I didn't register Miriam following out the door with me. I hadn't even noticed her there, hiding against the wall. I didn't have any problem with her, though, so I hadn't yelled at her. 

   When we had reached the next flight of moving stairs, Miriam stopped me.

   "Are you okay?"

  I sighed raggedly. I didn't answer; I was near close to tears. Motioning for her to follow me, I made my way towards my own dorms.

   Once we got to my dorms, I dragged Miriam down onto a black leather couch by the dark windows showing the depths of the lake and laid back, exhausted. It was only then that I let a tear out. It dripped down my face, and I looked at my reflection in the glass, watching it fall, glistening in the light of the dim candles and green lake. Miriam kind of just sat there, until I finally brushed it off with a robe sleeve. I sniffed a bit.

I felt horrible. I knew I had just embarrassed myself to the extreme, and it had been at the expense of Youngjae and Jinyoung. I knew they could probably handle it, but I couldn’t stand adding on another problem to Jinyoung’s plate, let alone yell at Youngjae like I had.

Youngjae…

Not another one. I just lost another friend. I tried hiding my red face from Miriam, but I knew she had already seen me lose a tear.

“Miriam,” I tried, but my voice cracked horribly.

“What I just did…” I trailed off. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Miriam shake her head.

“No,” she started. She sounded uncharacteristically mature.

“You were well backed up with evidence. You had a right to yell like that, regardless of what happened with Jackson,” she said, affirmatively. I looked at my reflection again.

“That’s the problem…”

“...nothing happened with Jackson. There’s no excuse.” I didn’t move. I just sat frozen.

“Naw,” Miriam’s reflection smiled.

“You were in the right. Maybe yelling isn’t the best way to go about, but you had the right. You aren’t accountable for Jackson’s behavior, and they shouldn’t shove you in the crossfire for their own problems,” she stated. I felt a little better.

“But some of those problems are your problems too, like what happened at the quidditch pitch.”

I froze again, staring at Miriam’s reflection.

“While you don’t have to solve their problems, you should try solving your own. I don’t know what’s going on with you two, but if your problems are impacting you and others around you negatively, then you should solve them, don’t you think?” She continued. I just stared. She’s right, I thought.

“But… then I was unjustified,” I muttered. I felt bad again. Miriam shook her head.

“Only partly. You deal with a lot of their crap twenty-four-seven, and that’s saying a lot. They got a lot of crap going on,” she said, smirking. She was back to old Miriam. I smiled back at her reflection.

“Okay,” I said. I turned and faced her real face.

“Now, listen. Someone has to apologize, but I don’t want you to.” I started at Miriam’s sentence.

“What?”

“You gotta get at them back. If they don’t feel sorry enough to apologize, then they don’t deserve your apology,” she grinned. I laughed a bit and tried not to roll my eyes.

“Miriam… you’re an idiot. But you’re right,” I said, placing an elbow on my knee to hold my head up. “I’m pretty done being Jackson’s throwaway, and I don’t want to be a part of their drama. I get enough of that.”

Miriam nodded. “Yesssssss,” she muttered. “Join the dark side,” she said, snarkily. I chuckled darkly.

“It’s going to be hard ignoring Youngjae though… and he really didn’t deserve that…” I trailed off.

“Nope. If it helps, I’ll drag you away if one of them starts bothering you,” she grinned. I laughed.

“Sure, Miriam. Lets try it.”

And then we walked to our next class.