Authors: Wendy Higgins
W
hen school started a week later, I knew it was going to be bad. Jay warned me that there’d been a lot of speculation and gossip over the summer about what happened between Scott and me at the party. But I had expected everyone to whisper behind my back at school. Not so much.
I wasn’t comfortable with the attention. It didn’t help that I’d donated fourteen inches of hair to Locks of Love, gotten platinum blond highlights, and had my eyebrows waxed.
Bobby Donaldson, varsity baseball pitcher and player extraordinaire, who’d never said a word to me in my life, approached me at my locker with one heck of a lusty red aura before school started.
“Hey, girl. How you doin’?”
“Um, fine?”
“I’m Bobby. Where you from?”
Annoyed, I closed my locker, swung the purple-and-black bag over my shoulder, and attempted to stuff long bangs behind my ear.
“I’m not new. You know me. Anna Whitt?”
His eyes ran across the features of my face.
“Hot daaay-um, for real?”
I forced my eyes not to roll back, and walked past him. He ran to catch up.
“So you hooked up with Scott?” he hollered over the din of excited first-day voices.
“No, I didn’t.”
I sped up, dodging other hall walkers, but Bobby stayed on my heels.
“’Cause it’s cool if you did. Hey, you wanna go out sometime?”
I stopped so abruptly he ran into a girl passing us.
“It’s just me, Bobby. I’m the same weird, prudish girl that you’ve been in youth group and science class with for the past three years and never talked to. All I did was go to a party and get a haircut.”
“I heard you aren’t such a prude anymore.”
And before I could give a lame comeback about how he’d heard wrong, he tweaked my cheek with his knuckle and headed for his own class. I swallowed down the bile in my throat and blinked back moisture building in my eyes. I was not going to cry because of Bobby. It didn’t matter what he thought. I went to first period.
By lunch it was clear that I hadn’t taken Jay’s warnings seriously enough. The rumors were out of control. I could ignore the stares and whispers, but I couldn’t pretend people weren’t cornering me for information.
What happened with you and Scott? He says you’re making it up about the drugs. Did you really hook up with some guy in a band? I’m having a party this weekend; wanna come?
I told each one of them I didn’t want to talk about it.
I had one class with Scott, Spanish again. He sat on the other side of the room and never looked my way. Even Veronica avoided me, maybe too embarrassed about the BFF stuff. They were the only two people in school
not
interested in talking to me.
I thought I was unsociable in years past, but for the first few weeks of this year I was a recluse. I kept my eyes down and went straight home after school. No football games. No hanging at Jay’s house. And definitely no parties or clubs.
But despite how hard I tried to be invisible, all eyes were on me. Only one person was able to shake me into clarity.
Lena was a shy girl who worked hard and didn’t go out of her way to impress others—traits I appreciated. She usually hid her face behind a headful of shiny black curls and kept to herself.
Lena came into the bathroom after me between classes one morning. Afterward I realized she had followed me. Lena shuffled next to me, leaning into the mirror to check out her creamy skin, catching my eye. We both messed with our hair, and then she bent down to see whether there were any feet in the stalls before speaking.
“I...” She bit down as if mustering courage. “I heard about what Scott McCallister did to you.”
“Oh?” I continued to dig around for some pretend object, surprised she would stoop low enough to care about such gossip, and hoping she would drop it. I almost missed her next words, spoken softly.
“He did it to me, too.”
I tensed and looked up at her. “He did?”
“Well, kind of.” She shuffled her stance, eyeing the cracked wall tiles. “Last year at a party over Christmas break.”
So Kaidan was right. It hadn’t been a solitary incident. Lena’s light gray nervousness darkened with apprehension when I didn’t respond right away.
“I believe you, Lena.”
With that reassurance, her gray worries cleared into the sky blue of relief.
“Did he—” She stopped herself, but I knew what she wanted to ask.
“No,” I told her. “We were interrupted.”
She continued avoiding my eyes, adjusting the book-bag strap on her shoulder. “That’s good. Unfortunately we weren’t. He didn’t drug me. I mean, he talked me into taking it, but afterward he told me I came on too strong, and he didn’t like me that way. He was just trying to be nice.”
