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Beck Oliver is weirdly protective of his jackets. There are three of them, a light one that does nothing but add to outfits, for aesthetics. The winter jacket, which was still a light jacket but we live in LA and an actual winter coat is entirely unnecessary. And the jacket he wears every day; it might be denim but I can’t be sure, it’s far too worn to tell. It is also the jacket that Jade is wearing, for some reason. Beck isn’t wearing a jacket, braving the seventy-three degrees in just his grey long sleeve.
They’re sitting next to each other, which isn’t entirely unusual. Jade normally doesn’t care who she sits next to unless it’s Tori — who has to be at least two people away from her on both sides at all times — and Beck sits in the same spot every day. Another thing he’s weirdly protective of. His jackets and his spot at the stupid lunch table, but not his friend’s feelings. Interesting.
No one else seems to have noticed, which is also weird. No one has noticed how they’re sitting too close to one another, how he’s taken three of her fries and she hasn’t said a word. That she’s wearing one of his sacred jackets. No one cares, either. They’re talking about their plans for the weekend, separate from each other. Jade and Tori split the group clean in half. It was hard to tell from the outside; they didn’t appear to be as fractured as they were. Cat and Robbie still walked to and from class together, quietly bickering about pirates or Star Trek or something. I don’t listen to them; they give me a headache. Andre and Tori are looking over each other’s compositions for their songwriting class, writing notes in red Sharpie in the margins. Beck is likeable as ever, Jade equally as unlikeable.
No one notices but Tori, who is pretending not to look over at Beck and Jade. Pretending it doesn’t bother her that their heads are bowed together, conversation all breath. She pretends it hasn’t only been three months, and this is a rock in the pit of her stomach. My sister, usually, doesn’t know how to keep her gripes to herself, but she has never been more silent in her life. I nudge her knee with mine, trying to get her attention. She doesn’t react, keeps her face towards the paper and her eyes towards her ex-girlfriend and her best friend.
I don’t take my eyes off them, either. It’s hard not to. There’s something magnetic about them, right . It makes sense, them being together. I couldn’t have predicted it, but I get it. They’ll balance each other out. Lord knows Jade needs balancing out. And this is coming from me . Trina Vega. But as much as it makes sense, it shouldn’t be happening. Beck should not be doing this to Tori. She’s his best friend. She’s her ex-girlfriend.
Beck Oliver is as likeable as ever, but I’ve never disliked him more.
They get up from the table, without a word, ten minutes before lunch ends. I think they think they’re being subtle by not holding hands, by going to Beck’s car to make out instead of doing it right in front of us. They’re not.
“What’s up with them?” I ask, trying to sound nonchalant, undefensive. I am technically justified in my almost anger, with both of them, but mostly Beck. He’s her best friend. Jade doesn’t like Tori, not anymore. She would do something like this. Jade West is nothing if not spiteful.
Tori and Jade dated for seven months, broke up last semester. It got too much too quickly, as with anything Jade does, and Tori got spooked. No sixteen-year-old is ready for that kind of relationship, commitment. That’s insane. Jade did not take it well. She takes nothing well. She broke up with Tori before Tori could break up with her. Gotta leave before you get left, and all that.
“What are you talking about?” Andre asks in return, almost too quickly. “I think they have a project together or something. I don’t know. But there’s nothing going on .”
“Jade would have told me if they were dating, or starting to,” Cat says because she’s convinced herself she and Jade are best friends. Jade West doesn’t do best friends. Her friend group aren’t her friends, not really. Well, Beck is. He’s the reason she sits with them. But he’s not her friend anymore, is he? There’s no way they aren’t dating. They couldn’t be more obvious about it.
Tori kicks me under the table, and for once I don’t kick her back. Honestly, I feel bad for her. It’s only been a couple of months, and she hasn’t fully gotten over her ex-girlfriend. She isn’t one to get over things; it runs in the family. She doesn’t argue like she usually would. It’s bad enough that her ex-girlfriend still sits with them, that her friends act like nothing happened. Bringing attention to it would do nothing but embarrass her. Normally, I wouldn’t be opposed, but this is different. She’s hurt.
The photo is all but confirmation. Jade doesn’t publicly tolerate anyone. It’s humiliating. She doesn’t let anyone sit that close to her, either. Not even Tori when they were dating. Something about Beck is different, even from Tori, and I hate it.
I scroll back through Jade’s Instagram to find pictures to compare, but she’s deleted all the ones of her and Tori. Of course. She would be that petty. So, I click onto my sister’s instead, and they’re all still there. Not many of them, lest Jade seem unmysterious or something, but they’re all there.
