Firsts (28 page)

“You don’t need to do that,” I tell him, putting my hand on his shoulder. People are watching us. I know what they’re thinking.
Now he’s cleaning her locker. I wonder what she’s giving him.
I don’t want people to see Zach like that.

He flinches under my touch. “Yeah, I do,” he mumbles. “This is what friends do.”

My relief is so immense that I almost can’t keep myself standing up.
This is what friends do
. This is what Zach thinks friends do. And all this time I didn’t want to be his friend. All this time, and I was pushing somebody away who I really never wanted to get rid of.

Somebody who wants to protect me.

But Zach can’t protect me all the time. He can’t save me from the girl who pushes my head down at the water fountain, causing my lips to mash against the porcelain. He can’t save me in French class, when Laura and Britney tell Mrs. Palmateer that they can’t be in the same small group as me anymore because of “personal differences.” He can’t save me from the glare Gus Teller gives me, the one I feel even after he walks away. The Crier. What was I thinking, writing them down?

Worst of all, he can’t save me from the fear that Charlie is lurking around every corner, reveling in the hell he caused.

“I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but this will blow over,” Faye says as we walk to my car after school. But I know she’s trying to convince herself.

Toby Easton messages me to let me know he can’t make our tutoring session. He says a “family thing” came up. I know better. He doesn’t want a tutor whom everybody has seen naked. He’s a nice person, too kind to tell me to fuck off like the rest of the student body. Somehow losing Toby’s respect hurts worse than almost everything else.

My only solace is the MIT acceptance letter. I carry it around in my purse with me, and when I’m alone, I pull it out and read it. I read it until it’s almost etched into my head, until I use it to erase all of the insults, all of the dirty glares and pudding cups flung my way. I use it to remind myself that I’m getting a fresh start. Nobody at MIT will know who I am. Nobody will know what I did. They won’t see the video or read the pages of my notebook. I’ll be another face in the crowd. A number, like I told Faye.

You stood out as one of the most talented and promising students in the most competitive applicant pool in the history of the Institute.

It’s almost funny. Somebody at MIT thinks I’m talented and promising. Try telling that to anybody at this school right now, when the only word used to describe me would be the one on my locker. I guess I underestimated the power of words, at least until now. The words in my notebook, the ones I never thought anybody else would see, the ones that did the kind of damage I never thought possible. The words I wrote in the letter to Angela, if she ever reads them.

I don’t see Angela until Wednesday when she’s getting out of her mom’s car in front of the school. Angela is the only seventeen-year-old I know who didn’t care about getting her license and doesn’t want to learn how to drive. I tell myself to go inside, to turn and leave, but instead I watch her reach into the car and hug her mom. She raises her eyes up and sees me after looking both ways for passing cars. I would rather she just outright hate me than give me the expression she levels at me, something between pity and confusion. She feels sorry for me, for the girl she thinks lied to feel better about sleeping with so many other girls’ boyfriends. I open my mouth as she passes by, but she stares at the ground and leaves cold air in her wake.

“Seriously. This will be yesterday’s news sooner than you know it,” Faye says, wrapping her arm around my shoulder after chemistry class, which I spent staring at the back of Angela’s head, willing her to turn around.

“It’s not going away,” I say, but I’m not thinking about the jeers and the insults and the thrown pudding cups. I’m thinking about what Charlie could have done to me. What his hands are capable of doing to Angela.

Faye and Zach talk at lunch. They’re right beside me at the same round cafeteria table, but I can’t hear them. My inner dialogue is too loud.
Angela hates me. She won’t read the letter—she’ll rip it up. Charlie brainwashed her. If she sleeps with Charlie, she’ll never forgive herself. He won’t give her the first time she deserves.
I push pasta salad around my plate. The yellowish color and putty texture are enough to make me gag.

“You have to eat something,” Faye says, snapping her fingers. “Mercy. You have to eat something. When’s the last time you had an actual meal?”

I shrug. Even that motion is exhausting.

“You need to eat. This is all going to go away, you know. Maybe sooner than you think.” She bites her lower lip.

