They Said She Was Strong So They Never Had To Choose Her Chapter 08
Before the winter holidays, the observation project I was on hit a major milestone.
My advisor put my name on the report and recommended me for the undergraduate research program the following year.
When the news went out to the family group chat, my mother sent a string of congratulatory emojis.
My father, of all people, called too, saying he wanted to throw me a celebration dinner.
After my parents divorced, he had quickly started a new family.
Over the years, he had occasionally sent me money for living expenses, but he’d rarely asked about my life.
Only now, hearing I’d made it into a serious research project, did he suddenly remember he had a daughter worth being proud of.
I turned down the celebration dinner and didn’t go home for the holidays.
My mother asked if I was still angry at her.
I told her the campus observation program was short-staffed.
It wasn’t a lie.
Compared to going back to that house full of old memories, I would rather stay in the cold observatory.
On New Year’s Eve, fireworks went up in the valley below.
A handful of us who had stayed on campus made a pot of stew in the lab.
Nina dropped a piece of beef into my bowl.
“Everyone else is fighting over the meat, and you keep going for the vegetables. Don’t be shy. We’ve got plenty.”
I paused, then took a bite.
Back when the five of us used to go out to eat, Mia couldn’t handle spice, so we always defaulted to somewhere mild.
She loved steak, so Grayson would always give her the last piece.
Ethan remembered she didn’t eat cilantro. Julian remembered cold drinks upset her stomach.
But what I liked, none of them had ever asked.
It turned out being remembered didn’t require a decade of history.
People who actually care about you notice you in a very short time.
At midnight, my phone lit up with messages.
Julian sent one too.
【Happy New Year.】
【Not being together for fireworks feels off.】
I didn’t reply.
Half an hour later, he sent a photo.
The three of them stood on the same street corner where we used to hang out as kids.
There was an empty space in the middle.
Mia wasn’t in the picture.
I later learned from my mother that Grayson had dug up the whole travel video thing.
Mia had insisted at first that she’d just made a typo.
But Ethan had pulled the deleted draft off her Instagram back end.
The original caption had read clearly.
【Finally, it’s just the four of us.】
There had been no misunderstanding. No slip of the finger.
She had wanted me out from the start.
The second round of the game had been planned too.
She had known the three boys would pick me, because before the party even started, she had asked each of them separately.
“If Chloe doesn’t want to stay around here, will you stay with me?”
They had all said yes.
So she had asked the question in front of everyone on purpose, just to watch me get left behind.
When my mother told me all of this, her voice was thick with anger.
“We were all fooled by her.”
I listened and just found it darkly funny.
“She didn’t force you to treat me the way you did.”
My mother went silent.
Mia had absolutely fanned the flames.
But my mother was the one who had told me to give up my room.
Julian was the one who had used my money for the trip.
Ethan was the one who had assigned me to the storage room.
The answer cards with my name on them had been in the three boys’ hands.
Mia had done wrong, but she wasn’t the reason all of them had hurt me.
Rushing to pin everything on her was just a way for them to lighten their own guilt.
“Chloe, she’s moved out.”
“Grayson and the others don’t speak to her anymore. If you’re willing to come back, everything can go back to how it was.”
Back to how it was. Again.
Like all it took was clearing Mia out of the picture and I would happily slot myself back in among them.
But what had been broken wasn’t the friendship between five people.
It was my trust in every last one of them.
“Mom, I’m not coming back.”
“Then what do you want us to do?”
Her voice cracked into a sob.
I looked at the fireworks rising outside the window and said, calmly.
“Nothing.”
“Just accept that I’m not close to any of you anymore. The way I once accepted that you loved her more.”
After I hung up, I opened the lab door.
The sky was ablaze with fireworks.
Nina waved at me from the snow. Caleb handed me a lit sparkler.
“Make a wish.”
I closed my eyes.
This time, my wish didn’t include any of the old faces.