Mel frowned, and when the bell rang, he bolted into the hallway. Beth looked so pissed that I laughed out loud. She didn’t even glance at me, of course, but Caro did. Her eyes were narrowed and unhappy-looking.
“He probably went to look for Patrick,” she told Beth. Her eyes were wide and happy again.
“Yeah, I know that, Caro. I don’t know why Mel still hangs out with him. What are you wearing to the party?”
“I don’t know. I totally need your help.” She smiled, jammed her book in her bag, tossed her hair back, and walked out with Beth. Still the perfect follower except her left hand, hanging by her side, was curled up tight, an angry silent fist. I walked behind her and Beth all the way down the hall, and Caro’s hand never unknotted.
That’s when I knew why yesterday happened.
Yesterday, when Caro followed me, when we hung out, Mel and Beth were already together. They must have hooked up after the movie, and I’ll bet anything that yesterday morning was when Caro found out. It would be just like Beth to wait and tell her at school. To say, “Oh, I thought I told you! I mean, everyone totally knows already,” and then give her every single detail so she could watch Caro’s face. So everyone could see Caro’s face.
Caro came after me to get away. That’s why she was so upset. It wasn’t because of what I said and later, us hanging out—it wasn’t about me. It was about her wanting to pretend she wasn’t going to go along and act like everything was fine. I was safe to talk to, safe to vent at. It was middle school all over again, except this time she didn’t even have to worry that Beth might find out. The thing is—
The thing is, I thought Caro maybe wanted to be friends. Not hang-out-in-school friends or anything like that, but just…I don’t know. That maybe we might talk sometime or something. I thought—I thought we did talk yesterday. I thought we talked for real.
I am so stupid.
124 days
J,
I swear, today has actually been three days. Every day has been like that lately.
Things with my parents are horrid. We’ve talked about me skipping school (How’s it going now? Do you think you know why you skipped?) so much I almost want to tell them about Corn Syrup to get them to shut up. But I don’t want their pity, J. I want them to just stop trying. They keep looking at me, smiling these brittle, scared smiles, and I can’t stand it. I want them to stop acting like…I want them to stop acting like they want to be around me. I want to tell them I haven’t forgotten what I told them about what I did to you and I know they haven’t either. I want to ask them why they won’t mention it. I want to scream at them to call me what I know I am and get it over with.
I just called your house. A fake female voice answered, the phone company politely telling me, sorry, the number I was trying to reach had been changed. The new number wasn’t given.
Before, when I called, at least I knew the phone would be answered, you know? I’d hear your mother’s voice. I could pretend. Now I don’t even have that.
I want to go downstairs and stand in front of my parents as they sit nestled together on the sofa. Why can’t they be like normal parents and drift through a room without noticing the other person is there? Why do they always have to be so together? Why is it when they look at me I want to scream until my voice is gone?
I want to force their mouths open, make them say the word murderer.
Why won’t they say it? Why can’t they just get it out there? I keep thinking about that. The why. Why they won’t say what we all know is true. Why I did what I did. Why I thought getting you to see Kevin cheating on you was a good idea. Why, when you got so upset, I thought getting in your car and leaving was a good idea. Why I took your hand and smiled at you, said that everything would be okay. Why did I do it? Why?
I don’t know, J. I don’t. All I know is this:
You never should have been my friend.
FOURTEEN
TODAY STARTED OFF OKAY—for it being a school day, for it being 125 days without Julia—but in English, things started sucking because Beth smushed herself into our group. She must have given the teacher, Ms. Gladwell, some crap story—I wasn’t listening—but when I looked up from my copy of Huckleberry Finn (way less boring than The Scarlet Letter) she was there, grinning at Mel and saying, “Caro, can you squeeze a desk in for me?”
It had better not be a permanent thing, because what followed was pure torture. Beth giggled. She swished her hair around. She whispered to Mel. She whispered to Caro. She did the “we have mysterious hand gestures that make us giggle” thing.
