Chapter Text
Room 256.
Cady looks at the number on the door, then back to the sheet of paper clutched in her sweaty hand. Yes, it’s correct. She takes a deep breath and shoves her key in the lock, turning it back and forth for a moment before the door swings open.
Cady steps into the room and dumps her heavy backpack on the floor, grateful to have relief from the straps that had been digging into her shoulders. She drags her suitcase and big duffel bag in behind her before closing the door.
The room is dark and quiet, but when she flips on the light, it’s clear that her roommate has already been here. The bed against the far left wall is covered with a multicolored blanket and half a dozen throw pillows, the desk littered with books and art supplies and assorted things that have yet to be properly unpacked and put away. A few paintings are already tacked to the wall.
For a moment, Cady feels intensely lonely, wishing for the thousandth time that her mom was here to help her move in. But she pushes the thought out of her mind and busies herself methodically and neatly making her bed, tucking in the plain white sheets and smoothing her blue floral-patterned duvet. She plops a couple stuffed animals by her pillows, and the room already feels a bit more like home.
Cady digs through her backpack until she finds the envelope full of photos she had printed at a CVS. She flips through them, smiling a little despite the pang of longing in her chest as she looks at pictures of her and her mom in Kenya, Cady grinning with a lion napping in a tree behind her. The last time her mom visited her at Northwestern, Lake Michigan behind them. Cady and her friends at a Northwestern Undergraduate Math Society event, all of them making goofy faces at the camera.
The next photo startles her so much she drops the entire stack, the glossy prints fluttering quietly to the floor. It’s the only photo she didn’t shred in a fit of rage after the breakup: her and Aaron at Cady’s high school graduation, his arms around her, grinning brightly. Cady remembers how excited she felt, knowing that in just a few short months she’d be joining Aaron at Northwestern. She stares at the photo until her eyes start to blur.
The click-click of a key in the lock is the only warning Cady gets before the door opens, revealing a girl with dark hair and bold eye makeup, her paint-splattered jeans and sneakers indicating that she is the one who made the art on the wall.
“Oh!” the girl says, eyes widening in surprise. “Hey. You must be Caddy?”
“Hi. It’s Cady, actually,” Cady says as the girl toes off her shoes and kicks them with a thwack into the corner by the door.
“I like Caddy better,” the girl says, looking Cady up and down appraisingly. “I’m Janis.”
“I’m Cady,” Cady says, then immediately wants to smack herself in the forehead.
Janis just laughs—a good-natured laugh, not a mean one. It puts Cady at ease for some reason.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you before,” Janis says with a scrutinizing look. “What’s your major?”
“Mathematics,” Cady answers as Janis flops down into her desk chair. “And I just transferred.”
“Well, that explains it. From where?”
“Northwestern.” Cady busies herself picking up the fallen photos from the floor, arranging them into a neat stack with the photo of her and Aaron on the bottom. She prays Janis doesn’t ask her why.
“Hmm,” is all Janis says. “Did you move in by yourself?”
“Yeah.” Cady hoists her heavy duffel bag onto her bed. “I have a couple boxes I had shipped here that I need to go pick up.”
“Why?”
Cady frowns. “Because my stuff is in them.”
“No, no. Why are you moving in by yourself?” Janis asks.
“Oh. My mom is in Kenya. She researches African wildlife.”
“That’s actually really cool,” Janis says. “Like lions and zebras and shit?”
“Yep.” Cady busies herself with putting away her clothes, dumping an armful of socks into a drawer. “And what are you studying?”
“Fine arts,” Janis says, gesturing to the paintings on her wall. “Which means I’ll do your arts gen ed homework if you do my math homework.”
“But that’s cheating,” Cady says, eyes widening.
Janis sees her expression and laughs. “Relax, Caddy, I’m kidding. But I’ll totally help you if you need it.”
“Thanks,” Cady says, relieved. “I think I will definitely need the help. I’m bad at art.”
