At the end of their next English class, during which Marcia and Sabor again managed to go off on a tangent flexing their ability to spot the one word in the work that would turn its whole meaning on its head, Ms. Tsoi announced a group assignment.

“Okay class, I want you to do this one in groups of three,” Ms. Tsoi said, handing out the group list to each table. Vic quickly looked at his and found that he was in a group with Liz and Evelyn, which was great, because with Liz, a good grade was pretty much guaranteed. Plus, she had mostly avoided talking to him since the end of that Geography class earlier in the week, so it would be a good excuse to get together and hopefully move forward. “But because we don’t quite have enough people,” Ms. Tsoi continued, “We will have one group of two.”

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me,” Marcia said, staring into the group sheet and then lifted her head at the same time as the other member of her group – Sabor.

“Oh great,” the boy with the stubble grumbled, “You?”

“What the hell do you even have to complain about?” Vic asked sternly across the room.

“Did anyone ask you, Vic?” and before Vic even had a chance to open his mouth, Sabor added, “That’s what I thought.”

Vic wished he could’ve been half as quick-witted as Marcia, because he was aware of half the class staring at him, but he had nothing to say, and Marcia was still busy glaring into the group assignment sheet as if it was going to change any second, so he was forced to take that one on the chin.

Coming out of English class, Vic trailed closely behind Liz. “So, you want to talk about the project or …”

“We have almost two weeks to finish it, I’m not in a rush,” Liz said without so much as looking at him and headed to their lockers.

“Come on, I barely even did anything,” Vic mumbled under his breath.

“Ah, cheer up, bud,” Owen said from behind him and clamped a hand on his shoulder. “It’s just how she is – enjoys keeping a grudge, but she’ll get over it eventually.”

“Oh yeah?” Vic asked. It’s not like him and Liz had been friends for long, but no part of this light freezing out was enjoyable for him.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry about it,” Owen said in his usually breezy way, walking beside Vic in a leisurely pace, “She’ll get over it. Like, I once bit her ass while we were fucking and she didn’t talk to me for a week. Still won’t bang, but we’re good friends.”

“Wait,” Vic said, wondering how he was still being surprised by anything that was said to him at Dampgate. “Did you say you guys did it?” Even knowing Liz had a boyfriend that fingered her under the table and whom she took back to the girls’ dormitory, he still had a hard time imagining this.

“‘Did it?’ You mean we fucked? Yeah, sure a couple of times. Just not since then.”

For a brief moment he wanted to stop and throttle Owen and maybe get him to stop giving his infuriating half-answers and actually tell him the full story.

“So did you … with like, the other girls, too?”

“Buddy, the way you talk sometimes I can almost hear the little censorship bleeps coming out of your mind.” Again, the urge to strangle Owen was bubbling up in Vic. “But yeah, yeah. I mean, what are friends for right?”

“And Marcia …” Vic said dejectedly, mostly to himself.

“Buddy, stop, listen,” Owen said, actually grabbing Vic’s arm and making him stop and then looking at him with the most genuine expression Vic had seen Owen make. “You really need to figure out how not get so caught up. Yes, Marcia, too, before anyway, not so much recently. The bottom line is, it doesn’t matter, you have your regulars, and you have your one offs and you have your friends and you have those with who you throw down the occasional hate fuck. This whole thing you’re doing, it’s not going to work out. So let. It. Go.”

Vic just stood there, still processing what Owen had told him when the shorter boy said, “I swear if you’re still thinking about me and Marcia.”

“Yeah, I’m really trying not to.”

“Yeah, well, try harder. You’ll last longer,” Owen said, and gave Vic a friendly pat on the arm, before walking away, and leaving him in the middle of the hallway, more than a little confused.