She has a brain in that rotten head of hers—whenever Mrs. Gladwell came around to check on our discussion, Beth would say something about the book that was pretty smart. That’s the nicest thing I can say about her. She’s evil, but she isn’t stupid.
Beth should have some redeeming characteristics. At least one, anyway, because she is theoretically human. But there isn’t a single good thing about her. If anything, she’s even more of a troll than I remembered. For instance, every time Mel said something to Caro, she’d give Caro a look, an “I can ruin you in thirty seconds if I want or if I’m bored” smile.
So of course Caro never did more than mumble, “I don’t know” or “I haven’t really thought about that part of the book yet.”
After a while, Mel gave up and tried to talk to me and Patrick. I said I hadn’t done the reading even though I had (no way did I want to get sucked into a conversation with Beth). Of course it didn’t work because Beth said, “Amy, you didn’t do any of the reading?” really loudly so Gladwell would hear and which got me a “Stay after class, please.” Patrick just laughed when Mel asked him, which I wished had been my answer.
Hearing Patrick laugh was strange. Aside from that night in the basement, I’ve never seen him look anything but tense or angry. It’s like he’s always on edge.
And the laugh itself? It sounded like…well, it sounded like he’d forgotten how to laugh.
Naturally, Beth made a face at him, and then she and Caro whispered to each other, which meant Beth looked at Patrick and me and said “Freak” loud enough for us all to hear. Corn Syrup blushed but nodded along like some sort of stupid puppet.
I wished the ground would open up and swallow them both, and looked over at Mel.
He was giving Patrick a look. A look kind of like one of Julia’s, actually. The “Amy, don’t start in on Guy X because I’m getting some and I like it and you’re always PMSing about love anyway” one. (Except, obviously, guys don’t PMS about love. And, for that matter, neither do I. Julia was the one who did, who’d get mad whenever I tried to explain that love isn’t something anyone should want.)
Anyway, even though I thought Mel was a jackass for being with Beth, I couldn’t help but smile. That look just reminded me so much of Julia. Plus, it was nice to know he wasn’t completely oblivious of Beth’s inherent trollness.
After class, Gladwell “talked” to me about “staying the course” and “working to my potential.” It’s like every teacher I have has some sort of “ ” manual to use when talking to me. She finished with, “You have so much going for you,” which was the dumbest thing anyone, even Laurie, has ever said to me. I knew it was a sign the day was only going to get worse.
Naturally, it did. First, Gladwell’s lecture hadn’t taken long enough, and I still had to deal with part of my lunch period. I went to the cafeteria, grabbed a veggie wrap, and waited in line to pay even though my usual seat at the reject table had already been taken by mustache girl. Her seat had been taken by suit boy, who’d lost his seat to an overflow of ninth-grade girls who’d gotten invited to the jock table and were being leered at by the seniors. Fresh meat for the slaughter. I almost felt sorry for them.
Why do people think being with someone is the answer to everything? Julia hated it when I said stuff like that, but I can’t help it. Thinking about one person will just turn you into my parents, and all you have to do is look at them to see that love doesn’t gi
ve you a perfect life. In their case, it gave them me.
I paid for my “food,” and even though I’d wished mustache girl would suddenly realize she had that thing on her lip and then rush off to bleach it, she hadn’t, and so I had to wander around trying to find a seat. I passed Beth’s table as I was making my way over to what looked like a vacant chair at the end of the choir table.
Yes, that’s what I’m reduced to these days. Hoping the freaking choir people won’t tell me, “Sorry, you can’t sit here.” I know it’s what I deserve, but it’s…it’s hard.
Beth was talking away about her favorite subject—herself—and so of course everyone was making appropriately excited hand gestures of joy. Except Corn Syrup. She really…wasn’t. I mean she was trying, but she clearly wasn’t into it. She looked tired. Sad.