“Don’t you wonder why I did it?” I say, surprised by the acidity in my own voice. “You must have at least some qualms about being my friend after what I did.”

Faye props her elbows on the table and stares at the ceiling. “I did wonder why,” she says. “But then I figured it out. It’s like we talked about, that time you came to the store. Guys are clueless. They need guidance. That’s what you wanted to give to them.”

Zach casts his eyes downward. I know he wants to say something, but he stays silent.

“I guess now it’s pretty obvious why I didn’t want to be your girlfriend,” I say with a nervous laugh. “You deserve better.”
You deserve Faye
. I know she told me there was nothing going on, but I haven’t forgotten what I saw when I walked into the chemistry lab.

Nobody says anything. Zach doesn’t agree with me, but he doesn’t disagree, either. I know he must think of Faye like that. Now that he knows what I did, he can move on. He can move on with somebody who would never hurt him like I did.

When I get to my locker, somebody is waiting there for me. Somebody I didn’t expect to see here. Jillian Landry, with one foot against the door, holding her books in her arms, her back stooped slightly. Tommy used to carry her books for her, but I guess she won’t let him carry them anymore.

“Hi,” I say in a strangled voice.

“Why?” she says softly. “What did I do to you to deserve this? And you had the nerve to pretend to help me. I thought you actually wanted me to do well.” She’s not crying, but her voice is thick with unshed tears. People stop to listen around us, but Jillian doesn’t pay them any attention.

I try to think of something to say to justify what I did. I remember what I told Tommy when he asked the same question, that night as he walked down my driveway
Why me? Why Jillian?
I had responded,
I just saw a chance to make myself useful.
Now those words are empty, filled with hot air and false promises.

“I did want you to do well. I do, I mean.”

“That’s bullshit. That’s not an answer. Why?” she repeats again. I open my mouth to say something, even though I don’t know what to say, but something else inside me opens instead and I start to cry, big heaving tears that almost hurt coming out of my eyes.

Jillian’s eyes widen and she moves a step closer. Maybe she forgives me. Maybe she gets it, even if she doesn’t understand it. But when she’s right in my face, her eyes harden.

“You don’t get to cry about this,” she says. “You ruined my life. I was ready to give everything up for Tommy. I was even going to follow him across the country for school. Now I have no idea who I spent the last six years of my life with.”

She turns on her heel and walks away, her hair flapping against her back. Jillian will have to learn how to trust people again, and that’s my fault. I took that away from her. And now the one good thing I had going is gone, too. Jillian doesn’t want me as a tutor. Toby doesn’t, either. His girlfriend is probably freaked out, scouring the website for Toby’s name in my journal. I’m not fit to teach anybody anymore.

I almost talk myself out of home economics. It would be so much easier to go home, to lock myself in my bedroom. Angela is in home economics, along with Trevor and Chase. I can’t spend class staring at their backs, or having them turn around and stare at me. But Zach catches me in the hallway.

“You’re not walking out,” he says. “We’re in this together.”

Angela’s seat is vacant, but Trevor and Chase both turn around when I come in. I’m met with a glare from Trevor and a wink from Chase. Trevor is no doubt pissed off that I have ignored his Facebook messages, all six of them that have piled up in my in-box.
You said nobody would find out. What am I supposed to do now? This is all your fault.

Mrs. Hill glances up from her desk when she sees me take a seat beside Faye, purses her lips, and focuses her gaze on the stack of papers in front of her.

“Gross,” I whisper to Faye. “I think Mrs. Hill knows about the video. She just gave me the strangest look.”

Faye makes a face. “She’s coming over here. Don’t look up.”

Mrs. Hill stoops over my desk, a rather unfortunate position because it puts me in very close proximity to her sagging top.

“Mercedes, I found this on the floor. It had your name on the top. I didn’t read it, but I thought you might want it back.” She pushes a sheet of white paper toward me. At first I think it’s an assignment, until I look at the heading.

MERCEDES AYRES’S TO-DO LIST

They’re all there, every single name and nickname, every mean and cold and vulnerable thought. The same pages that Charlie posted are now floating around the school, being passed from student to student.

