Friday never happened.
I wipe a light sheen of sweat from my forehead. Anna, Kara, Jeanette, and Marta usually wait for me at the front so we can enter school the Fearsome Fivesome. It’s the only part of the day I sort of like, standing next to Anna, untouchable.
Everyone is afraid of us.
Today, they’re nowhere to be found.
I scope out the parking lot just in time to see a black convertible pull in. Donnie. My stomach twists and I can’t breathe. I feel wrong in all the wrong places. I have to get inside. Now. I navigate the cacophony of voices, drug deals and insults—
“—See you at lunch, okay?—”
“—I didn’t finish it, but I don’t think Bradbury will care—”
“—Wait up, I’ve got to get—”
“—For one pill? Fuck you! I can get them cheaper from—”
“—Slut! HEY, SLUT—” —and push through the front doors, into the air-conditioned main corridor. I scan the halls. They can’t be that far off. I just need to find them. I feel naked without them.
A flash of blond hair catches my eye.
“Kara!” She doesn’t turn around. She must not have heard me. “Kara!”
She stops and I hurry over. Being next to her calms me a little; I’m not invincible yet, but it’s better than nothing. And it’s weird. I never thought we could be friendly, but she was nice to me. So I’ll be nice to her. For a while.
“Have you seen Anna?”
But she stares at me like I’ve just told her to stab her eyes out with a pen, and even though she gives me that look a lot, I don’t get it today.
“Uh, yeah?” Bitch-voice. Okay.
I readjust my book bag and clear my throat.
“Where is she? I want to talk to her. She called this weekend and I didn’t pick up.” I wasn’t ready. “You know Anna. She’ll be pissed.”
“Yeah,” Kara agrees. “You could say that.”
“What? Did you talk to her?”
Kara shrugs and flounces down the hall, her golden curls bouncing off her shoulders as she goes. A bitter taste works its way up my throat in spite of the antacid I took. I follow her. She turns a corner. I turn it.
Jeanette and Marta are at Marta’s locker. Kara prances over, and they enfold her into our secret huddle, the one I should be at the heart of, but my feet are cemented into place by some kind of animal instinct that tells me I’m not allowed over there. Marta spots me. My heart leaps. Invite me over. She murmurs something to the other girls. Invite me over. They laugh. Invite me over.
They turn their backs to me. No.
No way.
This is not a freeze-out.
But I have to find Anna to be sure.
She’s not at her locker. I check her homeroom. She’s not there either. I stalk the halls, and people are looking at me, whispering. But it’s the sweater.
I detour into the girls’ washroom, not because I think Anna will be there, but because my stomach is upset. I pop two more antacids and lean over the sink. My heart spazzes in my chest and my arms itch. I scratch along the outside of my sweater because I don’t want to look at the bruises, even though I could close my eyes and see them.
I could close my eyes and see—
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
I stare at my reflection in the mirror. My hair is limp, dead, and my face is an unattractive overheated red. Anna would not approve. Anna doesn’t want to talk to me because…Because. Because.
I haven’t returned her clothes yet.
I ignored her all weekend.
Duh.
Anna doesn’t want to talk to me, and the other girls are giving me the Cryptic Cold Shoulder until I apologize to her. I exhale. It’s almost comforting in its familiarity. I’ve been here before and I can handle it. It’s not fun, but it’s easy.
It’s not a freeze-out.
I’ll find her. Apologize.
The first bell rings. Homeroom. I haven’t even gotten my books. I leave the washroom and step into the hall, forcing my way past the whispers and stares.
It’s the sweater. That’s all it is.
And then I push through the crowd converged in front of my locker so I can get a good look at the word spray-painted across it.
WHORE
This is a freeze-out .
The scene fades out until it’s me and that word and nothing else .
I step forward and touch my fingers to one of the letters. It comes back black. I rub my sleeve across the metal. The paint is fresh enough to ruin my shirt but dry enough to keep from smearing into an unintelligible mess.
“Is it true?” Someone asks. I touch the paint again. It’s really there. “Did you really bone Donnie Henderson?”
The scene fades back in. Voices assert themselves over the sound of my heart pounding in my chest, and they’re all saying something about me.
Me. Donnie Henderson. Did I really bone Donnie Henderson.
His hand up my skirt. Mouth on my neck.
I step back and end up on someone’s foot. They swear at me. Watch it, bitch. I focus on not looking like a cornered animal and try to zero in on a face I know, someone familiar amid the slack-jawed rubberneckers.
