“She never mentioned you,” he says.
“We were friends,” I repeat. He searches my face for the lie. I sweat it out until he concedes and says, “Maybe.” The bell rings.
“Can I sit here with you tomorrow?” I ask. It’s humiliating having to ask permission to sit at the Garbage Table, and when he doesn’t answer me immediately, I pose the question again with the kind of urgency that makes me sound totally pathetic. “Michael, can I sit here with you tomorrow at lunch?”
“What if I said no?” he asks. My mouth goes dry. You can’t. The cafeteria is emptying. Ms. Nelson stands by the door, waiting for the last of us to leave, but I can’t leave without this one thing and he knows it. “Regina, I don’t care where you sit.”
He grabs his things, gets up, and makes his way out. I stay, staring at the table until Nelson blows her whistle and tells me to “get out there.”
BITCH.
Kara drops the note on my desk on her way to the board to do a few math problems for Mr. Brenner, and her wrist action is so subtle, he doesn’t even see it and he’s looking right at her. And that has everything to do with how short her skirt is.
I crush the note into a neat little ball.
“Well done,” Brenner says, as Kara chalks down the answers to the last problem. He’s staring at her legs like the skeeve he is. Bruce waves his hand around.
“Excuse me, sir? I did the problems with Kara, and she got the last one wrong.”
The silence is delicious. Kara reddens and Brenner blinks, totally caught.
“Maybe you got it wrong, Burton,” he suggests, and waits for the rest of the class to laugh, like, Yeah, maybe. We don’t.
“I doubt it, sir,” Bruce says.
That’s when we laugh. Brenner tells us to be quiet, and we review the problem as a class, and sure enough, Kara got it wrong, so Brenner has to backtrack. He starts babbling about the “mathematical journey” and how the steps you take are sometimes more important than the destination, until he loses his ridiculous train of thought and sends Kara back to her seat.
I stare at the crumpled note, and when she’s close enough, I wind my arm back and whip it at her forehead. She shrieks and Brenner totally sees it, so it’s detention for me, shelving returns in the library after school.
There’s no such thing as justice.
I’m in the library wedging a copy of Flowers in the Attic between two
copies of Persuasion when Liz Cooper and Charie Andrews come in. Proof positive a bad day can always get worse. I back into the narrow shelves until I’m out of sight and they pass by, talking low, and end up in the stacks directly behind me. Charie is a total no one, but Liz is this faded-out yellow-haired girl-ghost I’ve gone to elaborate lengths to avoid because being around her makes my stomach ache. I reach into my pocket and force an antacid between my lips, chewing it in hopes that will make it work faster.
They’re talking about me, of course. I’d be shocked if they weren’t. I get as close to the books as I can and hope they don’t see me spying on them through the shelves. I don’t even know why I’m eavesdropping. They won’t say anything I want to hear.
“Donnie didn’t even show today,” Charie is saying.
“He’s probably out getting wasted,” Liz replies, and she’s probably right. For Donnie, sobriety is a fate worse than his inevitable death from liver failure.
“Did you see her looking for somewhere to sit at lunch? It was totally hilarious. I kept hoping she’d come over and ask if she could sit with you.”
“Why?”
“So you could tell her no.” Charie laughs because it’s totally hilarious. Liz doesn’t laugh, but I almost wish she would. It’s always easier when the people you’ve ruined decide to really hate you—like Michael does–because then your defenses go up and you can’t even really feel the bad things you’ve done. “She sat with Michael,” Liz says.
“He’s too nice.” Charie’s voice is all disappointment. “I caught up with him in history and asked him if she was really upset, but he said she seemed normal. It has to be a front, though, right? She gets kicked out of her clique and they all hate her and Josh dumped her–” I jerk back. I don’t remember that part happening. “…She’ll be slitting her wrists soon enough.”
I swallow. I swallow again. I don’t know what feels worse: Josh breaking up with me without breaking up with me, Charie joking about my suicide, or Liz’s gentle admonition of it—“Charie, don’t.”
“Hey, it could happen,” Charie says. “Anyway, I’ve got to catch Paul. See you.”
“See you.”
Charie flits by my shelves. I wait while Liz rifles through book after book after book after book. After a while, she settles at a table nearby and opens up a paperback. I lean against the shelf and close my eyes. I’m trapped here until she leaves. Facing her is not an option.