I smiled at her. It was stupid and I don’t know why I did it. I guess maybe I was thinking about the stuff she said when we hung out, and how awful English class had been today. How Beth acted when Mel tried talking to her in class, threat wrapped in a smile. How defeated Caro had sounded when she’d talked about her.
How she’d said the last real conversation she’d had was years ago. With me.
Caro started to smile back, but then—well, she realized what she was about to do, and a look of terror flashed across her face. It was like I was a little kid again, standing there as she turned away, turned to Beth. I can’t believe I forgot, even for a second, that she’s still the same moron she always was.
I made myself move then, made myself walk off. I told myself it wasn’t like I’d expected anything different, but I guess part of me had because I felt…I felt like I used to years ago, before Julia came along. She never would have done anything like that to me. She—and drinking—made me shinier, stronger. Julia was always there for me.
And then I knew, suddenly, what I had to do.
I dumped my tray and left the cafeteria. I heard people saying stuff—there she goes, whisper whisper—but for once I didn’t care. I knew how to get rid of the poison Laurie had put inside me with her questions about Julia. I knew how to remember what was real. I knew how to see the way me and J truly were again. I’d finally thought of something to bring a little piece of her back.
I went to what used to be her locker and I made it Julia’s again.
It felt so good when I started that I wished I’d done it sooner. I’d thought I couldn’t before. I was afraid. But it was nothing to reach up and pull down all those stupid stars and messages. It was easy.
“Do you want some help?”
It was Patrick. I’d been looking around as often as possible, checking to make sure no one was in the hall, so I should have seen him coming. I mean, he’s a big guy, built like the jerk jocks that shove through the school making sure everyone knows they’re around. He’s not like that, though. He moves like he doesn’t want to be seen. It reminded me of that night, the one where I didn’t see him until I tripped over him and then moved closer and closer, holding on tighter and longer than I ever have with anyone.
He wasn’t standing super close or anything, but I wanted him farther away. I wanted to block him out. Block memories. His skin. His breath skittering over my ear, my throat. His question to me that night at the movies, about who I used to be and did I miss her, that girl that once was.
“I’m fine,” I said, and my voice—it shook. It cracked. Outside I am tall, but inside I am so small. So weak.
“She wasn’t really a foil star poetry kind of person, was she?” he said, and pointed at the flood of fake stars and words scattered around my feet.
“Nope,” I said, grinding one shoe into a heart sparkling with Beth’s name. (No message, of course. Just her name—BETH—in glittery letters.) And then, when I realized what he said, “You knew her?”
He pulled a star off her locker. “Not really. But she…she stood out. And we talked once.”
“She never told me.”
He handed me the star. I waited for him to say something else, but he didn’t, just unpeeled and unstuck and caught the door after I yanked it open. It smelled like Julia for just a second, a hint of her under the scent of glue and ink spelling out messages she’d never see, and I felt dizzy with how much I missed her.
I stuck one hand inside to steady myself and found something. On the top shelf, wedged back in the corner, I found a pot of lip gloss, one Julia bought when we went to the beauty supply store with her mom’s credit card the day after Thanksgiving last year, the one she loved in the store but hated when we got outside because instead of deep red it was a dark brownish orange, a shade no one could ever wear.
I remember when she put it in her locker. “To remind me,” she said, “that everyone makes mistakes. Even me.” Then she grinned, so wide, and pulled out two little liquor bottles.
She waved them at me, teasing, and then we snuck into the bathroom. She laughed when I reached for the second while I was still drinking the first, and I laughed too because I knew she’d give it to me, knew Julia would—
“Amy?”
I was holding Julia’s lip gloss so hard that I’d cracked the case, and color had smeared across my palm like sickness on my skin. I stared at it, but it didn’t go away. I wanted Julia to come along and smile, make me take my sleeve and rub my skin clean. I wanted Julia to make a face at the lip gloss and toss it over her shoulder, not caring if it landed in a trash can or on the floor. I wanted her there.