Janis steeples her fingers in front of her. “I’ll tell you a secret. Nobody is bad at art. Some people are just pretentious assholes.”
“If you say so,” Cady says skeptically.
A knock at the door nearly makes Cady jump.
“IT’S OPEN,” Janis yells, probably loud enough for the whole floor to hear.
After a moment, the door opens to reveal a guy built line a linebacker with dark skin and a brightly printed t-shirt. “Bonsoir,” he says, wiggling his fingers, even though when Cady checks her watch it reads 12:37 pm. His eyes land on Cady and widen. “Who do we have here?”
“This is Damian,” Janis says. “D, this is Caddy.”
“It’s Cady, actually.”
“You can call me Beyoncé,” Damian tells her seriously.
Cady cuts her eyes to Janis uncertainly, who rolls her eyes fondly. “You can call him Damian.”
“I love your hair,” Damian gushes. “Is that your natural color?”
“Yes,” Cady says, touching her hair self-consciously. “Thanks.”
Damian gives her a scrutinizing look. “Have you ever thought about going blond?”
“Uh…”
“Damian, leave her alone,” Janis says, tossing a balled-up piece of paper at him. It bounces off his leg and lands on the floor by his feet. “Sorry,” she says to Cady. “He’s almost too gay to function.”
“Doctor says it’s incurable,” Damian says seriously, pressing a hand to his chest.
Cady doesn’t know what to say to that, so she just nods.
“Have you eaten lunch yet?” Janis asks, and Cady shakes her head. “Allow me to show you to the dining hall, then. You into biology?”
“Sure,” Cady says, a little thrown by the question.
“Then you’ll love it,” Janis promises. “Some of the food they serve should be studied in a lab.”
That doesn’t sound good, but Cady loops the lanyard holding her student ID and keys around her neck and follows them out of the room.
As they walk down the hall, Cady uses the time to look around her new home now that she isn’t weighed down with bags. Some of the doors stand ajar, students chatting and squealing as they reunite after a long summer. It makes Cady feel a little lonely, not knowing a single person at this school. Well, she knows Janis and Damian, but that doesn’t mean they’ll want to hang out with her.
Janis bypasses the elevator, where a group of students are waiting, and yanks open the door to the stairs. “Dining hall is on the first floor of the building,” she says, her boots clomp-clomping on the stairs.
They swipe into the dining hall, and Cady is immediately overwhelmed. It’s not any larger than her favorite dining hall at Northwestern, but Cady was used to that one. She knew where all her favorite stations were, and what to avoid.
Janis sees Cady’s wide-eyed look and places a hand on her arm. “You got any dietary restrictions? Vegetarian? Allergies?”
Cady shakes her head.
“Then the stir-fry station is usually safe, and the grilled cheese is bomb. Pizza can be hit or miss depending on who’s making it,” Janis tells her. “Avoid the sushi. I’ve heard war stories.”
“Okay,” Cady says. She can do grilled cheese. She makes her way to the station that Janis points to, and places a grilled cheese and some French friends onto her tray. After a quick stop at the salad bar to get some fruit—a mix of melon that seem like they have seen better days—she spots Damian and returns to him, grateful for his loud shirt.
Damian looks over Cady’s selections and nods approvingly. On his tray is a plate of dumplings and pizza bagels. She follows him to a table, where Janis is waiting.
“You survived,” Janis says.
“Thanks for the tips,” Cady says. She bites into her sandwich. Janis was right; it is really good.
“Are you new?” Damian asks, propping his chin on his hand. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before. I would have noticed the Birkensocks.”
“Yes, I’m a transfer,” Cady says, looking down self-consciously at her socked feet in her Birkenstock sandals.
“Ooh, okay. So let me give you the run down,” Damian says, sitting up straighter. “We are the coolest people at this school.”
“No contest,” Janis agrees.
“If you ever have to do a partner project, ask what their major is first.”
“The business bros are a nightmare,” Janis confirms.
