“Yes…?”
“Well, when my dad’s there, there’s a lot of yelling.” At the Redskins, the Orioles and every other sports team he followed like a maniac. I contemplated my next implication. “And when he’s not, there are other noises.”
“Other
noises?
”
I bit my lip and looked down for a moment before meeting his eyes and delivering what I hoped would be The Silencer.
“My stepmother has…guests. Well, one guy in particular.
It’s…uncomfortable to be around at those times especially, but—” I shrugged “—you know.”
My implication hung in the air for a moment, before he finally had the decency to look embarrassed and avert his eyes.
The truth was, the only objectionable sounds I’d ever heard coming from my stepmother’s room when my father was away were strains of Rod Stewart albums and, on one memorable occasion, the Partridge Family. And, more embarrassingly, her thin voice singing along.
But the headmaster didn’t know that.
The closest thing Meredith had to a male guest was Todd, the f laming interior decorator she’d employed for years who kept trying to leave chintz throw pillows on my bed. Apparently the mess in my room was “insulting” to him.
But the headmaster didn’t know that either.
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P A I G E H A R B I S O N
“Really.” He didn’t say it like he wanted an answer. So I kept talking.
“Um, yeah. I mean I have to see him like five days a week, you know? That’s what makes it even worse.” I tried to look tortured for a moment. It was true; Todd was there all the time. Since Meredith didn’t have a job, she had nothing better to do than to redecorate every room in my house from bottom to top, baseboard to crown molding. I also suspected Todd might be one of her best friends.
I wasn’t sure if that was sad or not.
“That must be difficult,” he agreed, looking hesitant.
I nodded. Now it was time to get back on track.
“Listen, I’m not really comfortable talking about this,” I said, and it was true. “The point is that I think it’s been hard at home, and it’s been hard in class.”
He paused. “I certainly am sorry to hear about your trouble at home, but I still don’t see what one has to do with the other.”
Why wasn’t he letting this
go?
I f loundered, trying to wrap it up in a way that made sense.
“Well, how would you like to have the two people who hate you most
plotting
together about your future for their own convenience?” I was embarrassed at how clear the hurt was in my voice.
But Mr. Ransic had already lost patience. “Miss Duke, I still don’t see what you’re talking about, and the point—”
“What
I’m
talking about
is my stepmother and Mr. Ezhno’s little private…‘rendezvous.’” I was raising my voice a little bit more, not having realized how mad I was about this until now.
All the parent-teacher conferences that Meredith left saying what a “nice man” Mr. Ezhno was, and how “we both” just 2 5
want the best for me, and that this kind of behavior wouldn’t
“cut it in college.”
“I mean, why should I have to suffer because my teacher is, like, in love with my stepmom and he’s trying to impress her or whatever by scheming with her?”
I was practically panting.
“Are you saying—”
“I’m saying it’s
personal,
” I spat. “
Not
professional. Not
academic. Per-son-al.
”
Mr. Ransic finally looked like he didn’t know what to say.
Thank
God.
It was about time he pulled his nose out of my business. Whether it was imaginary business or not.
At last, looking as if he had a speculative grasp on the situation and the fact that Mr. Ezhno and Meredith had something personal against me and that I needed help, not punishment, he said something about his busy day and stood up to open the door for me. I walked out, finally free from being judged.
Two hours later, I was in the locker room with Michelle, one of my best friends. Our gym lockers were next to one another, which was convenient for my venting.
“I
was
seriously
only thirty seconds late. And it wasn’t even my fault! It was his be
loved
Meredith’s fault.”
“Yeah, that sucks.” Michelle pulled on her shorts. She’d had them since freshman year, and they didn’t really fit her anymore.
“You know, you should really buy new shorts this year.
Those are getting a little tight on your hips. I think they’ll order some for you if they don’t have your size.”
