Ashley turned the corner to see Spencer leaning against her locker. Her feet were crossed and just her head and shoulder butted up against the locker. She had an anguished look on her face, but that couldn’t be right. Spencer wasn’t broken enough to feel anguish, and the emotion didn’t seem to fit. Ashley cautiously stepped toward her and she looked up, but wouldn’t make eye contact.

“Hi” She said, searching Spencer’s face. She almost thought she didn’t care what she found, she just wanted to know something definitive one way or the other. Almost.

Spencer locked eyes with her for three of the longest seconds of her life. This was not one-mississippi territory; this was one-theentiresoutheasternunitedstates territory. Her pupils screamed sentences, paragraphs, entire edited volumes of her rehashed thoughts turning over and reforming at all hours. Spencer’s lips parted and she took a shallow breath, steeling herself for what felt like a monologue.

“Hi back”

It was hard to tell who was more disappointed with her feeble return. For a relationship built on a foundation of witty banter, their silence only reinforced the enormity of this moment. Ashley paused a second, just in case Spencer wanted to resurrect the illusion of platonic friendship. She didn’t.

“Ashley, I–”

“Know. I know it too.” Spencer shook her head with a look of impressed confusion etched across her face. Now they were finishing each others sentences? Ashley looked at her with something more than a question but less than a challenge.

“This is…” And then another famous Spencer Carlin pause that drove Ashley wild, that made her want to lean in slightly, just to be closer when the next word came so she could hear it all that more quickly. She was beginning to question whether or not Spencer had this exact effect in mind. “I don’t know. Kind of weird, right?”

For such a smart girl, Spencer could be kind of dumb. Ashley smiled slyly with only the left side of her mouth and noticed they were breathing in unison. She shook her head slowly, surely.

“It doesn’t feel weird to me. Not at all.”

“But you’re used to…” That silent gap while Spencer edited her thoughts instantaneously was going to kill Ashley. There had been enough silence. It was time to speak.