“The best time to do laundry is on game days, because the campus is basically empty.”
Cady nods, wondering if she should be writing this down.
“Avoid any man you see in a North Shore Lacrosse hat or shirt. Being a massive dick is, like, a prerequisite to being on the team. And don’t wear your ID around your neck. Only freshmen do that.”
“Oh,” Cady says, pulling the lanyard over her head and setting it down on the table. “Okay.”
“You into sports at all?” Janis asks.
“Um, I don’t think so?” Cady answers, it coming out more like a question than a statement. “I found the football games at Northwestern to be really overwhelming, and I had no idea what was happening.”
“Football is boring,” Janis says, waving a hand dismissively. “But my girlfriend is on the gymnastics team. It’s a much chiller crowd.”
“That’s cool,” Cady says, and she means it. “We didn’t have a gymnastics team at Northwestern.”
“Plus there’s the added bonus of hot girls in leotards,” Janis adds.
“Oh,” Cady says. “Sure.”
Janis looks at her for a moment before bursting out laughing, and Damian giggles, too.
“What?” Cady asks, self-consciously.
“Sorry,” Janis says, reining it in. “Sometimes I forget people are actually straight.”
“Oh,” Cady says again, then laughs a little, mostly because she feels awkward.
“We will work on being better allies to you,” Damian says, touching her hand.
“You don’t need to…” Cady trails off, but something catches Damian’s attention across the dining hall.
“Did Gretchen Wieners dye her hair?” he asks.
“Looks the same to me,” Janis says with a shrug.
“I swear it’s lighter,” Damian says.
“Who cares?”
Cady cranes her neck to see who he’s looking at. It’s a girl with perfectly curled dirty blonde hair that bounces as she speaks to a taller girl with smooth brown skin and long, curly dark hair that nearly reaches her waist. They look like models.
“I care, and it hurts my feelings that you aren’t being supportive,” Damian complains.
Janis rolls her eyes. “I don’t even know why she’s here. She lives off campus and Karen doesn’t even go to school here.”
“Are you the dining hall police now?”
Janis shoves him in lieu of an answer.
“Have you seen Regina yet?” Damian asks, scanning the dining hall.
“No, and it’s been amazing,” Janis says. “Don’t ruin it for me.”
“Who?” Cady asks.
“Regina George,” Damian says in a hushed tone, as if it’s a secret. “She’s fabulous.”
“She’s terrible,” Janis cuts in.
“Her clothes are fabulous,” Damian amends. “And her shoes. And her hair. And her makeup.”
“Why don’t you like her?” Cady asks Janis.
Janis makes a face, something between disgust and irritation. “She’s just a bitch.”
“Are you sure you’re not just bitter that she beat out Grace for the anchor spot on beam?” Damian asks—teasingly, like this is something he goads her about a lot.
“I don’t care about that.” Janis sits back and crosses her arms. “And neither does Grace. It’s about the team.”
Damian holds his hands up in a surrendering motion. “Whatever you say.”
Cady’s phone dings where it sits on the table, and she sees she’s received an email on her new student account.
“I can go and pick up the boxes I shipped here,” Cady says. “Do you know where it is?”
“The mail room is in the basement of the student center,” Damian says distractedly, catching the eye of someone and wiggling his fingers in a wave. “I’ll be back,” he says, getting up and crossing the dining hall to a group of students.
Cady doesn’t get a chance to tell him she doesn’t know where the student center is.
“The student center is just two buildings down from this one,” Janis says, seeming to sense Cady’s confusion. “Just go left out of this building. It’s hard to miss it. I have a studio booked for 1:30 or I would come with you. I should head back to our room and get my stuff now, actually.”
“Thanks,” Cady says, picking up her tray when Janis does the same. She casts a glance over to Damian, who is talking to a boy in a floral-patterned shirt and eyeliner.
Janis smirks. “Don’t worry about him. He’s not coming back anytime soon.”