I pulled on mine, which I’d been forced to buy two sizes too big because I got stuck with one of the last pairs before I knew they could just order them, and my father had told me to deal with them (his go-to response whenever I complained—it 2 6
P A I G E H A R B I S O N
really sucks that he’s not a pushover). Meredith had said, in that irritatingly sweet way of hers, that maybe I’d grow into them. Yeah, right, like I’d ever let myself go up
two
sizes.
They were constantly slipping down, putting me an inch away from embarrassment every time. “Mine, on the other hand, are huge.” I pulled on the waistband, and looked down at my sneakers through the pant legs.
“Okay, so what happened when you came in late?” Michelle asked sharply.
“Basically, he sent me to the office with this totally stupid note talking about how I’m some kind of menace. Ugh, and he said something about me distracting other students who were
trying to pay attention.
”
I watched Michelle for an aghast reaction, and was disappointed to see her fiddling with the cord on her shorts.
I kept talking. “It was so stupid. So then I had to wait for like, ever, with three of Winchester Prep’s Least Wanted.” I looked expectantly at Michelle again.
She was tugging violently on her waistband now.
“Are you even listening, Michelle? Or are you just going to rip your pants trying to make them fit?”
She looked up, like she’d forgotten I was there.
“Oh, sorry, go on, I was listening.”
I sighed. “So, finally I go in, right, and then I’m about to be super-nice and just say something about how I promised not to be late anymore, and how homework’s been hard lately, possibly start crying, and then…” I paused for emphasis
“…Mr. Ezhno actually
called
the office to tell him that not only was I late but that I was disruptive or whatever.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. So then I knew I was going to have to think fast, and really all I wanted to do was to get out of there, right?
2 7
So I start talking about how Meredith’s always got this ‘male guest’ over.”
Michelle didn’t see my finger quotes, or my self-impressed smile, because she was back to messing with her shorts.
My smile faded and I decided to finish my story, because
obviously
she was incapable of paying attention. “I just complained about how she and Mr. Ezhno were always meeting and stuff, and how he was like in
love
with her, and how everything he does is because of that.” I looked at her. Was
nothing
I said going to get her attention? “And how they’re totally doing it,” I added, just to get a reaction.
“Wait, what?” She looked up.
I glared at her, and a whistle blew to indicate the beginning of gym. Oblivious to the ball I’d just set rolling, I f lounced off to class.
C H A P T E R T W O
The next day, I showed up to Mr. Ezhno’s class on time.
Frankly, it wasn’t in reaction to his threat of suspension, but more just needing to escape my house and Meredith’s sobbing.
If I didn’t hate her so much, I might have asked her what was wrong. I couldn’t stand it when other people cried around me. I always felt guilty, even when I hadn’t done anything wrong.
But seriously, who wakes up at seven o’clock in the morning to cry?
As soon as I sat down, Jillian, my other, more gossip-appreciating best friend, passed me a neatly folded note (she’d been the first one in fourth grade to be able to make origami and paper footballs).
I looked up at her. “You can’t just say it? We have to pass notes?”
It sounded kind of mean, but come on, everyone was talking and class hadn’t even started yet.
Jillian made a face and mouthed, “Just read it.”
I opened the note and started to read the rounded, funky handwriting I’d never been able to copy. Instead, I had total boy handwriting.
2 9
Michelle told me about everything that you told her about Mr.
Ezhno. Is it true?
I nodded and made a gagging face. Her eyes widened, along with her mouth.
Finally
someone appreciated how irritating the situation was. I felt a wave of fondness for Jillian, as I saw how commiserative she was.
As class started, I wrote back, asking her what else had been going on in school. She had some decent gossip, as usual. It was really the main reason I kept her around. Jillian had an amazing ability to remember just about everything. She didn’t use her memory to score high on tests and do well in Spanish class—obviously, if she was talking to me all through class, she couldn’t hear that information to memorize it. She used her memory exclusively to collect and archive everything about everyone we went to school with.
Jillian was going on about the colleges everyone was interested in applying to, and the boy who’d just gotten kicked off the soccer team for having a 1.9 GPA. I had just been about to say something about “getting to the good stuff ” when she mentioned that there was a new girl.
