Page 83 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
My friend stared at me for a long moment. “That’s possible.”
“You werethere,” I said, leaning forward. “All those camp days. You saw how he was. How he humiliated me.”
Her head moved in a tight, controlled arc, barely more than a flick. “I did. And I fully supported your decision to hate him. He hurt you. He picked at things you did like it was a hobby.” She paused. “But maybe we were both a tiny bit wrong.”
“What?” I nearly choked on my next bite. “You can’t say that. That’s treason. You’re myperson.”
“Iamyour person, which is why I can say this.” She set her fork down, which meant we were in serious territory. “I’ve known the Kingsleys a long time. Marc included. In a way you don’t, since you were only here for summers and vacations. And even back then, when he was being insufferable? He was also weirdly sweet. And very, very bad at peopling.”
I thought about the facts he’d bring up during other people’s presentations at camp. Every single summer. Well, at least the ones my aunt made me go to.
“You know he’s high-functioning autistic, right?” she asked carefully.
I opened my mouth to respond and snapped it shut.
No, I hadn’t known that.
How could I not have known that?
Why after all these years, all the signs, I hadn’t put the pieces together?
It made total sense now that Adele named it.
“I’m not excusing it,” she said, holding up a hand. “It took him time to learn better social skills. And who else could spout fifty facts about bats randomly? But back then, he just—he’d say things without any idea they’d land like a brick. And by the time you two were teenagers, you’d built this wholedynamic. Where you were both awful to each other, but also couldn’t stop circling.”
I thought about the game Glamma had engineered. How easily the answers had come. And how many of them were true.
“You may,” I said slowly, “not be completely wrong.”
Adele did not gloat. She gave a single, restrained, one-shoulder shrug, which was her version of gloating.
“I don’t even know what to do with any of this,” I muttered. “My whole internal Marc Filing System is in shambles.”
“To be fair, I think it’s been in shambles for awhile, and you just labeled the folder ‘HATRED,’ so you didn’t have to open it.”
I rolled my eyes. “I came here for French toast, not psychological prodding.”
She grinned. “You get both. It’s a combo deal. And you’re welcome.”
I sighed the sigh of someone who had lost and knew it. “When did a man in glasses start looking so hot?” I said, mostly to my coffee cup.
Adele scoffed. “Um … according to you … Clark Kent.”
“Don’t.”
“You’ve literally had a thing for bespectacled nerds since thetwo thousands.”
“I saiddon’t.”
“Every Superman. All of them. The moment they put on their glasses, you were gone.”
I pressed my lips together. “This conversation is over.”
“All I’m saying,” she continued, completely ignoring me, “is to give him an actual fair shot. Not a ‘waiting for him to mess up’ shot. Areal one. And if he blows it, we shun him.”
I laughed. “Did you just say shun?”
“Yes.”