Cady follows Janis out of the dining hall, dropping her tray at a window before pushing open the double doors into the lobby where students are milling around, chatting in small groups or typing on laptops.
Janis points to a door. “Just go out there and to the left.”
Cady nods. She can do that. “I’ll see you later,” she says, and with a wave, they part.
It’s hot outside. Gross, really—the air filled with the kind of humidity that sticks to you, and Cady can feel sweat beading on her brow immediately.
It only takes a few minutes of dodging and weaving in between students and their families with big rolling bins full of their belongings as they move in to find the student center, clearly demarcated with a sign. Cady is blessedly hit with the air conditioning as soon as she enters the building, a spacious structure with couches and chairs in clusters and lots of natural light pouring in through the windows.
She follows a sign to the elevator bank and punches the down button. While she waits, Cady pulls out her phone. It’s empty of notifications—has been for weeks now, save the occasional text from her mother—and her thumb hovers over the Instagram icon, but she’s interrupted by a loud ding as the elevator doors open. Two students walk out, not sparing Cady even a glance, and she walks in and presses the button with a B.
Cady wanders down a hallway until she finds a door with a sign that says MAIL ROOM.
“Student ID,” says the bored-looking guy sitting behind the window when Cady approaches. She digs out her lanyard from where she had shoved it into her pocket and slides it under the Plexiglas.
“For Cady Heron,” Cady says unnecessarily, but the guy ignores her, typing something into his computer for a moment before getting up from his stool and disappearing into the room. After a few minutes, a side door opens, and the guy appears with Cady’s boxes on a small hand truck.
He looks at the boxes, then at Cady, then at the boxes. “Do you have a way to carry these?”
“Uh, I guess I could make two trips?” Cady says. It comes out more like a question.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you borrow this”—he smacks the hand truck handle with the flat of his hand—“if you promise to bring it right back.”
“Thank you,” Cady says gratefully. She reaches for the hand truck, but the guy holds up a hand.
“You must bring it right back,” he says seriously. “If you don’t return it, I could get fired. Do you want me to get fired?”
Cady shakes her head vigorously. “No. I’ll bring it back.”
“Thank you,” he says, finally letting Cady take the hand truck. “There was an incident last year and I’m on thin ice.”
“I understand,” Cady tells him, wheeling her boxes away before he can change his mind. It’s more difficult than it looks; the packages are heavy, and the wheels refuse to go in a straight line. But it’s better than nothing.
Cady is so focused on making the hard left turn out of the elevator that she doesn’t notice that someone is standing in front of the doors until they shout, “Watch it!”
“Oh god, sorry,” Cady says, looking up to see…
…the most beautiful girl she’s ever seen in her entire life.
The girl standing in front of her has blonde hair that falls in perfect waves just past her shoulders and perfectly winged eyeliner that draws attention to the blue eyes that are currently squinting in irritation at Cady. Cady is suddenly hyperaware of the way that her ponytail is sticking to the back of her neck, and she hopes there aren’t any sweat stains on her light blue t-shirt. The girl in front of her looks like she’s never sweat in her life. Her pale pink top makes her skin look extra tan, and there’s a strip of skin revealed between the hem of her shirt and the waistband of her white denim shorts that Cady has to physically pull her eyes away from.
The girl opens her mouth to say something, then stops. Her eyes widen, just for a moment, then her expression hardens. Her gaze drifts down Cady’s body, her lip curling just a little when she reaches Cady’s sandaled feet, and then back up to Cady’s face. It makes Cady shiver.
“Why don’t I know you?” the girl asks, as if there aren’t thousands of students who attend North Shore University.
“I’m new,” Cady tells her. “I just transferred.”
“Hmm,” the girl says, her eyes scrutinizing. “What’s your name?”
“Cady Heron.”
The girl throws an arm out to stop the elevator door from closing and gets in.
“Don’t wear your ID around your neck. It makes you look like a freshman,” she says just before the doors close.