The color drains out of my face, and I start to feel both hot and clammy at the same time. I try to crumple the paper and hide it in my backpack, but Faye grabs it and heads to the back of the room. I can barely watch whatever it is she’s going to do.

She holds it over the sink, retrieves a lighter from her jeans pocket, and lights the paper on fire. For some reason my first thought is,
Faye doesn’t even smoke
. A hush falls over the class. Zach, who is at the back of the room, stands up and promptly sits down again when Faye shoots him a withering glare. She holds an edge of the sheet and watches the paper curl up while tapping her toe and smiling sweetly. Even Mrs. Hill seems lost for words. She makes little squeaking noises, which may or may not be strings of expletives, until she finally makes a move for the back of the room.

Faye drops the paper, which is by now engulfed in flames, in the sink and turns the water on.

“Detention,” Mrs. Hill shouts. “Principal’s office, right now.”

Faye grabs her bag and winks at me. I wish I were heading to detention with her. It would be better than braving the student population on my own.

She stops at the door. “Just so you all know, there’s more where that came from. She’s not the only one who fucked up, so get off your goddamned high horses.”

Faye will probably get detention for a week, maybe even longer. I get to hear a frazzled Mrs. Hill drone on about hormones and the female menstrual cycle. Even though Faye isn’t beside me, her strength is still thrumming under my veins like a second pulse.
I will get through this. We will get through this.

If only I could believe her. If only there were some kind of chemical formula for this, some tried-and-true solution. But there’s no textbook cure, nothing that equates sleeping with people’s boyfriends with forgiveness.

And there never will be.

34

“It was worth it,” Faye says after school while she walks me to my car. “It’s not fair that you take all the shit for this while the guys get to walk around like nothing happened. They’re just as much to blame.”

“I’m the one who started it,” I say, kicking a beer cap across the parking lot with my shoe. “If I hadn’t started it, nothing would have happened.”

“Don’t let them off the hook so easily,” Faye snaps. “They were coming to you. It takes two to have sex. So don’t defend them.”

I nod, but I don’t believe her. I keep telling myself that I thought I was helping, that I was doing it for them. For their girlfriends. But I know that’s not true anymore.

“It’s going to be okay, you know,” Faye says, reaching out her hand but pulling it back and shoving it in her pocket instead. “Everything will go back to normal.”

This time, I shake my head. I don’t even know what normal is anymore.

A car pulls through the parking lot and up next to us. I can’t see who is driving, but two girls in the passenger side pelt us with fast-food wrappers. A half-finished Coke hits me on the temple and bounces off, not hard enough to hurt, although I doubt that was the intention.

“You’re never getting away with this,” Laura Adams says, her skinny torso hanging out the window. Faye shoots her the middle finger and picks up the discarded can, readying herself to throw it back, even as the car speeds away.

“Don’t,” I say, putting my hand on her shoulder. “I deserve it.”

“You don’t deserve it,” Faye says flatly. “None of it. And pretty soon, people are going to forget all about it.”

I cock my head. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” I say. “What’s that saying—a picture is worth a thousand words? How many words is a video worth?”

“Huh.” Faye’s lips curl into a little smile. “You might be right about that.” She grabs my wrist and glances at my watch. “Shit. I need to get to detention now, or else I’ll end up with more detention.” She blows me a kiss and runs back toward the school. Her hair is being whipped around by the wind and she’s holding onto the back of it with one hand and her bag with the other hand. My heart swells with something I can only describe as gratitude, gratitude for something and someone I’m not quite sure I deserve.

Instead of getting in the Jeep, I decide to walk home. I don’t know how long it takes me, but I imagine Zach taking the same route, day after day, and me knowing nothing about it. How many times did I pass right by him, going too far over the speed limit to notice?

By the time I get home I’m hungry but too tired to imagine making something to eat, so I curl up in my bed. I must have fallen asleep because I wake up to a loud, obnoxious knocking on my door and a loud, obnoxious voice to go along with it.

“Mercy, sweetie, wake up. There’s a boy here to see you.”