Lora was working on a Beowulf essay when she heard a knock at her door.
“Come in!” she sang, perhaps a bit too sweetly.
Mascara streaked from Felicia’s puffy eyes. Her cheeks were still wet.
“Honey, what happened?”
But Lora knew what had happened. She knew about the lipstick on the mirror, the earring by the bed, the smell of another girl's perfume.
Felicia never suspected a thing as she poured her heart out to Lora, as she chided herself for not listening to her friend when she told her to say “no” to Jason.
Two hours later, the girls were drinking coffee in the living room. Lora had even gotten Felicia, her face now clean, to laugh a few times. Things were right again, at least in one interpretation of the word.
Lora was brushing her teeth before bed. Felicia stuck her head in the bathroom.
“Goodnight.”
Lora smiled and waved with her toothbrush.
“I left you something in your room.”
Lora waited until she heard Felicia’s door close. She spit out the remaining toothpaste and hurried to her bedroom.
On her pillow was a bracelet, Felicia’s favorite bracelet, one she made while working one summer in Honduras. With the bracelet was a note. Lora’s hands shook as she read the words.
That night, the smile didn’t leave her face, not even as she slept.
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