Cady realizes that she had looped the lanyard around her neck again without thinking. She shoves it in her pocket, and realizes that she never got the girl’s name.
Once Cady has unloaded her boxes and returned the hand truck to the mail room, all she wants to do is just flop down on her bed—so she does, telling herself it’ll only be for a few minutes, and then she will finish unpacking.
Her mind drifts back to the girl from the elevator and their bizarre interaction. Who was she, and why did she ask Cady’s name? What was her name? She wonders if she should ask Janis, but she can’t think of a way to initiate that conversation that doesn’t make her sound crazy.
With a sigh, Cady forces herself to get up and open the boxes. She busies herself putting away books and toiletries, towels and shoes, jackets and little trinkets she scatters across her desk to remind her of home.
She’s made good progress when Janis returns.
“Hey, it actually looks like you live here now,” Janis says. She has a small streak of purple paint on her forehead.
Cady smiles and surveys the photos she has tacked to the wall (the one of her and Aaron shoved deep in the bottom of a desk drawer) and the spines of her favorite books lined up on the bookshelf.
“You interested in going to a party tonight?” Janis asks as she pulls a makeup wipe out of a drawer and starts wiping at the paint on her face and arms. “Nothing crazy, just a last-night-before-classes-start thing. Grace said some of the girls on the team are going, but anyone can go.”
Cady thinks about the class she has in the morning that she wants to be well-rested for, but then thinks about spending the night in her room, alone, while all the other students hang out and have fun before they’re all beholden to papers and exams and projects.
She thinks about how isolated she became after she and Aaron broke up.
“Sure,” Cady says.
“Cool.” Janis throws the makeup wipe in the direction of the trash and misses by about two feet. She sighs as if this is a great inconvenience to her. Cady picks it up and competes the wipe’s journey into the trash.
Janis grins. “I knew we were going to be friends.”
Cady is relieved when they arrive at the party and it seems to be, just as Janis had described, nothing crazy.
There are still a lot of people crammed into the apartment—which occupies the top floor of a townhouse about a ten-minute walk from campus—but people are just chatting in small groups, the music mostly drowned out by the sound of voices. She follows Janis into the kitchen, where an array of drinks and mixers are strewn on the counter.
“You want anything?” Janis asks.
“Juice?” Cady says. She’s never really been one for soda.
Janis briefly raises an eyebrow before shoving some bottles aside. “Lemonade good?”
Cady accepts the bottle, grimacing a little at how sticky it is, and pours some into a red plastic cup.
“Jan!” someone shouts behind them.
From the crowd emerges a slender Black girl with purple eyeshadow, her hair pulled into two poofs on either side of her head. She slings an arm around Janis’s shoulders. Janis presses a quick kiss to her cheek before turning to Cady.
“Caddy, this is Grace. Grace, this is my roommate, Caddy,” she says.
“It’s Cady,” Cady says.
“Nice to meet you,” Grace says, her voice warm, her smile easy. “What are you studying, Cady?”
“Mathematics,” Cady says.
Grace’s eyes light up. “Mechanical engineering,” she says, pointing to herself. “We’re adjacent, kind of. I like airplanes.”
“They’re cool,” Cady offers.
“How did I get stuck with a bunch of nerds?” Janis complains, but she smiles playfully.
“Nerds who are going to make sure you pass your math class,” Grace reminds her, then turns back to Cady. “Where are you from?”
“The Chicago area, technically,” Cady says, “but I spent most of my life in Kenya.”
“Wait, I didn’t know you grew up there,” Janis cuts in. “That’s so cool.”
“That is cool,” Grace says. “Why Kenya?”
“My mom is a wildlife researcher. But we moved back so I could finish high school in the U.S., and then I spent the last two years at Northwestern,” Cady says.
“Sorry, J,” Grace tells Janis, “Cady is officially the most interesting person at this party.”
Cady laughs, her chest feeling warm. She’s never been particularly adept at making friends, but she’s ending her first day with three. It feels good.
