What I did know—when Ruthie finally stepped out of the car and started loping toward the house with her trombone—was that she looked happy. She didn’t even seem annoyed that I’d been spying. She just smiled and said—casual as can be—“Hey.”
My jaw dropped a foot. “That’s all you have to say?”
“What?”
I gestured to the spot where the car had been. “What was that?”
“That was Carter Benson.”
“Carter Benson…” I repeated. “Carter Benson…” The name sounded familiar. “Wait—Carter Benson the soccer player?”
“Well, I wouldn’t define him that way, but yes, he plays soccer. He also plays the French horn.”
“He doesn’t just play soccer, Ruthie. He’s, like, phenomenal.” I knew this because Kendall and Rae had gone to soccer camp last summer and Carter Benson had been there. They hadn’t shut up about him for weeks. “Carter Benson is your boyfriend?”
Ruthie shook her head slightly. “I’m not a fan of labeling relationships … but Carter is a boy and he’s my friend and we’ve been hanging out for the past couple of weeks, so…” She smiled. “Call it whatever you want.”
The past couple of weeks? Weeks?
I stared at my sister in disbelief. “How could you not tell me?”
She shrugged. “You never asked.”
I pressed the palm of my hand to my forehead, still trying to process this information.
“Anyway, it’s not like he’s the first guy I’ve ever been with.”
“What?”
“Please,” Ruthie said, rolling her eyes slightly. “Why do you think I keep going back to music camp? The institutional cooking?”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out.
“Speaking of which,” Ruthie said, “what’s for dinner? I’m starving.” Then, “Hellooo?”
“Huh?” I snapped back to reality.
“What did Mom make for dinner?”
“Oh. Steak … But I wouldn’t go in there yet. She and Dad are having one of their arguments.”
“What about?”
“Taylor and the photos. Dad’s going off … something about voyeurism and malicious intent and how Taylor has a case … and Mom’s trying to talk him down from the ledge.”
“Oh, those two.” Ruthie shook her head.
“I know. They’re so annoying.”
“No—they’re perfect for each other.”
“Please,” I said.
“Dad’s the fiery, passionate one, and Mom’s the voice of reason.”
“Mom’s the voice of reason? … No way.”
“Oh, yes, she is,” Ruthie insisted. “Dad gets heated up, and she cools his fevered brow.”
“Oh my God,” I moaned.
“What?”
“Have you gone completely mental?”
All she did was smile. “Opposites attract, you know. It’s a tale as old as time.”
A scene from Invasion of the Body Snatchers popped into my head. My father made me watch it once, and it was a terrible movie, but it seemed as good an explanation as any for Ruthie’s bizarre behavior.
“Who are you,” I demanded, “and what have you done with my sister?”
So Unbelievable
I WAS LATE for homeroom because I’d spent the entire ride to school—plus ten minutes in the parking lot—pumping Ruthie for information. How did this Carter thing start? (With a joke about banana chips—you had to be there.) Who kissed who first? (He kissed her.) Where? (The instrument room.) The Q&A went on and on. By the time I got to homeroom second bell had already rung, but only Mr. Ziff seemed to notice I was late. Everyone else was lining up at the door, whispering and jostling each other. I scanned the room for Taylor, but she was MIA.
“What’s going on?” I asked J. P. Melillo.
“All-school assembly,” he mumbled.
“Why?”
J. P. shrugged.
But as soon as we got to the auditorium, I knew. I knew because Mr. Levitt, the principal, was standing at the lectern in his pin-striped banker’s suit, holding a cell phone in the air like a hand grenade. The minute we sat down, he announced that—effective immediately—Millbridge High School would be adopting a “no-phones-on-campus policy,” and that the next hour of our day would be dedicated to the “unfortunate incident that occurred at our homecoming dance on Saturday night.”
