Your Best Friend

“I love you,” Sayaka told Melanie one day after school, and meant it.

The rain around them pounded against the concrete with powerful splatters, the sounds of the storm whipping in their ears. Melanie’s umbrella, clenched in both of Sayaka’s hands, careened dangerously to the left from the wind.

Her best friend only smiled.

“Sayaka,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re so weird sometimes.”

—

“Melanie’s my girlfriend now,” John told Sayaka after class, hovering over her desk like a thin, gangly hawk.

Sayaka stared up at him, unblinking.

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked suspiciously.

“I just figured I should.”

—

“Guess who asked me out?”

“Someone asked you out?”

“And I said yes,” Melanie said ecstatically. “He’s my boyfriend now.”

“Yeah?” Sayaka asked. Her grip tightened around the handle of Melanie’s pink umbrella. “Who?”

“John. From math.”

“John from math,” Sayaka repeated. “I don’t even know who that is.”

Melanie looked at her sideways. “Sure you do.”

“I don’t,” she said shortly, and that was that.

—

John fell down the stairs the next day.

He ended up at the nurse’s office with a twisted ankle and a cut on his forehead.

It wasn’t Sayaka’s fault he was in the way.

—

“I don’t even know how it happened,” Melanie choked out into Sayaka’s shoulder.

Sayaka tightened her arms around Melanie’s waist.

“He’s fine,” she said, patting her back. “He’ll live.”

—

“Stay away from Melanie,” John told her the next day, arms crossed.

“Why?”

“Because you’re crazy.”

“You’re crazy,” Sayaka shot back. “You stay away from her.”

“I’m her boyfriend.”

“I’m her best friend.”

John stared at her for a long, terrible moment.

“She hates you, you know,” he said. “I’d bet money on it.”

—

John didn’t make it to class the next day.