“Oh, my gosh, Lena. That’s...” I didn’t know what to say. She looked at me now.
“You’re the only person I’ve ever told. I just wanted you to know you’re not alone.”
“Thank you,” I said.
She nodded and rushed out the door. I stood there thinking for two minutes and received my first tardy ever.
Jay was shaking when he sat down next to me at the lunch table. Band and drama kids sat at the other end.
“Where’s your lunch?” I asked.
“I’m not eating.” His knee bounced as he glared around the cafeteria.
“What happened?” I pushed my tray away.
“Nothing.”
I moved closer, stomach turning. “No, tell me.”
“I have a feeling I’m gonna get suspended.”
“Why? What did you do?” I asked.
“Nothing yet.”
“Is it Scott?”
Jay nodded, mouth tightening at the mention of that name. “You should hear what he’s saying.”
“I don’t want to,” I told him. “He’s not worth getting into trouble over, Jay.”
“I don’t know about that. It might be worth it to shut his mouth.”
I followed Jay’s hateful stare to where Scott stood next to a table of wrestlers, reenacting someone tripping and falling. The guys rewarded him with hearty laughs. I wondered how many girls he’d taken advantage of.
I couldn’t let him get away with it, even though I loathed the idea of confrontation.
“You should tell your scary-ass dad about Scott,” Jay muttered.
“He’d kill him,” I said.
“Exactly.”
I put a hand on his arm. “Listen to me, ’kay? I’m going to say something to Scott, but I need you to promise me you won’t interfere. Just stay over here or go somewhere else.”
Jay was quiet for a moment, rubbing his hands together.
“Jay.”
“Fine. I’ll stay here, but I’m watching.”
I stood up and dumped my tray, then set it on the cart. Scott had moved on to the next table and was sitting across from Veronica and Kristin Miller. I took a deep breath and approached him on unsteady legs.
“Can I talk to you?” I asked quietly, trying not to gain everyone’s attention. Blood thumped in my temples and throat. He eyeballed me up and down over his shoulder as if I’d been rolling around in a pigsty.
“Talk to me about what?” He stood and faced me, using his bulk to make me step back. “About how you’re sorry you lied about me to everyone when all I did was try to be nice to you?”
I took a breath before answering. “Please, Scott, let’s just go in the hall and talk alone.”
“I got nothin’ to hide!” He threw his arms out to the sides.
I had intended to speak with him privately, but if he wanted to make a public spectacle out of us, then so be it. I balled my fists.
“I’m not sorry, because I haven’t lied about anything and you know it,” I said. “I’m not the one spreading rumors.”
“As if I would have needed to drug you,” he said. The whole table was watching and listening now. “You were, like, desperate, hanging all over me.”
I tried not to let his ugliness seep into me. I had to keep my mind sharp. I angled myself away from the spectators, but it had gone silent around us as I responded.
“I thought you were being nice by inviting me to the party, and I did wonder what a guy like you was doing giving a girl like me any attention, but now I understand. You knew that if the truth came out about what you planned to do, all these people would take your word over mine. We both know what you did. Veronica and Kristin know it, too.”
Kristin gave a short laugh like I was crazy; her colors were a muddy orange of amusement at my expense. Veronica’s eyes widened and she looked away, wearing a blanket of dark shame about her. As for Scott, he was cloaked in a swirl of purple pride and gray fear, a dangerous combination. For a split second I thought about willing all three of them to tell the truth. It would have brought me satisfaction, but I refused to hamper their free will.
I lowered my voice to a whisper. “And I also know I’m not the first girl you’ve done this to.”
His eyes hardened. “You really expect anyone to believe that? You’re psycho.”
“Do you always ask psychos whether you can kiss them?”
Snickers rose from the table.
“Yeah, right,” Scott said. “You wish.”
“She’s not lying.” We all turned to Veronica, who’d spoken with bold confidence. But only I could see she was wrapped in the darkness of fear now.