Then Ms. Ash, the school counselor, proceeded to give a two-part lecture on alcohol abuse and inappropriate conduct, and Mr. Donovan, the football coach, stood onstage in his polyester shorts and tube socks to announce a zero-tolerance policy against any form of hazing. “Make no mistake,” he declared, poking his whistle in the air for emphasis. “The perpetrators. Of this incident. Are. Being. Held. Accountable.”
“Thanks in great part”—Ms. Ash added, leaning toward the microphone so that her hippie hair flopped in front of her eyes—“to a student in this school who had the fortitude and integrity to do the right thing.”
Everyone started talking at once. The buzz in the auditorium grew louder and louder. “Who’s the snitch?” someone yelled from the back of the auditorium.
“Simmer down, people.” Mr. Levitt banged on the lecturn. “Simmer down!” You could tell he was annoyed from the way his mustache was twitching, but that didn’t shut anyone up.
“The identities of those involved,” Ms. Ash said, gripping microphone again, “are not important. What is important is that we all learn something from this experience. That we become a stronger community because of it.”
“Stronger community,” I said in the darkroom later, imitating Ms. Ash’s yoga teacher voice. “Teachable moment.”
Theo gave me a half smile.
“They should have led those guys up onstage in shackles and let the whole school throw eggs at them…. Better yet, stones. A good, old-fashioned stoning. Now there’s a teachable moment.”
“I think Taylor’s brother already took care of that,” Theo said mildly.
“What?”
“You didn’t hear?”
When I shook my head, Theo told me that after assembly, Jarrod walked straight to the principal’s office and waited outside until Kyle Humboldt, Jason Saccovitch, Owen Porte, and Will Faller came out, and then he started throwing punches.
“No,” I said. It wasn’t the names that shocked me—by third period, everyone in school knew who’d taken the pictures of Taylor—it was Jarrod’s reaction.
“Yup,” Theo said. “Now he’s suspended, too.”
“Oh my God.”
“Yup.”
I shook my head. “I can’t believe El Capitán actually fought back against the Brotherhood.”
“Believe it.”
“You know what?” I said. “You should write about this. Some big exposé about the football team … the hazing … the way they treat girls … There must be a gold mine of material—”
Theo frowned.
“What?” I said.
“What’s the point?”
“What do you mean ‘what’s the point?’ The point is public humiliation. Make them pay—”
“I’m not talking about that,” Theo said, cutting me off. “I mean me … writing … This morning, I tried to explain to my dad again, why I want to take next year off and get an internship … you know, at one of the local papers. I wanted him to know how serious I am about this. And he’s like, ‘Writing is a hobby, Taddeo. Taking pictures is a hobby. It’s not a career.’”
“And what did you say?”
“I said, ‘Tell that to Bob Woodward. Tell that to Paul Krugman. Tell that to Christiane Amanpour….’ He doesn’t get it. He wants me to go into accounting. Or … I don’t know … computer programming. He said he won’t pay a dime to support me after graduation unless it’s college tuition. Can you believe that shit?”
“No,” I said softly.
“My mom gets it. She’s an English teacher…. At least she was … until Becks…” There was a moment of silence,
and then Theo muttered, “I’m sorry. I don’t even know where this is coming from.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
He shook his head, frowning.
“Hey,” I said. “You know what would make you feel better?”
“What?”
I held up both hands, threw a jab, then a cross.
“No,” Theo said.
“No?”
He shook his head. “I know what would make me feel better.”
“What?”
“This.”
As he reached out to cup my face in his hands, I had two simultaneous and contradictory impulses. First, to back away—and then, to slap him.
For a second, I just stood there, frozen with indecision, and then it happened.
Theo kissed me.
And I didn’t pull away.