“Regina,” she says, and my heart stops. I open my eyes and she’s staring in my direction. “I know you’re there. You can come out.”
I step out slowly. She looks me over, starting at my feet and working her way up to my eyes. I have to force myself to hold her gaze. I don’t like looking Liz in the eyes. It’s stupid, but I’m afraid I’ll see her like the last time I really saw her. Totally broken. I mean, I still see that on her—everyone does. It’ll be all over her until she graduates.
But I’m afraid I’ll see it now like I saw it then.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” I ask her.
“What would I have to say to you?”
“I just thought you’d enjoy this, is all.”
“That still doesn’t mean I’d have anything to say to you.”
The moment should end here, but I’m rooted to the spot. I stare at the literacy poster tacked on the wall behind her head. “Read or die.” I feel like I should be saying something important, but the chance for that has passed. A long time ago.
“The locker was impressive,” she says. “What do you think they’ll do next?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Guess you’ll have to tune in to find out.”
She closes her book. “Well, I’m here every day. But I don’t know, it’s kind of boring. I’ve seen this show before. I totally starred in it once. Remember?”
A familiar, horrible feeling consumes me. I want to tell her it wasn’t easy for me, either, watching Anna torture her every day until the light in her eyes went out. I want to tell her, but that would be dumb.
“Got any tips?” I try to keep my voice light.
She laughs a little. It’s been ages since I heard her laugh and mean it, and even though it’s at my expense, and for a minute it’s so familiar it’s like we’re in her room, giggling about things that don’t mean anything, a really happy moment until Anna would call her cell phone, looking for me.
“Good luck, Regina,” Liz says. “You’ll need it.”
Tuesday, after school
The night air is thick with heat, awful. Every breath in is stale and gross. I’m starting to think this weather will never break. We’ll just choke on it and die.
Josh’s house is strange and lonely looking when it’s not the backdrop for the crazy parties that have made him legend around the halls of Hallowell High. The front lawn is a broad green brushstroke, and the house itself, a picture out of a magazine—tasteful, but flat. I walk the stone path to the front door and push the doorbell.
He answers in boxers and a T-shirt, his blond hair tousled. “No,” he says, taking me in. “No way. I have nothing to say to you—”
I shove my sandaled foot in the door at the exact same time he closes it, hard. I yelp and jump back, sucking in a breath through my teeth before the pain hits, and then it hits. Fuck. He opens the door, his mouth hanging open like a total idiot. Fuck him. I turn and hobble back down the walk.
“Why would you put your foot there?” he demands.
“Because I didn’t want you to shut the door in my face!”
I sit on the steps leading to the driveway and rub my foot, tears in my eyes. Josh walks over and stares me down, looking every inch the asshole that he’s turned out to be. The saddest part is, it’s not even that much of a surprise. Josh is stupid-smart. Knowing him, he probably severed all emotional ties to me when I stopped being his girlfriend and started being a social liability.
“Are you okay?” he asks, like it’s the last thing he wants to ask.
“I’m fine.”
“Okay, good. Now get off my property.”
I stare at him. “Are you kidding me? You’re not even going to hear me out?”
His cell vibrates in his pocket. He takes it out, glances at the screen, and sighs. “Lynn Parks wants Adderall for resale because the other girls are too scared to buy from me, even though it’d be cheaper.” He shakes his head. “I could get these retards Percocet and they just want Adderall.”
That is not the thing he should be saying.
“Fuck you, Josh.” I get to my feet. “You totally—”
He shoves his cell back in his pocket. “Okay, okay. Regina, just—wait. I’ll hear you out, Jesus. What, did you think I’d be happy to see you after you fucked Donnie?”
I didn’t sleep with him. The words are stopped by a dead-sick feeling in the middle of my chest. I didn’t sleep with him, he tried to rape me. I open my mouth and close it again, while Josh stares at me expectantly, waiting for me to speak.
But I can’t.
In the washroom with Anna, it made sense to just blurt it out; I didn’t have a lot of time. But Josh is, like…not Anna. I need to think of a way to say it that doesn’t betray the feel of Donnie on me.
“He tried to…Donnie tried to…”
My tongue gets too thick to talk around. A tear slides down my cheek. I wipe it away. I don’t want to cry in front of Josh. “Tears? Come on.”