I stare at the floor. Tears spill out onto my cheeks. I wipe my eyes.
“God, Regina, I don’t understand you. This is the only thing that could have happened. You think you’re making easy choices, and every single time you have a good thing, you ruin it. Because you’re a coward. Don’t expect me to feel sorry for you.”
“It’s not like you wanted me to have it,” I snap. She snorts. I grab the edges of the counter and try to get myself up but I can’t. And I can feel how pathetic it is and I know how pathetic it looks. I can’t get up and she’s just standing there. I slam my palm against the floor. “Why are you even here if you’re not going to help?”
Her mouth drops open. She looks away from me, ashamed. I’ve never seen that on her face before, and I don’t even know how I managed it, until she says, “I wanted to see it.”
It’s such a bitch thing to say.
But I get it.
“Okay,” I mumble. I don’t care anymore. I grab the counter a second time and finally manage to get to my feet. I lean on it. My mouth is dry, parched. I run the water cold and dab it on my face. It makes me painfully, painfully awake. “If you feel like it, tell Michael not to—tell him not to come to school on Monday.”
“What? Why?”
“You tell me. You know everything.”
I take a hard step on my right foot, the one with the cut, and wince. I just want to get past Liz, out of the washroom, go home, and die. She grabs my arm.
“I’m not telling him anything if you don’t tell me why.”
I bite my lip. This is not about me and Liz. Michael.
“They have his journal,” I tell her.
“What? Michael has his journal. I’ve seen it.”
I shake my head. “They stole it. Anna made photocopies and returned it before he knew it was missing. She’s going to plaster it over school.”
She stares at me. “He has his journal, Regina.”
“I saw the pages.” My voice cracks. “I’m not telling you what they said. But there was something in there that could get him expelled—”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care if you believe me.”
“You could be lying just to—just to get me to feel sorry for—”
“He wrote that he wanted to kill everyone in school,” I blurt out. Liz’s eyes widen. “They’re going to give it to Holt and say it’s a death threat. Do you know what that could do to him? I don’t lose anything if you don’t tell him.”
I push past her bony frame. The space between the stalls and the sinks is too narrow, and the corner of the counter rams into my kicked side. I make a dying-kitten kind of sound and curl in, one hand on my side, the other on the counter.
“Regina—”
“Just look.” I manage. “You wanted to see it.” I leave the washroom and make my way down the empty hall. The bell rings at the exact same time I push back through the front door. My toes cringe at the reintroduction to the cold pavement. But this is nothing.
Nothing.
I climb the stairs to my bedroom and study my reflection in the full -length mirror mounted on my closet. My jaw is tender to touch, but I think it’s going to be okay, because Anna can’t hit. But Kara can. I lift my shirt so I can see the damage. There are already bruises forming, abstract works of art across my abdomen and what I can glimpse of my back.
I raid the mirrored cabinet over the sink in the bathroom. My fingers travel over antacids and prescriptions until I find the Tylenol with Codeine and I take three of those, and then I crawl into bed.
Everything hurts.
I don’t want to go to school today .
I get dressed slowly, but I don’t want to look at myself. I don’t want to see it on me.
Bruises always look the worst when they’re healing.
I pull the edges of my sweater down and grab the bottle of Tylenol on my desk. I shake two pills into my palm. I probably don’t need them. It doesn’t even hurt like it did. Not totally. I take them anyway.
Mom and Dad drink their coffee at the kitchen table. Get ready for work. I stay at the kitchen sink, quiet, staring out the window. It’s cold out. It looks cold out.
Anna’s probably already taken care of it.
I wonder if it will be big.
I hope he’s not there.
I turn away from the window and grab my book bag. “Be careful in gym,” Dad says, nodding at the bruise on my chin. He smiles a little. “Next time dodge the ball, huh?” I nod. Mom looks up from her coffee.
“Going in already?” she asks. I nod again because I can’t speak. She gives me a thumbs-up. “That’s great. Have a good day, honey.”
I count steps on the way to school—283. School is 283 steps from my house.
