Tuesday October 18th

22.)

I woke up Tuesday morning to two text messages from Blossom. The first one said "I miss uu ;__;", just like that. The second one was a picture of her in a bar with a friend. She was clearly drunk. I rolled over in bed and tried not to think about it until school.

Maybe I should message back. Maybe I should pretend the weekend never happened. Maybe we could still be friends, or whatever we almost were. Maybe I could still talk about Academy Works with somebody. But then, whenever I thought about her, when I thought about us, I felt queasy. Like she was twisting me up inside.

I couldn't deal with this today. I still hadn't written Chapter 7 of Academy A, and I was sleeping in uncharacteristically high quantities. I was behind on my schoolwork.

Unfortunately, Tuesday afternoons also marked the class I had with Blossom. Luckily for me, her "spheres" rule or whatever meant she wouldn't talk to me in public. I just had to avoid eye contact with her for 90 minutes and I could go about the rest of my life. Until Thursday, anyway.

***

Mia didn't message Blossom back, but it was probably for the best. Like most nights out when she didn't hook up with someone else, she wound up making out with Becky some and getting really drunk.

And while Becky had been hoping that the alcohol would get Blossom's mind off this girl, it probably had done the opposite. The next day, at school, Blossom didn't hear a damn thing during the class she had with Mia. Between trying not to stare and trying not to think about the weekend together, Blossom had only enough room in her head for one more thing, and that was her desire to answer Mia's question.

What was her name?

Would it even matter? She imagined going up to Mia, all proud and beaming, oh I know your name! Bam. Now you'll forgive me for every awful thing I've done, right? Blossom knew it wouldn't work that way. She was, as Becky had aptly pointed out, not very good at chasing people. Heck, last night she'd even thought about sending yearbook photos of her from middle school to Mia, as though Mia seeing Blossom at her worst would be any kind of atonement.

She dropped her pencil as she sat up with a start.

Yearbook. High school yearbook.

I glanced over for just a second when Blossom's pencil hit the ground. We caught each other's eyes, for just a moment. She seemed... happy. A smile. Probably because she had a good night at the bar. But before I could get another read on her, I turned back to my notebook. I needed to pay attention to something else.

Her high school yearbook would have Mia in it, right? And her name. Even if knowing the answer wouldn't change anything, maybe the effort was worth something. The problem was? She didn't have her yearbooks here in the sorority house. Maybe one of the other sisters did. In fact, she was sure of it. And even if they didn't, it would only be a few hours out of her way to pop in and see her Dad and look through her own.

You just hold tight, Mia. Or… whatever your name is. Blossom's on the case.

***

Lin wanted to hang out. I didn't have the energy. I climbed into bed at seven o' clock, having finished almost all of my dinner and almost none of my reading. When I woke up, it was the middle of the night. One something. My bedside clock was never very accurate - the timer inside must have been broken because I had to reset the minutes every few months. I reached for my phone out of instinct. I hadn't checked DailyDiapers since that weekend. I didn't want to read any other comments like that last one. Everyone probably assumed my story was dead. But I had three messages on my lock screen.

Mom.

>>I'm working early in the morning. Have a good day!

Lin.

>>We actually beat the Third Circle on savage omg ;__; Buy a lotto ticket because MIRACLES ARE HAPPENING

Blossom.

>>Amanda Pearson!

...huh.

I only replied to Blossom:

>>Nice sleuthing, Sherlock.

I locked my phone and rolled over in bed. I wondered how she figured it out, but it didn't really matter. So she learned my name. She officially accomplished what literally any stranger could accomplish in ten seconds. But what really bothered me was why she'd figured it out at all. After ten or so minutes of debating with myself, I rolled back over and picked up my phone. Blossom's texts were still up. I sent a new one:

>>It doesn't matter?? I was just trying to make you mad.

The reply came back after only a few seconds.

>>Well you did not make me mad babes, but you did make me sad 😢it is my fault for not knowing tho!!

>>Sorry..

I dropped my phone on the bed and put my head in my pillow. She's the one that doesn't know my name, and somehow I'm still the one that fucked up. My phone buzzed before I could spiral any further than that.

>>Drop your cookies, babes, it is okay!! 💕 I am sorry I did not know your name. As an apology, I offer u this heart 💖 and also this heart 💜 and also my sincerest apologies. I like you, Amanda.

That made one of us. With a sigh, I typed back:

>>You can call me Mia, idc

>>I was attracted to you at first because of your writing, but spending the weekend together and getting to know you as a person showed me how much more there is to u & the more I learned the more I liked you. So while I met Mia, I got to know Amanda. So I will call you Amanda!

Uh... I rolled over onto my stomach and read the message a few times. I didn't really get it. What was so interesting about me? All I did was cook and complain. Maybe she liked my cooking, because it probably wasn't the complaining thing. With reluctance, I sent a message back.

>>Amanda is fine too??

It sure didn't have the allure of 'Mia Moore', but it meant something. The spheres of my two disparate lives had become a Venn diagram. As small an overlap as it may have been, the symbolism was profound.

***

Things with Blossom were a little better after that. More texting, usually for no good reason. She still wouldn't talk about Academy Works in text, so we had to supplement our conversation with other points of interest.

She opened up about her family. Her mom died during childbirth, which was really hard for her dad. She loves her dad a lot, but sometimes gets sad around Mother's Day. I knew she didn't have a mom, but I didn't know why.

Alternatively, my dad ran off when I was a kid. Four or five. I never really got the whole "why didn't he love me?" trope on TV. If he didn't want to be around my mom and me, I'm glad he left. I don't really get sad around Father's Day.

Maybe her dad and my mom would meet up at an art gallery or a gala or wherever white people meet. And we'd have a Yours, Mine, and Ours situation on our hands, except rather than trying to break our parents up we'd conspire to get ourselves put back into diapers.

"Mom! Blossom wet the bed again!"

"Well you still sleep with a teddy bear!"

"Amanda! Blossom!" her father would say. "Why can't the two of you get along?"

"When I was a kid, I would have loved to have a new sister," my mom would say.

"Well I'm not a kid," I'd argue. "I'm twenty!"

"Yeah," Blossom would scoff. "Maybe if we were still kids... but there's no way we'll be real sisters now."

Plant a few websites on my mom's laptop... a few weird magazines appear in her dad's office...

Yeah, even in fiction this idea kind of sucked.