Best Served Fake

fifty-two // some sort of harley quinn

Cora and Sophie and Kai, never explicit, but hinting at things I should maybe have examined more closely. Because when I thought about my friendship with Sydney, it was this intensive, co-dependant thing that was more significant to my life than anything else. This complete reliance on one another, sometimes at the expense of my other friendships. Not healthy, probably.

She had evidently been thinking about it too, because she didn't ask me what I meant.

Sydney shrugged. "I think so. It's hard to say."

I nodded.

"I didn't think about it until after," I told her.

"I did," Sydney said. At my surprise, she shrugged. "I did everything to avoid thinking about it, but like the purple elephant, it only made me think of it more. It was something I became an expert at ignoring, but it was still... pressing."

Huh. Okay. It was something I'd long-ago shoved in a box marked DON'T LOOK TOO CLOSELY, and today wasn't the day for unpacking all the layers of our friendship and the implications of what it could have meant for both of us.

"Tommy certainly thought so, at least."

"He what?"

Tommy held doubts about my friendship with Sydney? I couldn't remember him ever communicating anything like that with me. There was never a conversation about that, and if there had been, I might've even laughed. I had loved Tommy, without reserve, through our whole relationship. I'd never given him any reason to doubt us. I had no idea that he was anyway.

"Why do you think we hated each other so much? If things were different, we probably could've been friends. But I think we were both jealous and competitive, and I'm sorry that it always made things hard for you."

Sydney and Tommy's hatred for one another had always underpinned their interactions, but its origins had always been a question mark. This, for the first time, made sense.

She was back to looking at anything but me. She looked sad now, and for maybe the first time, vulnerable. "It's what he came to talk to me about that night. He kept asking me if we were ever more than friends, and I kept telling him no. I wasn't even sure if I believed it, even though it's what I'd always told myself. But he was jealous and angry and he asked me to prove it. So..."

So she slept with him. Huh.

That had never made sense, either. Why Sydney had slept with Tommy. I wasn't sure if it was an attention grab, or a display of her selfishness. But this was an explanation I could finally believe.

I didn't think I'd ever been in love with Sydney, but it was the kind of complex thing that I wasn't sure I would understand at eighteen. Sexuality was difficult enough to understand, but a friendship that had been forged over decades, with so many blurred lines and misunderstood meanings seemed, in this moment, just as hard to muddle through. It was the kind of connection that could only ever be examined through hindsight, and it was not so far in the rear mirror to be truly objective.

"I guess it makes sense now," I said.

"I guess it does."

It felt like the end of a century. Something ending, but the next cycle inevitable. And it wasn't sad so much as nostalgic, thinking of all the things lost to a previous time.

"I think I'm afraid that school will end soon," said Sydney. Graduation was only a mere month away. It didn't seem world-changing. Just the passing of one chapter to the next. Not for Sydney. "I'm leaving with nothing to show for it. I don't have a single real friendship left and I am—" when she laughed, it was absent of humour "—so deathly afraid that I have both peaked and hit rock bottom in high school, and I will be left with complete mundanity."

I scoffed. It was a sound far more casual than was appropriate for the intensity of the conversation, and it made Sydney look up. "You won't be mundane. You're a lot of things, good and bad, and boring will never be one of them."

Her smile was small. "Thanks."

That was the other thing that was different; the other thing that made this okay. Our friendship had never been on my terms. We were symbiotic, to an extent, but I was always weaker-willed, always the one to submit to her whims. It wasn't like that now; she would let me determine the trajectory of our friendship, and be pleased with whatever I was willing to give her.

"I can't be your friend like before," I told her.

I couldn't be anyone's friend like that again. Cora's criticisms from the other day and Kai's casual comments in a dark room at that very first party had made it evident to me that I was not built to weather a friendship has co-dependant as the one I had cultivated with Sydney. It had forced me to jeopardise my morals, be an imperfect friend and always be willing to compromise myself to please her. She might've been the same in reverse; it was hard to tell. There were friendships that could be tight knit like ours and have both parties survive. Kai and Will or Lena and Cole, even. I wasn't sure if it was just that Sydney and I were different—maybe it was—but I suspected it was simply a weakness to my character, that I was susceptible to that kind of all-encompassing friendship. I wanted friends who made me better; Madeleine and Jameson and Cora and all the others. Most importantly, Kai.

Always, always Kai.

But at the hope on Sydney's face, I continued. "I'm not ready to forgive you, but I'm not ready to cut you out of my life either."

"Okay," she said cautiously.

"Once a month," I said. "And mostly just because I'm not willing to give up the cookies your mum makes."

Sydney laughed, and all the intensity of the moment was suddenly broken. "Deal."

It was as if the reparation of our friendship had energised me. I didn't feel as lethargic and bone-weary; I was ready to talk and gossip, to catch up on months of things I'd wanted to say to her. I wanted to know if she'd kept watching Succession, even though we were supposed to be watching it together. I wanted to tell her about my newfound friendship with Sophie and the look on Tommy's face when he threw rocks at my window months ago.

But Sydney didn't let me. "I mean, this is incredible, but I also did come here to talk to you about something."

"Oh."

"Valerie," Sydney said, and I'd never seen her select her words so carefully. I knew Sydney was meticulous in crafting everything she said, and she had never thoughtlessly opened her mouth, but it was usually an invisible process. But I could see the cogs of her mind working, almost envisage the moment she decided the perfect combination to say. "I know why Kai isn't talking to you."

What? How did Sydney even know Kai wasn't talking to me? And, with that realisation, I remembered that she also knew about the façade of our relationship.

"You do?" I demanded. "Why?"

She was glassy-eyed in her recollection. "He came up to me the other day at school. Said he had some information I might be interested in, if I wanted to help him out. I think he thought I'd be on his side, like some sort of Harley Quinn to his fucking psycho Joker. Not that I've really spoken to him since Jack Heath's party. But maybe he thought I'd want revenge as well, or at least to facilitate the breakdown of your relationship with Kai."

My heart thudded. "Sydney, who came up to you?"

She didn't answer. She had committed to her storytelling, and had never been content for anyone to derail her tales. "I thought it was batshit insane for a petty high school feud and told him a few creative places he could shove it. I told him that he couldn't have proof, and that's when he showed me."

I was so desperate for her to continue that my skin itched, as if everything that lay beneath it was desperate to escape. Sydney's dramatic flair had never been so perfectly employed; I was on tenterhooks.

"Valerie, he still knew your password. You use the same one for everything, so I suppose I could've seen as well if I'd wanted to. I don't think he even considered checking until you posted those photos together. So unless you texted Kai through your actual text messages..."

"He could see everything."

Sydney nodded.

And so, I knew exactly why Kai wasn't talking to me.

"Tommy."