sneak peak 5.0

"she's not still working on it" listen!!!!!!!!!!!! i'm just slow.

HELEN

It wasn’t that Helen was worried, exactly. She had no reason to be worried. The Holdfasts had donated, like, a whole building to the school two years ago; Paris wasn’t going anywhere. And it’s — and who cared, ultimately, what happened to Manny? He wasn’t Helen’s boyfriend anymore, and also, therefore, he wasn’t her problem. So she didn’t really give a shit what happened to him.

It would be stupid, if she did, and Helen wasn’t stupid, so she didn’t, and that was that on that, never mind the looks Saff kept giving her every time she brought him up.

“Oh my God, are we still talking about this,” moaned Dité. “Does our friendship even pass the Bechdel Test anymore? Ha — where’s Saff? She’d love that joke.”

“I haven’t seen her since this morning. And literally two minutes ago we were talking about your relationship problems, how come it’s only unfeminist when we’re talking about mine?”

Dité shot her a look from where she was stretched out along the bottom of the bed and took a long, prim sip of her smoothie. “First of all, my relationship doesn’t have problems, it has sexual intrigue. And secondly, we’re not ‘talking about’ anything. You were asking me to abuse my boyfriend’s love for me in order to get him to intercede on your behalf in a made-up conflict that doesn’t deserve your—much less my—attention.”

“Snob,” Athena said cheerfully, taking a bite of an apple and talking with her mouth full. Dité flicked her off without looking at her and Athena snickered; Helen stamped down on the flare of jealousy that shot though her, at how easy the back and forth was. Dité had a different kind of relationship with Athena than she had with Helen, and that was fine. Of course it was fine. Helen didn’t own Dité; she was just her favorite. 

Well — second favorite. Heff was Dité’s favorite, but he was also her boyfriend, so Helen felt like on a fundamental level he didn’t count.