It’s the most recent one, three weeks before they broke up. Three weeks before Jade broke up with Tori after a screaming argument over something I don’t remember. It wasn’t grounds for a breakup, I remember that, but Jade hates being wrong. It’s the same as admitting defeat, and she never loses.
I’m kind of mad at Tori for not deleting the pictures, for leaving evidence that they were together all over her feed. Ex-girlfriends, especially like this one, should not be on full display. If anything, it’s embarrassing. I don’t know how Tori doesn’t get it. She’s smart, she’s so smart , but sometimes she is so dumb.
I feel terrible about it before I even do it. I know it’s wrong, inherently. But it’s not the first time I’ve done it before. Hell, I’ve told Tori to do it before. But I’ve never done it to Tori. Tori’s life has never been interesting enough for me to want to look through her phone. And I’m not looking through it because this is interesting . I’m looking through it because I’m concerned.
Tori doesn’t bring her phone in the bathroom with her when she takes a bath, likes to unwind and clear her head and apparently that’s impossible to do with her phone in the room. I don’t get it, but it means her phone is charging at her desk and I can take it for a while without her noticing.
Her password is simple: her birthday. As creative as she is, she isn’t. It’s been her password for everything her whole life. I leave The Slap and click into her messages, scroll down until I find Jade’s. The number is blocked both ways. Good. Their last conversation wasn’t interesting, something about dinner plans. I don’t care. Then to Beck’s. They haven’t texted in nearly a week. I scroll until a month ago, when I find what I’m looking for.
So maybe they were just friends. They were at the beginning, at least. Whatever this was had started innocently. Well, it was from a month ago. A lot could happen in a month.
I swipe out of their conversation and onto Cat’s. 
Andre’s. 
She didn’t answer the last message, but I knew she wasn’t. There was no way she was. Not when Beck asked her permission to go to the movies with Jade because he cared about Tori’s feelings and then went and dated her ex-girlfriend . He didn’t care. He couldn’t care when he turned around and did that.
I feel sick when I go back to her Slap feed and turn off her phone, put it back on charge. It’s none of my business, but that’s never stopped me before.
*
I don’t have classes with Beck, being a year older, but we’re in the same study hall on Thursdays. I shouldn’t corner him, no sane person would, but I do. He’s on his way to the desk at the very back of the room, where Dickers won’t see him fucking around on his phone or hear him talking to Andre. Beck Oliver is not very committed to his studies outside the arts.
“Beck!” I say as if this isn’t intentional, like I didn’t stand by the door and wait for him to come in. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”
He pauses and then nods, moves out of the way of the door. “Uh..s sure. Shoot.”
I don’t see the point in beating around the bush, I don’t have time to; I have a biology lab tomorrow and I need to study for it. Badly. “Are you dating Jade?”
Beck splutters for a second, takes his time to learn to breathe again.
“Don’t lie to me.”
He bows his head, looking guilty. He’s an actor for a reason. I almost believe he feels guilty. Actually, he probably does. This is probably eating him up inside and he’s been waiting for someone to know for so long he can’t take it. But that isn’t my problem. That’s up to him to figure out.
“I liked Jade first,” he says, trying to justify his actions. If I empathise with him, then I’ll be less mad, is his thinking. “I was going to ask her out, Tori knew this, when Jade asked her out. If anything she—”
“I’m gonna stop you right there. You lost any right to like or date or whatever Jade the moment she asked Tori out, okay? Tori didn’t steal Jade from you. Jade wasn’t interested in you. This is really, really shitty of you.”
There is a group of sophomores staring at us and he cares a whole lot more than I do. He shifts his gaze between me and them, but continues anyway. “Is Tori upset?”
“Of course she’s upset! You’re her best friend and you’re dating her ex-girlfriend.” Dickers shushes us and tells us to sit down. We do neither.
“Tell her I’m sorry, okay. I didn’t mean for this to happen. Jade started this, not me!”
“Tell her yourself!”
Beck sighs and opens his mouth to say something. He doesn’t, snaps his teeth shut and walks away to the back of the library, head to the ground.
It’s harsh, I know. I probably didn’t need to be so harsh with him. But I couldn’t help myself. He hurt Tori, and I wasn’t going to let him get away with that. And I know that, really, I should be angrier with Jade. She started this, did this on purpose. She pursued Beck despite knowing he was Tori’s best friend. Beck is easier to confront. Talking to Jade is like talking to a brick wall.