When Hallowell High comes into view, I feel fourteen again. It’s the first day of school and I’m scared. I’m standing in the middle of the parking lot. Anna bounds over to me and she’s excited. It’s the first day of school and she’s a lowly frosh, but she’s ready to take this whole place on. She claimed it as hers before anyone else got the chance, and we gave it to her because she was the only one who looked like she knew what she was doing, and I just went along with it because I didn’t know.
I spot her Benz at the front of the school. They’re here. I stalk across the pavement to the front doors. My pulse thrums in my ears, a prelude to a panic attack. I grip the door handle and pull it open. It’s like my finger on the trigger.
My finger is on the trigger and—
Bang.
The school is quiet. Distant ghost-footsteps reach my ears. I jog up the stairs to the lockers, and there’s nothing. I expect journal pages taped to the walls, shoved in lockers, everywhere. But the school looks like it always does.
I don’t believe it. It’s an illusion of peace. I hurry to my locker and spin the dial. Here. It has to be here. It’s not just his torture; it’s mine. It takes forever to get the right numbers, my hands are shaking so badly, but I finally get it and I pull the lock off and open my locker and—
Nothing.
But she’s here. I saw the Benz. They’re here and they’re early and they’re ruining lives because that’s what they’d do. That’s what she told me she was going to do.
I check the washroom. The empty changing room. The entire school is mine; it’s so early, and I find nothing. How many ways can they do this?
I’m not clever like Anna. I’m missing something important.
The school begins to fill up. I listen to snatches of conversations, hoping for some indication, someone else finding it first, but there’s nothing. I wander the halls. It gets busier, busier, busier. The busier it gets, the more bodies I have to contend with.
I glimpse Michael at his locker and he’s okay.
I hide while he opens it up and wait for it— this, is it, this has to he it —but nothing. Nothing happens. He just stands there, and this is any day. A normal day. He pauses, like he knows he’s being watched. He does. He looks around. I back into the alcove and count to ninety, and when I look again, he’s gone.
The bell rings. I stay in the alcove while the morning announcements start. If it hasn’t happened by now, this is a slow build, a painfully slow build to it. Girl-bombs getting ready to go off and leave us all in pieces. I make my way down the hall and push through the door to the girls’ washroom and Anna is there, staring at her reflection in the mirror. Her hands are on her makeup bag, but she’s not moving. She’s just staring at herself.
I back into the door, the handle jamming into purple-yellow-brown skin all over my back. I wince and turn, pulling the door open so I can leave.
“Come to gloat?” she asks.
I let the door handle slip from my grasp, but I keep my back to her and keep my mouth shut. I stare at the fading blue paint on the door, chipping around the edges.
Come to gloat?
I don’t understand what that means. “What are you talking about?”
She turns her head and takes me in. Checks me, I know, for remnants of what happened last Friday, but there’s nothing she can see from where she’s standing and nothing I’m willing to show her. Her eyes search mine, and then she laughs, softly.
“You don’t know?”
What don’t I know. She went straight to Holt. Michael will leave quietly and without a fight. That’s not like her. Public humiliation is way more her style. She had a change of heart? I shake my head slowly.
I don’t know.
She unzips her makeup bag and rummages through it, but her usual morning makeup routine seems lost to her. She starts with the lip gloss usually, but now it feels like she’s just looking for something to do with her hands.
“I’m done with you. I’m done with Michael. Your little friend, Liz—” She laughs and shakes her head. “She threatened to go to Holt about what I did to you. Hilarious.”
The words settle in slow, twisting my stomach. I stare at Anna, my mouth trying to form a reply, but nothing comes out. I don’t—I don’t believe it.
“But the photocopies—”
“Liz has them and I said I’m done with you.” She finally finds the gloss. “Go.”
“Just because -Liz won’t go to Holt now doesn’t mean I won’t,” I tell her. “I can still go to Holt. Show him the bruises.”
She drops the gloss back in her bag and I notice she’s trembling; she’s afraid. She knows I could go to Holt and I’d have her. I would have her.
But I want something better.
“You’re scared,” I tell her. Anna. Scared. She gives me a look that could kill. “You always said none of this matters, and you’re scared.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says tightly. “But it’s good practice.” I have never hated anyone so much in my life. I never will again.
I pull the door open and step out into the hall.