Symptoms of Being Human (20 page)

THE CLOCK ON THE DASH
reads 10:42 p.m. when I pull up to Bec's house, and all the lights are out. I try Bec's phone one more time. It goes straight to voice mail. It's way too late to knock on the door—so, using my phone as a flashlight, I walk around the side of the house, fumble with the latch on the gate, and make my way into the small, overgrown backyard. The lights are on in the back window, and there's a small gap in the curtains. I approach the glass and peer in.

It's Bec's room, all right, but it's a disheveled mess: bed unmade, dresser drawers hanging open, books piled on every surface. And there's Bec, sitting on the floor facing away from the window, staring at a framed photo surrounded by lit candles.

Gently, I tap on the glass, and she looks up in surprise. When our eyes meet, I take a step back; her face is drawn, her eyes hollow. Her hair is short and sticks up in clumps, as though
she chopped it off with dull scissors. Finally, she crosses to the window and opens it.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi.” Her voice comes out like a croak, as if she hasn't used it all day.

“Can I come in?”

She looks up at me, glances back at the door, and then sets about removing the screen from her window. I climb through, and she closes it behind me.

“Sorry if I scared you,” I say. Bec shoves aside a pile of clothes and drops onto her bed. “But you weren't answering your phone, and I thought it was too late to ring the doorbell.”

Bec shrugs. “Erik's at my dad's, and my mom took, like, three Ambien. She would've slept through it.”

I lean up against the wall next to her desk. “You look worse than I do,” I say. I hope to tease a smile out of her, but she just nods. “How come you haven't been answering my texts?”

Bec gestures vaguely at the door. “I dropped my phone in the toilet. I didn't want to talk to anyone.” She licks her chapped lips and looks up at me. “How's your head?”

“It looks worse than it is.” I move toward the bed and sit down next to her. I hope she'll take my hand, but she makes no move to touch me. I clear my throat. “I want to ask you about what happened that night.”

As though she's been dreading this, Bec closes her eyes and nods.

“Did you know it was him? Vickers?”

“Yes.”

“Did you tell the police?”

She nods again.

“Then why haven't they arrested him?”

She punches her thigh with a fist. “I
knew
it was him, but . . . that night, Solo and I hardly saw anything. Guys running. A truck pulling away. We couldn't see faces, let alone a license plate. When the detective took our statements at the hospital, he acted like we were wasting his time.” Bec buries her face in her hands. “It's my fault,” she says.

“What are you talking about?”

“All of it. It's my fault. That's why I couldn't talk to you.”

My stomach twists, seeming to understand something my mind doesn't grasp yet.

When Bec speaks again, her voice is low, and she won't meet my eyes. “Erik hacked your computer. He found out about your blog.”

My heart begins to pound. “What?”

“The night you came over to study. When he set up the Wi-Fi on your laptop, he stole your browser history.”

I stare at her. “I don't understand. Are you telling me that Erik is the one who outed me? That he called the reporters?”

“No,” Bec says. “It's more complicated than that.” She lets out a long breath. “Erik had this fantasy of being on the football team. You saw him, working out with that video game. I guess he already knew who you were when you came to the door, because he'd overheard Vickers talking about you. So when I handed him your laptop that night, he saw a chance to get in good with the team. He hacked whatever he could and gave it to Vickers as some kind of bribe.”

I stare down at the patchy brown carpet, trying to process
what I'm hearing. I remember spotting the two of them on the athletic field that day: Vickers, apparently teaching Erik how to throw. I remember Erik digging something out of his pocket and handing it to him.

“And then,” Bec continues, “when we humiliated Vickers at the football game, I guess he just snapped. He had your blog, he knew your name. He must have Googled you, found out who your dad was. Read about the fund-raiser, and then made his plans to get back at you.”

My mind is spinning, my face starting to tingle; Erik knew about my blog and gave the info to Vickers, who waited until the right moment to out me. The moment when it would cause the most damage.

“So . . . ,” I begin, then pause. There's so much, it's hard to wrap my mind around it. “How do you know all this?” I ask.

