by her real name.” Ian. He slithered past me to sit beside Emma, I mean Rosie.

“Why’d she punch you?” Bethany.

“Just a bad joke,” I answered. I looked at Emma, I mean Rosie, and I could tell she was angry at me. Ian was pestering her but it looked like she wasn’t listening. Meanwhile, Bethany hooked my arm and asked me to accompany her inside the cafeteria and buy her a drink. I let myself be pulled away.

Emma, I mean Rosie, ignored me for an entire week.