Josh. My boyfriend.
He hovers just outside the mob. Our eyes meet. He turns away.
“Oh, my God, here comes Holt.” Another voice. “This is so awe- some!”
The second bell rings. Principal Holt is there before I can escape, the decrepit old janitor trailing behind him. His face purples as he surveys the damage. He paces, yells, and makes such a fuss, a new crowd is born. He orders a temporary cover for my locker until the paint can be removed, and he vows the perpetrators will be brought to justice.
And then he asks me if I know who they are.
After homeroom, I’m gone. I’m at that pay phone again and I’m calling Josh. Again. I pick at the phone book dangling from a string, half torn away by some vandal with nothing better to do, while the sun continues its slow rise overhead. It’s hot in this booth. I turn my back to the cars rushing past me, on their way to the main street.
I finally get his voice mail.
“It’s me.” A car goes by. I swallow twice and try to figure out what to say while the silence on the other end of the line waits for me to fill it. “Look, what they’re—what they’re all saying—what I—” I can’t tell this to Josh. Not on the phone.”…You heard it from Kara, didn’t you?”
I hang up. Kara.
Kara, Kara, Kara.
Kara Myers.
Kara.
I am such a fool.
I’m used to everyone’s eyes on me; that’s nothing new. When you’re
Anna Morrison’s best friend, people look. We’re the kind of popular that parents like to pretend doesn’t exist so they can sleep at night, and we’re the kind of popular that makes our peers unable to sleep at night. Everyone hates us, but they’re afraid of us, too. Anna thrives on it. She says the day people stop hating us is the day something is really wrong. She says I should look at it that way, but I can’t. Everyone hates us, and it makes me a total wreck. She hated that about me.
These people are nothing. They don’t matter. None of this matters. There’s a whole world outside of this hellhole. God, Regina. You could at least act like you don’t give a damn.
So I do it like she does it: I square my shoulders and march across the parking lot, my jaw clenched and my eyes narrowed. I try not to let the heat touch me or flinch at the blast of cold air on my skin when I step through the school doors.
I’m ushered in by whispers and stares. Half the student body relishes it; they’ve waited a long time to show me just how much they hate me. The other half doesn’t know what to make of it after spending four years fearfully revering me.
Principal Holt makes quick work of restoring my locker, but whoever repainted it doesn’t know how to color-match. My locker has been painted red. Every other locker in this school is a bright, hideous pumpkin orange. It’s a wash of a coat, too.
I can still see the WHORE forcing its way through.
I grab my books. Two girls go by, and I hear my name but not the context surrounding it. Probably something like: Regina Afton is a slut who slept with Anna Morrison’s boyfriend I know can you believe it pass it on.
I will kill myself before I get used to this.
Anna catches my eye then, swaggering down the hall in the opposite direction. A dozen guys watch her as she goes; it’s the way her skirt moves with her hips when she walks. She takes a sharp turn left, and I know where she’s going. And she’s alone.
This is my chance.
I take the same left, push through the pale blue door that opens into the girls’ washroom, and there she is, admiring her reflection in the mirrors over the sinks. I don’t blame her. Anna is beautiful, with her soft, fine auburn hair and the kind of body that brings guys to their knees. It’s cliché, but she’s a Siren. Impossible to fight, there’s no better feeling than to hear her sing your name until she has you and eats you alive. The people at this school think it’s hard enough living beneath her, but it’s even harder being her friend. Anna.
The door swings shut. She stiffens and turns, and the air leaves my lungs. I’m torn between wanting to be far away from her and wanting to throw myself at her feet to beg forgiveness for something I didn’t do. As long as it means we can be friends again.
I’m sorry. I’ll never sleep with your boyfriend again, never, never, never….
Maybe I should’ve thought this out better.
She takes me in slowly, one eyebrow arched. She wants me to feel like I’m not good enough to be acknowledged, and it’s working. I’m suddenly aware of the sloppy ponytail tied at the back of my head and how dumb my outfit looks—jeans and a sweater on another sweltering day—but it doesn’t matter. She’s always been prettier than me.
“Nice job you did on my locker,” I say.
We stare at each other, Western-movie-showdown-style. Several agonizing seconds pass, but Anna never draws her gun, which is good, because I’m totally unarmed. She turns back to the mirror and digs through the makeup bag in front of her.