They move out of the kitchen and claim the end of a couch, Cady perched on the arm while Grace and Janis sit practically on top of each other on the one available seat. Janis and Grace tell Cady how they met (a pottery class at the beginning of last year), and who has the best parties (the theater majors, according to them). Cady tells them about living in Kenya, and how hard it was to adjust to American life.
When Cady checks the time on her phone after excusing herself to use the restroom, she’s surprised that two hours have passed. She plans to tell Janis and Grace that she’s going to call it a night when she sees a flash of blonde hair out of the corner of her eye.
Cady sees the girl a moment before the girl sees her, catches the moment her face registers in the girl’s brain. Her lips—pink, shiny with gloss—part just a bit in surprise before they curl up into a smirk.
“Cady Heron,” she says, coming to stop a foot away from Cady and leaning against the wall.
“Hi,” Cady says, her voice coming out a little higher than normal. “You remembered.”
“I wouldn’t forget your name,” the girl says, as if Cady was a new colleague and not some random girl who almost ran her down with a hand truck.
“You never told me yours,” Cady says.
The girl looks a little surprised, as if Cady should know who she is. “Regina.”
“Regina George?” Cady asks, and then immediately regrets it, worried that, despite this girl’s forwardness, she sounds stalker-ish.
Regina, however, seems pleased by this. “What have you heard?”
“Nothing bad,” Cady assures her quickly, although it actually was.
“What are you doing here, new girl?” Regina asks.
“I came with my roommate,” Cady says. “Janis ‘Imi’ike?”
Regina rolls her eyes a little, and Cady guesses the feelings of dislike are mutual, but she doesn’t say anything about it, instead shifting a little closer. “You live on campus, then?”
“Yeah,” Cady says. She can smell Regina’s perfume something warm and spicy with undertones of vanilla. “Do you?”
“No,” Regina says, as if the very idea is ridiculous. “I live near here, actually.”
All of a sudden, Cady is jolted forward slightly as a boy smacks into her as he passes in the narrow hallway.
“Watch it,” Regina snaps, and the boy mutters an apology. “Here,” Regina says, taking Cady by the wrist and pulling her into an empty room. Regina flicks on the lights, revealing it to be someone’s bedroom.
“Should we be in here?” Cady asks as Regina sits down on the checkered comforter of the bed.
Regina shrugs. “Who cares?”
Cady isn’t sure what to say to that, so she sits down next to Regina. Cady swears she can feel Regina’s body heat radiating from Regina’s bare leg where it rests inches from Cady’s.
Regina turns and looks at her for a long moment, her gaze intense enough to make heat bloom in Cady’s cheeks. She hopes she’s not blushing too obviously. She’s never seen a girl as pretty as Regina, let alone been this close to one.
“Are you a junior then, if you’re living with Janis?” Regina asks. She shifts so she’s resting back on her hands and shakes her hair over her shoulders. The R pendant on her necklace rests in the dip between her collarbones.
“Yeah,” Cady says.
Regina studies her for a moment. “You’re really pretty.”
“Thanks,” Cady says. She feels a little flutter in her stomach.
Regina sits up and reaches around to the back of Cady’s head. Cady tenses, unsure of what’s happening, but Regina just gently tugs the hair elastic out of her hair. Cady feels her hair spill onto her shoulders.
“You should wear your hair down,” Regina says firmly, as though her word is final.
“Okay,” Cady says quietly.
Regina just looks at Cady, her eyes intense. It makes Cady’s skin burn. She can see the careful line of Regina’s eyeliner and a miniscule, barely noticeable blemish on her chin. Without realizing it, she’s looking at Regina’s lips.
Cady catches herself and moves her eyes back up to meet Regina’s, only to realize Regina is also looking at Cady’s lips. They’re so close that Cady can almost feel Regina’s breath on her face, and she desperately hopes that Regina can’t hear how loudly her heart is pounding.