“Erik told me,” she says. But something in her eyes tells me it's not the whole truth.

“He admitted it to you?”

She nods.

“When did you find out?”

Bec starts to say something, then drops her gaze to her lap.

“
When
?” My voice sounds hard, and Bec seems to shrink from it. She glances up at the door, then back at me.

“The night you came over to study. Right after you left, I caught him looking at your blog. And I confronted him.”

My chest tightens. “So you . . . you read it?” I ask.

Bec doesn't respond.

“Did you
read
it?”

She nods.

“
All
of it?”

She nods again, and suddenly I can't breathe.

“But I made him erase everything he stole,” she says. “I thought it was gone, I swear—but he must have, I don't know, emailed it to himself before I caught him.”

I put a hand on top of my head as if to hold myself down; the room has begun to tilt.

“But he didn't tell me the rest until—until
after
the . . . after it happened. I swear, Riley, I'm telling you the truth.”

But I'm not listening; I can't listen. She read my blog. She knew everything, all along. Her invitation to the Q, our “dates,” what I thought was flirting—was any of that even real?

My heart turns to lead in my chest.

“I'm sorry,” she says. “I should've told you sooner. I didn't think—”

“So,” I interrupt, my voice trembling. “I was just a project to you?”

Bec's head snaps up. “What do you mean?”

“You took pity on me.” Heat rises to my face. “Thought you could ‘fix' me.”

“What? No. Riley, you know that's not how it was. I didn't—”

I stand up, cutting her off. “What do I know? That you invaded my privacy? That you lied to me?”

Bec opens her mouth as if to reply, but only shakes her head.

“And when it really counted, when I really needed you—you couldn't face it, so you ran away.” I shake my head; now I'm the one who's disgusted. “You never liked me for me. You
couldn't save your fucked-up sister, so you thought you'd try to save me instead.”

Bec goes white.

I turn and stride to the closet. I dig my fingernails under the edge of the big rainbow decal on the closet door—Gabi's decal—and I tear at it, ripping it off in strips, shredding it. Something pops in my head—like a water balloon bursting—and I start to scream. My vision goes blurry. The sound of blood pumping through my ears is deafening. I push away from the closet door and stagger back toward Bec, yelling incoherently. My shins smash into the desk chair and I cry out. I stumble backward and kick the chair as hard as I can, sending paperback books flying.

And then Bec is on her feet, wrapping her arms around me, holding me. I thrash against her, slapping her back, trying to kick her, but she just holds me tighter, and my screams turn into wails. My legs give out, and I drop like a rag doll. Bec gets down next to me, not saying anything, just holding me. Just holding me.

There's a knock on the door, and a slurred, groggy voice yells, “Francesca? What's going on in there?”

“Nothing, Mom,” Bec says. “I just had a bad dream. Go back to bed.”

“Is that you yelling?”

“Go back to bed, Mom!”

Her mom mutters a few more incoherent protests, then withdraws. Bec holds me the whole time.

Gradually, my breathing slows. My heart rate goes down. I blink as Bec's face comes back into focus. She looks like herself
again—her eyes are still hollow and her chopped hair still sticks up at random, but she's back in control.

“I have to go check on my mom,” she says. “Stay here. I'll be right back.” She stands and quietly leaves the room.

I cross to the bed, and my eyes find the framed picture Bec was staring at when I knocked on the window. It's a photo of a beautiful, dark-haired, fine-featured child about six years old, wearing a pair of patent leather Mary Janes. It's Gabi.

My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I check the display—it's Mom. They must have discovered I left. With a pang of guilt, I decline the call and text her back instead.

I'm okay. Had to see Bec. Home in an hour. Sorry.

Bec returns with a cold, wet cloth, and I use it to wipe my face as we both sit back down on her bed.

“Is she okay?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Bec replies. “Are you?”

I look at her. “No. I'm pretty not-okay.”

Bec nods, looks away.

“But I'm more okay than your hair.”

She groans and runs a hand across her almost-buzzed scalp. “I'm so pissed I did that.”