“…1.9 GPA, which is so sad, because it’s only like point-
one
away from being acceptable. Oh! And that new girl is in my gym class, speaking of soccer. She was actually really good.”
I thought of Liam and the girl I hadn’t recognized the day before. “So, wait, did you talk to her?”
“Oh, yeah, she’s
so
nice. Her name is Anna Judge, and she moved here from Maine. It’s actually kind of funny, I kept running into her and Liam yesterday. Seriously, like, all day.”
My opportunity. “Liam?”
I spoke too quickly. Super casual. But thankfully, Jillian never noticed that kind of thing and simply answered my question.
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P A I G E H A R B I S O N
“Oh, right, he was showing her around yesterday. You know how the office, like, assigns you a buddy or whatever on your first day when you’re new?”
“Yeah, go on.”
SPIT. IT. OUT.
“Well, Liam was her buddy. I mean, he was assigned to do it, but I
heard
he volunteered. He was apparently in the off ice picking up some form for football when she came in. He dropped her off at each class, picked her up, ate lunch with her, all that normal stuff that the buddy guides do—”
Or all that stuff that he used to do with me every single day.
“—except he drove her home, too, which they don’t always do.”
No, they didn’t.
They
never
did that.
I spent the rest of the period prodding her for information about Liam and Anna. She spoke delicately, in accordance to my sensitivity on the subject of him. My best friends knew it was a hot button for me. But once she told me she didn’t know anything else, I knew she was telling the truth. Jillian was honest, always. Which was the reason she was the wrong person to tell a secret to, but an excellent person to leak them from.
She did keep talking about how super-nice Anna had been.
Not so delicate.
When the bell finally rang, I was more than ready to leave.
I was the first one out the door, tossing an “Oh, bye!” back to Jillian. I had thought that getting out of the classroom and away from Jillian would be enough to relieve me of having to think about the new girl and her friendship (or whatever it might become) with Liam. But as I walked down the hallway, 3 1
it seemed like her name was on everyone’s lips. Maybe it was all in my head, but even if it was, it was pissing me off.
I ducked into the bathroom, hoping to renew my self-confidence with the reapplication of lipgloss. And there she was.
Miss Anna Judge, the Super-Nice, Surprisingly-Good-Soccer-Player from Maine. Washing what looked like ink from her fingers.
What could be more awkward for me than to stand elbow to elbow with the girl who I had only seen from a hundred yards away but had already devoted so much thought to? Not awkward for her, of course; she didn’t even know who I was.
Oh, my God, she didn’t even know who I
was.
I felt the petty, obsessive, desperate-to-be-liked feeling that had been living in my stomach since I was in elementary school. That was always ready to jump out and whine,
But
what about me?
Whenever I felt it, I’d usually try to say or do something to draw the attention to myself.
And keep it there.
I walked to the other sink, next to her, and started to dig through my bag for my NARS lipgloss.
There was no one at the school who
didn’t
know who I was. I’d worked hard to make it that way. At this point, half the guys were trying to get with me, and half the girls were jealous of that fact or trying just as hard to be part of my inner circle.
I had parties all the time, and everyone knew I only invited the people I wanted to. It didn’t hurt that I had the best pool in Potomac Falls.
Though my dad and Meredith were strictly against alcohol at the parties, we usually managed to spike the punch. Then we’d just claim it was a slumber party, and
that’s
why no one drove home ’til morning. Meredith would spend days planning 3 2
P A I G E H A R B I S O N
the decorations, themed music, (temporarily) virgin drinks and anything else she or I could think of. It was pretty cool of her—not that I could ever get over my issues with her enough to tell her so.
It was even cooler that she would then spend the whole time in her room or out with my father, out of our way.
I redirected my thoughts back to figuring why Anna simply
must
know whom she was standing next to. Surely she’d heard someone talk about me, or something. Maybe someone had pointed me out to her while I was too busy to notice. I pulled out the lipgloss and started applying it, still considering other probable reasons why she simply must know who I was. She was just
pretending
not to.