For a moment neither of them move, breathing in each other’s air, seemingly suspended in time. Then Regina moves back abruptly, looking away and biting her lip.
Cady blinks, feeling a little like someone just dumped a bucket of cold water on her. She watches Regina run a hand through her hair, so casual that nobody would guess how intensely she had just been staring at Cady’s mouth. It kind of makes Cady feel like she imagined it, the only giveaway a slight flush on Regina’s cheeks and the tension in her shoulders.
The silence in the room hangs over Cady, and she suddenly has an urge to fill it.
“You’re on the gymnastics team, right?” she asks.
“Yeah,” Regina says with a shrug. “You a fan?”
“Janis mentioned it,” Cady says. “I don’t know anything about it, to be honest.”
“You’ll learn,” Regina promises, any temporary vulnerability gone, replaced by that smirk.
“Are you going to teach me?” Cady asks, then immediately feels herself flush when she realizes how flirtatious that sounded.
It seems to surprise a laugh out of Regina. She opens her mouth to respond, but is interrupted by Cady’s phone, which vibrates loudly where it rests on the bed.
Janis ‘Imi’ike, the screen says. Regina sees it, and her expression hardens a bit.
“Sorry,” Cady says, accepting the call quickly.
“Where are you?” Janis asks as soon as Cady says hello. “Are you still here?”
“Yeah,” Cady says. “I’m still here.” She doesn’t answer Janis’s first question.
“Well, we’re about to head out if you want to walk with us back to campus,” Janis says.
“Okay, I’ll come meet you by the door,” Cady says.
Regina is scrolling on her phone when Cady hangs up, her face blank except for a pinch between her eyebrows.
“I’m going to head out,” Cady says apologetically.
“Whatever,” Regina says coolly. “See you around.”
“Okay, see you,” Cady responds, and stands up, awkwardly hovering in front of Regina for a moment before turning to leave the room. She has her hand on the doorknob when Regina stops her.
“Wait,” Regina says, approaching her, and holds out a hand. “Give me your phone.”
Cady frowns, confused. “Why?”
“Just give it to me.”
Against her better judgment, she unlocks her phone and hands it to Regina. Regina swipes at the screen, types something, then hands the phone back. Cady looks at it, and sees that Regina has created a contact page for herself.
“Text me,” Regina says softly, giving Cady a meaningful look she can’t decipher.
“Okay,” Cady whispers, looking at Regina for a moment longer before she makes herself open the door and walk away.
“Where were you?” Janis asks when Cady pushes her way through the crowd and finds her and Grace at the door.
“I was talking to someone,” Cady says. For some reason she doesn’t want to say that she was with Regina.
“Good to go?” Janis says, and when Cady nods, they head down the stairs and onto the sidewalk, turning towards campus.
The time on Cady’s phone reads 1:12 am, and she knows her morning class is going to be brutal, but she opens Instagram for the first time in weeks. She bypasses the backlogged notifications and navigates to the search page. With careful fingers, she types in Regina George.
Regina is the first result, likely due to her 23,000 followers. North Shore University Gymnastics ’26, her bio reads.
Cady scrolls through Regina’s photos—endless pictures and videos of her leaping and flipping, and Cady is embarrassed by the way her eyes focus on the revealing cut of Regina’s leotard.
There are also pictures of Regina with friends, making goofy faces at the camera, and more formally posed photos. There are photos of a vacation to some tropical location, Regina lounging in a bikini on a white-sand beach. There are “candid” photos of Regina casually looking over her shoulder in a park, or sipping from an iced coffee on campus. Regina looks breathtakingly beautiful in every single one.
Cady is looking at a photo from a couple of years prior when she nearly drops her phone onto her face. She manages to catch it, but to her horror, she sees that she has accidentally liked the photo. She quickly unlikes it and desperately hopes Regina won’t notice.
Once the initial panic subsides, Cady decides to cut her losses and go to sleep. When she closes her eyes, all she sees is Regina, inches away from her, leaning in for a kiss that never comes.