“I actually kind of like it,” I say.

She rubs at it again. “I feel like a boy.”

I smile. “I know what you mean. Sometimes.”

Bec smiles back, that crooked smile, and warmth floods through me. I put the cold cloth against the back of my neck.

“I'm sorry I said that. About your sister. And about you.”

Bec shrugs. “You were pissed off.” There's a long silence as the two of us look at each other. Then she says, “When I saw the footage of you online, getting mobbed by reporters outside that hotel, I knew something was going to happen. I called Solo. We went looking for you.”

“He told me,” I say.

Bec's gaze drops to her lap, and she bites at her lip ring. “I didn't know Vickers was going to do what he did. But . . . I thought
you
might do something.”

“Like Gabi.”

“Yeah.”

I glance at the photo of Bec's sister, and a lump forms in my throat. I haven't talked about why I ended up in Pineview since my first session with Doctor Ann. I swallow and look up at Bec. “I already did,” I say. She cocks her head. “Over the summer, I chased a bottle of Xanax with a glass of my dad's favorite Irish whiskey.”

“Why?”

“A lot of reasons, I guess.” I look up at the ceiling. “I was into this guy, Derek. He was my friend, and then I made it weird, and he just . . . cut me off. I wasn't on meds yet, or in therapy or anything, and it kind of wrecked me. I didn't flush my phone, but I threw it pretty hard. Smashed the screen.” I show her; she nods. “Anyway. I was getting ready for one of my dad's big events, like the fund-raiser last week.” God, was that only last week? “Getting dressed up—it triggers my dysphoria. It was especially bad that night, and it snowballed into a full-on panic attack. And I just . . . I felt like it would never end. Like there was no other way out.” Bec nods. I take a deep breath,
and then I just keep talking. I tell Bec about Pineview. I tell her about Doctor Ann.

When I'm done, Bec starts to speak, but stops herself.

“What?” I ask.

“You never told me why you transferred.”

“You don't want to hear that sob story.”

Bec raises her eyebrows. “You owe me at least one, or we'll be out of balance.”

I smile. “Fair enough.” I lean back against the wall. “At Immaculate Heart, I had to take PE—I don't at Park Hills, I used my dad's pull to get it waived.” I glance over at Bec. “I guess that makes me a hypocrite, huh?”

“No,” she says. “It makes you smart.”

“I guess. Anyway, I had to change in the locker room in front of other people. That's when I started having really bad anxiety. I couldn't eat. I lost a lot of weight. By the end of sophomore year I was having panic attacks two, three times a week.”

“Wow,” Bec says. I nod.

“Being undressed in front of other people . . . it's hard. Especially on days when I don't feel like the gender I was assigned at birth, you know?” Bec nods, and I wonder if she ever had this conversation with Gabi. “So I started wearing my gym clothes under my school uniform every day. You can imagine the harassment. One kid asked me if I was Mormon, and was I hiding my magic underwear. Catholic kids, you know? Obsessed with sex and religion.” Bec smiles. “Anyway. One day—this was during the last week of sophomore year—I was changing in the locker room, and three of my classmates came in. They said school was almost out, and before summer
vacation started, they wanted to see the magic underwear.” I swallow hard. “It wasn't enough that I had to wear that fucking uniform every day. It wasn't enough that I changed right in front of them. They wanted to see my genitals.” My voice breaks, and it's a few moments before I can go on. “I refused. So two of them pinned me against the lockers, while the other one pulled down my gym shorts so everyone could see. There were three other people in the locker room, but no one tried to stop it; they all just watched. One kid was about to take a picture when the coach finally came in and put a stop to it.”

I expect Bec to act surprised, or to try to comfort me, but she doesn't, and I'm grateful. I don't want her pity right now—just her listening. And she seems to know that.

“At the time, I thought that was the worst thing that would ever happen to me.”

I watch Bec's jaw tighten. She nods. She gets it. I look out the window at the big sycamore tree just beyond the back fence. The branches are swaying in the strong autumn wind, leaves detaching like skydivers jumping out of a plane.