For a long time that’s all we did—kiss and kiss. And it wasn’t anything like Ryan. Not that I hadn’t enjoyed kissing Ryan; I had. (How can you not when the guy looks like he just stepped out of an Abercrombie & Fitch ad?) But there was always something … I don’t know … mechanical about the way we did it. Tilt head to side; open mouth; stick in tongue; swirl to the left; swirl to the right. Every time, the same routine. But with Theo … with Theo it was nose bumping lip touching tongue twining heart thumping knee weakening body pressing kissing kissing kissing until the bell rang and he took a sudden step back, breathing hard. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling my cheeks flush, and for once I didn’t even think about my graft. My chin, which had been scraping against Theo’s, burned slightly.
“I’ve wanted to do that for a really long time,” he said.
“Really?”
“You have no idea.”
He reached out to smooth down my hair, which must have been sticking up, and then, very gently, he brushed my cheek with his thumb.
I spent the rest of the day in a kind of a haze. I felt like, even with my hood back on, the whole world could tell what just happened to me—like every cell in my body was flashing neon yellow. I wanted to do a hundred different things at once. Hide. Laugh. Cringe. Sing. I tried to focus in class—to absorb what people were saying—but everyone sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher: “Wah, wah, woh, wah, wah.”
Between seventh and eighth periods, I was so distracted that I didn’t even notice Kendall and Rae barreling down the hall toward me until they suddenly materialized in front of my locker.
“Oh my God, Lexi!”
“We’re been looking for you everywhere!”
“We just saw your sister—”
“—and Carter Benson—”
“—totally macking in senior hall!”
“Totally macking!”
“How could you not tell us?”
I glanced from Kendall to Rae and then back to Kendall, who was chomping her Juicy Fruit so violently that I was afraid she might hurt herself. “How could I not tell you?” I repeated.
“Yes!” Kendall twirled a lock of shiny, brown hair around her finger. “It’s, like, unbelievable!”
“So unbelievable,” Rae chimed in.
“Why?” I said. Although disbelief had been my primary reaction, too—Ruthie and Carter Benson? How was this possible?—I suddenly felt defensive of my sister. “What’s so unbelievable about it?”
“Well…” Rae hesitated. “It’s just that they’re so…” She glanced at Kendall who, true to form, completed the thought. “Totally different.”
“Hey.” I shrugged, sliding my biology book into my backpack. “Opposites attract.”
“Lex-i,” Kendall said. “How could you keep this from us?” She shook a finger at me in mock disapproval. “Bad girl.”
And Rae said, “Very bad.”
I told them that perhaps they should call me sometime and I would put them on speakerphone; that way they could stay up to speed on all pertinent information. “It’s really a great tool,” I said. “It’s how I find out everything.”
Kendall and Rae looked confused. They glanced at each other and then back at me, waiting for an explanation.
“That day you called me? From JB’s? You thought you were putting me on mute, but really it was speaker.”
“What?” Kendall said.
Rae’s brow crinkled. “When was this?”
They weren’t faking it; they were genuinely clueless.
Well, what good would it do to rehash it now, when they didn’t even know what they’d done wrong? Maybe Ruthie was right. Maybe they weren’t necessarily bad friends; they just hadn’t known how to act, how to treat me after the accident. Was that all it was? Had I blown everything out of proportion?
First bell rang.
“Never mind.” I sighed. “I have bio.” I shut my locker and added, “Anyway, shouldn’t you guys be a little more concerned with what’s going on with Taylor than who’s kissing my sister? Why don’t you stop gossiping for one second and figure out how to help?”
Kendall and Rae went silent.
I instantly felt queasy, worried that I’d made a fatal mistake—that the two of them would turn on me and make the rest of my high-school experience a living hell. Then I remembered what Ruthie said, about growing a backbone. Translation: Don’t be a wimp. If you speak your mind and people don’t like it, well—
“I thought you hated her,” Kendall said.
I blinked. “What?”
“Taylor. You said the friendship was over.”
“Beyond over,” Rae piped in.
“Yeah, well … that was then. This is now.”
Kendall squinted. “Isn’t that a movie?”
“I don’t know…. Second bell’s about to ring.”