I wanted to know why Julia never said anything about my drinking. I’d lied to Laurie. Whenever I threw up or fell down Julia never said a word. She would help me back up. She would get me water. She would pass me tissues or paper towels or an old sweater from the back of her car. She would do all that, but she never said a word.
She would always hand me a bottle when I asked.
Patrick touched my hand and I looked at him. He looked startled, was staring at his fingers sliding across the color marking me like he didn’t know his own skin.
“It’s broken,” he said, and even though I saw him speak, his voice was so quiet I could hardly hear him. His hand was freezing, his fingers like icicles against my skin. I pulled away from him.
“It’s hers,” I said. I said it again, louder, but there was no one around to listen. He was already gone and I just stood there, Julia’s lip gloss melting into my skin.
Giggles found me, still standing there, after the bell rang. She marched me to her office. She made me wash my hands. She wouldn’t give the lip gloss back. When she was done talking at me and said I had to go see Mr. Waters, I saw her sweep it off her desk and into her trash can.
I felt something twist sharp inside me when she did that. Why did that one small piece of Julia have to go? My vision spotted yellow and black, and I wanted to scream, “Give it back. GIVE IT BACK!”
I didn’t. I wish I had. I fixed Julia’s locker, but that’s nothing. Nothing.
Mr. Waters said my parents had been called and then told me he wanted a 2,500-word essay about respecting others.
“Because of your, uh, situation,” he said, glancing at Mrs. Harris to make sure he was saying the right thing, “I think this would be most helpful to you. And we do want to help you, you know.”
He didn’t ask why I did it. No one did. No one asked, and no one saw that I just wanted to bring part of Julia back.
FIFTEEN
130 DAYS.
It feels like nothing and forever at the same time. I’d ask Laurie about it, but there’s no point.
I wish I didn’t have to see her every week. I wish I didn’t have to see her at all. I guess Mom or Dad (probably both) must have called and told her about me skipping school and the locker thing because the first words out of her mouth as soon as I sat down were, “Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on at school?”
Yeah, like I needed to hear the pen clicking about that. I ignored her and fished around in my backpack instead. I wished I’d taken one of the waiting room magazines, because then I could have read
it in front of her. All I had with me was homework—which I wasn’t desperate enough to do—and the notebook I write to Julia in. I pulled it out and clicked my pen a few times.
“We can talk about something else, if you’d like,” she said, and I smiled to myself. I knew the pen clicking would work.
“How about your notebook?” she said. “I’ve noticed you always have it with you. What’s it for?”
“Nothing.” I tried to make my voice as bored as possible, so she wouldn’t keep asking about it.
She looked at me. I looked back. She clicked her pen (argh!) and said, “All right, let’s move on. I’ve asked you to think about Julia and your friendship with her, and we’ve discussed certain events.”
Meaning the…she meant that thing we’d talked about before, and I wasn’t doing that. No way. I jammed the notebook back into my bag and wished it was her big stupid head.
“You look upset,” she said.
“I’m fine,” I said, and looked at the clock. Still forever to go.
I wished Laurie would just shut up and put me on drugs. I’d take anything to avoid dealing with her every week. They tried that when I first got to Pinewood, actually. Put me on antidepressants. The first one really messed with me—I spent two days in the bathroom in what was called “severe gastrointestinal distress.” (Only doctors would have a fancy name for that.)
Then I got put on another pill, only that one made me so nauseated that I couldn’t eat. Or rather, I could, but then I’d just throw it right back up. I refused to take anything after that, but the med people called my parents (called a “consultation,” of course, so it could cost more) and suggested some stuff I’d never heard of.
Well, when they did that, my mother, who never met a subject she couldn’t research to death, said she wanted to think about it, and called back later that day to say, sorry, she didn’t want her daughter on antipsychotics, thank you. I definitely wasn’t crazy about taking something like that either (ha!), but the next day I had my first session with Laurie, and by the end of it I was willing to take anything to get away from her and her questions. I told her that the med people had suggested some drugs and I’d go ahead and take them and skip out on therapy.