“So do you actually think we could be friends, or do you think I’m just tolerating you, or do you think I feel sorry for you? I’m really curious, now that you’ve bought me breakfast and all.”
“You tell me,” I say.
“When I think of you, I think of a girl who is so afraid of everything, she would fuck me over in a second if it made her life easier,” he says. “That’s what I think.”
“I won’t—”
“But that’s what you do, isn’t it?” he demands. “You did. You did it to Liz, you did it to me—and you didn’t even know me. Who does what you did to people and—”
I finally snap. “Then why did you even let me sit with you in the cafeteria that first day? Why wouldn’t you tell me to fuck off if you hate me that—”
“Because I wanted to call you a bitch to your face, and I wanted to make you uncomfortable, and I wanted to see you suffer up close, that’s why. God, maybe I’m as bad as—”
He stops. There’s this stunned silence. I’m as bad as you. I want to dare him to say it. He’s as bad as me, and Kara’s as bad as me, and I’m as bad as Anna, who killed all the things that were good about me before they got the chance to do any good.
“I ruin lives—I get it,” I say. “I don’t need to be told over and over and over.”
He shakes his head and walks the path to the porch, and I watch him for a minute, and then I make my way home, and it rains the whole way there.
It rains the whole weekend .
… Starts off with a bang, a buzz .
Lynn Parks gets caught doing lines of something Josh sold her in the girls’ room. Josh spends the morning sweating until word gets around she’s not talking. Holt works fast and furiously. A new rule is implemented: Students will have to sign out of class to go to the bathroom, and if they haven’t returned within ten minutes, they will be retrieved.
Which is stupid, because I could do, like, a million drugs in ten minutes.
Effective immediately, there will be no more loitering in the washrooms at lunch. No more seeking refuge there during class. The teachers will make sure of this. This could not have happened at a worse time, because I’m pretty sure Michael has revoked his invitation for me to sit with him at lunch and I need a place to hide. My brain is having a hard time accepting life in school without a space where I can disappear.
It comes to me—that storage room Anna and I had to get the volleyball net from. Josh and I used to meet there and have impromptu make-out sessions sometimes. I lived for him against me under that forty-watt bulb, against a background of ratty old gym mats and leftover, broken equipment. I make my way through the halls, past people heading to the cafeteria and past Brenner, who is hovering outside the boys’ washroom.
Usually, the storage rooms in the school are locked, because the administration values paper and athletics equipment more than its students, but this one is always open. No one steals or would want to steal mats. I step inside and turn the light on. I’ll have to use this space only when I really need it, until the memory of Lynn snorting things up her nose fades and the teachers remember how not to care.
My new hiding space secured, I wander the halls, waiting for the bell to ring, a strange nervousness in my gut. This is what being really alone feels like. I take an antacid. And another one.
“Regina?”
I hate myself because his voice gives me hope in the place in my stomach that’s most anxious, and then I hate myself even more because when I turn, seeing him makes that feeling worse. Or better. I don’t know.
“I was looking all over for you,” Michael says, causing another desperate, hopeful twinge in my gut. “I wanted to talk to you. About last Friday.”
“Okay,” I say.
“I don’t think we should hang around each other anymore.”
He doesn’t try to soften it or anything; he just says it. I don’t think we should hang around each other anymore. Before I can even try to get a grip on it, he’s saying more things I don’t really want to hear.
“I wasn’t fair to you. I let you sit with me at lunch and I let you do it for the wrong reasons and I should’ve known better—” He pauses. “—Even if you deserved it.”
My mouth goes dry. “Great.”
“Regina…”
“It’s fine.”
“I just think it would—”
“It’s fine, Michael,” I say.
“I can’t…” He trails off. I don’t even understand why he’s still talking, because I said it was fine. “And you’re really in it, and I just think it’s bullshit. It’s a waste of time.”
“Okay,” I say. “Thanks. I’ll see you—” I laugh. “Oh, wait. I won’t.”
“I’m just trying to give you a reason—”
“My life is bullshit. I got that part. And I deserve it. You don’t need to say anymore. I got it.”
“That’s not what I–”
“Kara and Anna—total bullshit. Got it. And Donnie? That was total—”
I press my fingers to my lips before I realize what I’m doing. It’s like my body won’t accept calling it bullshit because it wasn’t. What Donnie did to me is still with me. It doesn’t go away. A horrified realization crawls across Michael’s face, because he didn’t think that far back, which is okay, because I didn’t deserve that.