“Shut up, you stupid lush,” Scott said to her. “You and your big nose can stay the hell out of this conversation.”
“You’re a liar!” She jumped to her feet and ran from the cafeteria.
Scott turned his sneer on me. “Everyone knows you’re just a band whore now.”
My palm itched, begging to slap him. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Scott.”
“Oooh!” He shook his hands in the air. “Good comeback.”
“You’re such a fake,” I whispered, “and it’s really sad. You live your life to impress a bunch of people who don’t accept you for who you are. But maybe that’s because
you
don’t even know who you are.”
A bubble of blackness rose up from his depths, hideous and raging around him. His nostrils flared and I dared to take a step forward, speaking low enough for only him to hear.
“You need to deal with that self-hatred, and stop taking it out on innocent people. It’s not too late to be the person you really want to be.” Surprise, guilt, and rusty hope lifted from the dark sludge of his aura. “Good luck, Scott.”
I pushed past him, hurrying toward the exit to the hall. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I found Veronica in the bathroom, brushing her hair with punishing strokes in front of the mirror. She stopped when she saw me.
“I should have called him out sooner,” she said.
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s really not. I listened to him lie about you all summer and this whole month back at school. I kept hoping it would just blow over.” She shoved her brush back into her purse and sniffed.
“Thank you for sticking up for me.” I knew it wasn’t easy going against the crowd.
“I know everything was messed up at Gene’s party, but I had fun with you that night,” Veronica said.
“Me, too.”
Her feelings were only a light fog now.
“I heard about you and the drummer of that band. Is he kind of tall, with brown hair?”
I nodded and she grabbed my arm, suddenly animated again.
“Oh, my gawd, I totally think he was the guy checking you out in the hall at the party!”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.”
“Wanna come over and hang out sometime?” she asked. I opened myself to the pastels of her hope and gladness, letting them surge with my own.
“Sure. Maybe you can help me with my stupid hair.”
I pulled at the long bangs. As she lifted layers of my hair with her fingers, checking it out and complimenting the style, I marveled about the nature of humanity, and how something as lovely as friendship could stem from something so hideous.
There was a lot to be said for having a female friend. My toes looked better than they ever had. Veronica was insistent they be painted if I was going to wear flip-flops. We had some of our best conversations sitting on the floor of her bedroom as she leaned over my feet with a bottle of polish.
“Scott hasn’t talked to me at all since that day,” Veronica said one late October afternoon as she applied a coat of sparkly blue polish. “That’s fine by me, though.”
It had been over a month since the cafeteria showdown. I’d worried that the situation would only escalate from there, but after a frenzied flurry of gossip, Scott dropped it, and talk died down. I heard he was dating a girl from another school.
I’d finally started hanging out again outside of school with Jay and Veronica, but I preferred being at one of our homes instead of going out. I was always on the lookout for whisperers when we went somewhere like the mall, paranoid about my two friends being targeted. Or me seeming too chummy with humans. Veronica swiped more polish across my toenails.
“Tell me what it was like with Kaidan,” she said.
I felt excited at the initial thought of him, and then sad. Sometimes the longing was so overpowering I’d think of him for hours at a time. I told Veronica about our kisses and how he’d tease me in that flirty way. But there was too much I couldn’t explain.
“You still love him, don’t you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “How long has it been since you’ve seen him?”
“Three months or so.”
“We’ve gotta find you a new man.”
“No, I’m good. I don’t want anybody.”
“You still want
him
. That’s the problem,” she said.
I did still want him.
“What about you?” I used the same diversion tactics as I did with Jay, even though I didn’t want to talk about the shady guy she’d been dating.
“I think he’s starting to get impatient with me.” She looked down and started painting her own toes again, which were already perfect.
“You’ve been together only a few weeks,” I pointed out.
“I know, but it seems like it’s been longer ’cause we see each other every day and talk on the phone every night, and last night he said to me, ‘I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s not like you’re a virgin.’” She mimicked his mopey boy voice.
I thought about Veronica’s relationship with Mike Ramsey that had spanned our entire ninth-grade year, and I felt defensive for her.