“No. It is,” Rae said as I started to speed-walk down the hall. She scurried after me like a puppy. “We saw it at your house, Lex, remember? It had that guy in it … what’s his name … the hot one who played that coach…”
“From The Mighty Ducks!” Kendall galloped to catch up.
“Emilio Estevez?” I almost choked. “He’s, like, fifty years old.”
“So? He’s still hot.”
“So hot,” Rae added.
I shook my head. “Whatever. My point is that Taylor needs her friends right now. We need to go to her house after school—”
Rae cut me off. “We have soccer after school.”
“Let’s see…” I stopped walking and raised my palms in the air like a set of scales. “Soccer … friend in crisis … soccer … friend in crisis—”
“Okay!” Kendall cried. “We get it!”
“Friend in crisis!”
“Good.” I dropped my hands and resumed walking. “So you guys, me, and Heidi—”
Double groan.
“Heidi?”
“Why does she always have to tag along?”
“She’s so annoying.”
My mind worked overtime, deciding how to respond. Was Heidi annoying? Absolutely. But then I remembered our talk at the track. I thought about how everything got so messed up to begin with: Heidi feeling left out. All the times people made fun of her. Her thinking I lived this charmed life and wanting to punish me by pushing Taylor and Ryan together.
“Listen,” I said as we arrived outside the bio lab. “Heidi is Taylor’s oldest friend. She’s coming. If that means you guys aren’t … well … that’s a shame. Because Taylor could really use your support.” I hesitated, then brought out the big guns. “Jarrod, too. You guys heard, right? He got suspended? He’s stuck at home right now, all lonely?”
“Omigod! Right!” The change in Kendall’s expression was so dramatic—so pure, classic, boy-crazy Kendall—it was almost funny. “Of course we’re coming!”
Rae’s head bobbed. “We’re totally coming!”
“Good.” I didn’t care, at that point, what got them to Taylor’s house, as long as they came. “Meet me outside after school.”
Never Is a Strong Word
AN HOUR AND a half later, Kendall, Rae, Heidi, and I were standing on Taylo
r’s front stoop. All the way here in Theo’s truck, I’d told myself the reasons Taylor was worth forgiving. How she was the boldest, funniest, wildest person you could ever meet—the kind of person who made you bolder, funnier, and wilder by association. Like the time we snuck out of the LeFevres’ house in the middle of the night to rearrange her neighbor’s patio furniture. Or how we’d call up companies to complain about their products, just to get them to send us free stuff. I’d always chicken out when customer service answered, but Tay was fearless. She’d put on this crazed housewife tone and demand to speak to the manager. There was the time in fourth grade when I tripped down the LeFevres’ back steps, hit a rock, and sliced open my knee; Taylor rode me to the doctor on the back of her bike. And the time Brinley Couette—the meanest girl in ninth grade when we were in seventh—called me the C-word, and Taylor gave her a lecture I will never forget, right in the middle the cafeteria. And the time I got my period straight through my white Lucky jeans, and Tay gave me her new Patagonia fleece to wrap around my waist the whole day, even though it was freezing and all she had on was a tank top.
Before I got out of Theo’s truck, I’d rehearsed in my head what I was going to say to her parents. Mr. and Mrs. LeFevre, I know Taylor’s grounded, and I respect that, but this is important.
“You got this,” Theo said as I took a deep breath and opened the passenger door.
“You think?”
“I know.” He gave me a hug for luck, making Kendall, Rae, and Heidi, who’d just clambered out of the flatbed, raise their eyebrows.
“What was that?” Kendall demanded as we were walking up the front walk.
“Nothing.”
“It looked like something,” Rae piped in.
“A whole lot of something.”
“I’ll explain later,” I said. “Stay focused.”
Now, as I stood with my finger in front of the buzzer, I remembered the look on Mr. LeFevre’s face the night of the dance and felt a sick sense of déjà vu. But when I finally got up the nerve to press it, Taylor’s dad didn’t open the door.
Jarrod did.
I don’t know who was more startled, him or me.