But it hurts.
“Regina—” He sounds stunned, like he can’t believe he has to backtrack on his awesome speech about how my life is such bullshit. “Regina, I—”
“It’s fine,” I repeat, stepping around him. “You don’t owe me anything.”
And then Kara shoves me .
It happens like this: I’m heading to class, I walk past her, she shoves me. My books go flying, which is the point, because then she kicks them down the hall. And there’s nothing spectacular about it, even though everyone around us seems to think otherwise. I get my books—by the time I reach them, they’ve been trampled—and walk away without looking back, and then that little voice in my head:
Do something.
The bell rings. I circle the hall. I circle it again, thinking. How does Anna weigh the crimes against the punishments? “Sleeping” with Donnie is worth my total destruction, and Anna thought I was worth Liz’s total destruction, so I look at my books and try to guess how much they’re worth. They’re bent, battered. And I have to factor in embarrassment, too, because it was mildly embarrassing.
I don’t know how long I stand there contemplating it before I realize I’m standing directly in front of Kara’s locker. I’ve been standing in front of Kara’s locker.
Eleven, twenty-seven, three, ten. Her combination. I’ve been armed with it since that day she unexpectedly got her period and had to hole herself up in the bathroom while I got her a tampon. Eleven, twenty-seven, three, ten. My hands tremble. I grab the lock.
Eleven, twenty-seven, three, ten.
It comes undone. I open it. Kara’s locker is painfully neat. The inside of the door is decorated with photos of her after she lost the weight, but none from before. There are group shots of her with Marta, Jeanette, and Anna, and jagged edges mark the places she ripped me away. My eyes drift past her books—they could go into the pool, maybe—to the personal affects lining the shelves, the things you stick in your locker to help you forget you’re in school every time you open it up. I grab everything quickly. This is total suicide, and she’ll know it was me. But I don’t care.
It takes me three trips to get everything to the garbage two halls over.
When I’m done, I feel empty, but only for a second. Because I get it; I do. I get why Anna was my best friend. Why I couldn’t be friends with Liz and why I couldn’t save her and why I couldn’t eat. Why Kara hates me. Why Michael can’t be around me. Kara lost the weight. It didn’t matter. Same school, same teachers, same classmates, same friends. No chance. In high school, you don’t get to change. You only get to walk variations of the same lines everyone has already drawn for you.
So I should just make the best of it.
I’m not even going to bother getting out of bed today .
Anna, Kara, and Marta are huddled behind the front doors .
It’s the first cold day since the heat broke. I stand in the parking lot, waiting for the bell to ring or Jeanette to show, whichever comes first. When they move out, I’ll be able to go in. I wait and wait. My hands are numb and I’m shivering. A blue Saturn and a black convertible pull in at the same time. Anna. Kara. Marta. Michael. Donnie. The moment becomes a contest: Who do I want to avoid more?
Donnie. The others didn’t have their hands on me like he did. I take a deep breath and push the door open. Maybe if I keep my gaze level and stare straight ahead, the girls won’t engage.
“Regina.”
I jerk my head in their direction. Anna and Kara stand shoulder-to-shoulder, Marta slightly behind them. I’m stuffing an antacid into my mouth before I can get my brain to tell my stomach to be stronger than that. Anna’s mouth quirks.
“What do you want?”
Kara steps forward. Every time she asserts herself, it’s unbelievable: I can’t wrap my head around how comfortable she looks. How she can just grow into that skin when she’s spent years cowering and being stupid and worthless.
“I know you were the one who fucked up my locker.”
“I don’t—” my voice breaks, instant giveaway. I hate this. I used to own her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about….”
Kara takes two steps forward. I take two steps back. Anna oversees us, her arms crossed. She loves this. She loves every second of this.
“I know it was you,” Kara says.
She takes two more steps forward, forcing me to back up. Everything about her is predatory, from the curve of her mouth to the glint in her eyes. She takes a quick step forward, and I leap back at the same time the door swings open and nails me in the back, knocking the wind out of me. I stumble forward, glimpsing Jeanette. She high-fives Kara, and the entrance congests. Donnie and Michael and a few others are trying to make it through, and they witnessed the whole thing.