Jeez. Milo could be fierce when he wanted to be. I’m sure my face gave away just how thrilled I was with his little outburst, but I nodded. “Yeah, whatever. I’ll be honest.”
“Were you the one that went on a date with Morgan?” Crystal began.
I opened my mouth but Milo cut in. “Yes, he already admitted that,” he replied.
“Did. You. Fuck?” Lexi asked, standing up.
“We went on a walk,” I answered, hoping that would make her realize how dumb of a question that was.
It didn’t. She gestured around. “That doesn’t answer my question at all!”
“They didn’t,” Milo replied to her.
“How do you know?” Lexi asked.
“We didn’t,” I reaffirmed.
“Finally, thank you! As I suspected.” Lexi sat back down.
“What do you know about Morgan and Taylor? Did you see them yesterday?” Milo asked.
I bit my top lip in thought, unsure to what extent I should answer them. “Yesterday, I was talking to Morgan in the hallway when we ran into Taylor, or rather, she ran into us. She seemed really angry at Morgan for something. My guess is they had a fight or something, or Morgan was supposed to do something for her.”
“And this had nothing to do with you?” Milo asked.
I shrugged. “If it does have something to do with me, I don’t know what it is.”
Crystal had the next question. “Has your relationship with Taylor been completely… professional?” she asked. “Like, has it just been tutoring, or did something happen between you two too?”
Milo craned his neck to answer Crystal, but something held him back. He paused, and eventually turned to face me, waiting to see what I would say.
Milo knew that the answer was “no, we hadn’t been completely professional.” He knew that something happened between us. But I thought, or at least hoped, he understood what I understood about the group when I gave my answer.
“Jeez, Crystal,” I replied, realizing I was almost overacting it. “No. Taylor and I never did anything romantic or sexual. I’m just her tutor.”
Milo stared at me, his expression unchanging, saying nothing. Crystal seemed satisfied with my answer, but Lexi did not. “I think he’s lying,” she announced, to no one in particular. No one responded to her, so she continued. “He lied about not knowing what was going on with Morgan and Taylor, so-”
“But I wasn’t lying about that,” I cut in. “I don’t know what was going on. I just happened to witness Taylor getting mad at her.”
“I still think you’re lying, and that you’re hiding something with Taylor,” Lexi persisted.
I exhaled noisily. “Thank what you want, Lexi. Alright? Think what you want.”
“Do you know where they are now?” Milo asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t even know if they’re in the school. Yesterday Taylor didn’t show up to data management.”
“Morgan was in chem, so, like, she’s in the school,” Crystal interjected.
Milo looked at her, then at me. “I guess I should go find them,” he announced.
Something in the pit of my stomach churned at that. I didn’t know for sure if the Morgan-Taylor thing was my fault, or if it had to do with me, but I was pretty sure it did, somehow. The idea of Milo looking for them, finding them, and finding out more about me was a thought I wasn’t really comfortable with.
“Shouldn’t I go instead?” I asked. “You said yourself that I’m the connection between the two. I have some good ideas where they might go-”
Milo lowered his eyebrows. “We’ve known them for years, Quinn. Don’t act like you’re the only one that knows either of them.”
“…Okay, but, still, I might be able to find out more about what’s going on. Like, if I am the link here, they might be more willing to talk to me about it. If they were willing to talk to you about it, they would have sat down with you guys and hashed it out as a group, right?”
I wasn’t sure if I convinced them, but Milo sighed and looked at his posse. “Alright, whatever. If you wanna do this, go right ahead,” he conceded. “But I’m going too.”
“Just give me until the end of lunch, okay?” I asked. “Pretend this is a favor.”
“Why does this matter so much to you?” Milo asked me, looking me dead in the eye.
“Honestly? I’m just as worried this is about me. I don’t know if I’m being selfish, but I want to find out firsthand what’s going on. Even if we find them together, they might… withhold more details about it.”
Milo shrugged, moving his head. “Alright, that’s actually a fair point.” He held his phone up to me. “Here’s my number though. All I ask is you let me know if you see them.”
I copied down the number on his screen into my phone and promptly left, not saying much more to any of them, making a beeline for the elevator hallway.
I couldn’t stop myself from fiddling with my hands as I walked. I withheld the fact that I was pretty confident this was my fault — Taylor seemed more angry that we were together than anything — but that was a problem future me had to deal with. And only a problem created because Milo had to be nosy.
Well… caring. He cared about his friends. In a nosy way.
The elevator hallway had nobody in it, but I kind of expected that. The school was big, and if people wanted to have private conversations, there were a lot of hallways where you could meet. I checked my watch — I had time. Making a map in my head, I started wandering to different floors, trying to keep my eyes and ears open the whole time.
Searching for two students in a school the size of Hazelwood may have been a challenge, but knowing that at least one of them could be shouting makes the search a lot more easy. I wasn’t sure if I was glad or horrified when I heard raised voices coming from a particular hallway; Taylor’s voice, to be precise. Whatever was going on, it was clear Taylor was doing most of the talking.
As I got close enough to hear the words she was shouting, it suddenly dawned on me how much I missed being a nerdy nobody. I had to confront what was essentially my nightmare scenario — turn the corner and walk into a shouting match that I had no business walking into, all for the woman I was dating and the woman I had fooled around with. Nerdy nobodies don’t have to deal with that kind of bullshit. Our lives were less exciting, but on the bright side… our lives were less exciting.
I took a deep breath and steeled myself, turning the corner and walking into the pair of them.
I wasn’t sure how much I liked Morgan, but I was sure I had some kind of feelings for her at this point, and looking at someone you have a crush on with a hand over their mouth and teary eyes just sucks. It was like a sucker punch to the gut. I didn’t say anything, I just stood there awkwardly, no doubt with a face half-stricken with sadness, half nervousness.
Taylor yelled a few more words (“…stabbed me in the fucking back!” to be specific) before noticing me and hesitating, just for a second. A second of silence hung in the air, before she quietly, gravely, let one word escape from her mouth.
“You.”
It was probably reasonable to assume I was connected to this somehow. I stood there, standing my ground, as Morgan quickly became the second person to notice me. When her eyes met with mine, her face did this wincing thing and she bolted out of the hallway, her hands gripping her sides insecurely, her puffy red eyes closed in shame, the cheeks streaked with tears. I tried calling out for her, but in an instant, she was gone.