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I shift my focus to Anna. Her auburn hair dances around her face, and her skin is shiny with sweat. And then I watch Kara and my fingers get that familiar itch. Instead of curbing this uncomfortable feeling with pills, I decide to stew, to let their betrayal build until I can hear the blood rushing around my head. It sounds like a dam after spring thaw. The ball goes off-court and rolls my way, and I watch Kara chase after it, laughing, and I’m angry and I need to do something about it. Do something.
It’s a small voice inside of my head. Do something. The ball gets closer. Do something. She gets closer. Do something. I stick my foot out. Don’t do that.
But it’s too late to take it back. Kara’s foot slams into my ankle—it hurts—and she shrieks. Everyone stops what they’re doing to watch her fly. It’s one of those running falls that seems to last forever, too. She stumbles onto the floor, and the sound she makes when she finally hits it face-first goes straight to my bones in a really good way, and in the heavy pause before she starts wailing and everyone else starts buzzing…
I laugh.
I clamp my hand over my mouth, and her audience becomes mine. They’re torn about which one to look at—her or me? Another giggle escapes through the crack in my fingers. I clamp my other hand over my mouth.
Stop. This is bad.
When Kara gets to her feet, furious and red-faced, she’s a mirror image of me. Both of her hands are pressed against her mouth, and there are tears in her eyes.
Don’t laugh.
The room stays quiet. Nelson jogs over to Kara, but Anna manages to get to her first. She tries to draw Kara’s hands away from her mouth, and I remember Donnie, Donnie with his hands over his bloody nose and it’s great, and then the tears come, tears are streaming down Kara’s face and she’s hurt. Kara is hurt. I hurt her.
“What is it, Myers?” Nelson barks. Kara jerks away, shaking her head. A sob escapes her lips, and she walks away from both of them. “Myers, get back here!”
Kara keeps her back to all of us, crying. Anna ventures over, murmurs something at her, and Kara sobs something back and moves her hands from her mouth, and I remember Donnie and the stairs flying past me and the YourSpace page and the books, and however hurt Kara is, it’s not enough. I want her to hurt until there’s nothing there for Anna to comfort. I dig my fingernails into my palm and breathe.
I got to hurt her some.
That’s something.
I just wish she’d turn around and show us all how much. And then she does.
“You did that on purpose!” It’s not obvious—whatever damage I caused. I search her face and can’t find it. “You tripped me! I saw you stick your foot out— owww—”
She covers her mouth again and cries. Nelson blows her whistle in an attempt to reclaim control of the situation and forces Kara to remove her hand.
“Mouth?” Nelson asks. Kara nods. Nelson tilts Kara’s head back and inspects her mouth. I step forward for a better look. So does everyone else.
“Chipped tooth,” Nelson mutters, and I finally see it.
Chipped is an understatement. Half of Kara’s right front tooth is missing, and I wince in spite of myself, because I know how much they hurt. But I stop feeling sorry for her as soon as the picture really registers, because she’s missing half her front tooth. That’s hilarious. Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh.
Laugh later.
“Get to the office, call your parents, see if you can get to a dentist today,” Nelson says. “You’ll need it, Myers. ”
“Ms. Nelson,” Anna breaks in, “Regina tripped Kara. She was laughing—”
Kara nods frantically. “She did it on purpose—”
Her tooth interrupts her. She closes her eyes, clamps her mouth shut, and rides it out. I watch the impression of her tongue bubble up under her lip as she runs it over the place her tooth isn’t anymore. Nelson turns to me, face hard. Her face is always hard.
“Is this true, Afton?”
Everyone stares at me.
“It was an accident,” I say innocently. “She got in the way. ”
Josh’s head whips up. Anna’s mouth drops open. Kara looks ready to explode. Nelson orders her to the nurse’s office and shouts us back to the game. There’s room for me to be on the team, but no one wants me, so I go back to keeping score.
Today, it’s Regina: 1, Kara: 0.
“Donnie’s off the basketball team,” Michael tells me at lunch .
He said it was my call, so I made it. I decided to sit with him instead of hiding in the girls’ room because I didn’t want to run into Liz again. I was nervous crossing the room and making my way over, but he didn’t look unhappy to see me, I guess.
“Basketball was the only thing he loved doing sober,” I say.
“I overheard it in the changing rooms,” Michael says. “They forced him off by threatening to tell his parents he was cheating on the drug tests. I thought of you when I heard it. I thought you’d want to know. ”
“Thanks. ” I want it to feel good, but it doesn’t, because it’s smaller than what Donnie did to me. So he can’t play basketball. So what.
The center table is completely empty. It’s like they all took the day off to go with Kara to her emergency dental appointment or something. Everyone’s talking about Kara’s tooth, and no one is talking about how I like it in the dark. It’s so perfect I wish I’d planned it.
“They made this YourSpace hate group about me,” I say.
It gets quiet—as quiet as it can get in the cafeteria—and it’s unnerving. I don’t know Michael well enough to understand his quiet. When Anna’s quiet, she’s mad or bored. Kara gets quiet when she’s thinking of ways to bring everyone’s attention back to her. When Jeanette gets quiet, she’s spacing, and when Marta’s quiet, she’s sad.
“I know,” he finally says. “I got an invite in my e-mail. ”
“Did you join?”
“No. It’s stupid. They could’ve been more original. ”
Probably.
But it still stings.
Michael grabs his tray and stands. I stand.
“Thanks…” I say awkwardly, gesturing to the table, “…for this. ’
He nods curtly and leaves without me.
I’m sitting at my desk in my bedroom, where there’s a photo of the five of us.
The Fearsome Fivesome.
Me and Anna are laughing about something, and Kara stares at us, smiling, longing to be in on it. She’s there, but she never matters. Marta and Jeanette are in their own little world, forever okay with it because they have each other. I set the photo face down. Behind it is a little box. What I’m looking for.
I reach for it and fumble with the lid and find the notes.
Every year of high school is chronicled in scrap pieces of paper in this box. Our secrets. I save the ones Anna didn’t get her hands on, because I knew what she wanted to keep them for—insurance, and then, if needed, ammunition. I dump the papers on my desk and run my fingers over them, all folded to perfection. I pick one, unfold it, and squint at the tiny handwriting in the margins of some old math homework.
Are you mad at me? My handwriting.
Would you quit asking me that? Anna.
I’m sorry.
I crumple the paper and toss it aside, rifle through the pile and pick another.
Another exchange between Anna and me. Liz is out.
Are you serious?
I’m serious. She’s out.
Rethink this. Please.
Liz is out.
Wait. I trace the letters with my index fingers and close my eyes. I’m sitting at my desk, writing. Please. Please with all of my heart. I slide the note over to Anna. She unfolds it, scribbles down those three words again and slides it back to me. And that was it. I rifle through the notes until someone else’s handwriting catches my eye. It’s so girly, it’s Kara’s, of course. I smooth out
the paper and read. An old one:
I’m at my goal weight. Now I’m readjusting the goal!
That’s all it says. No reply, nothing. It might not have even been for me. Maybe I just collected it. I separate all the papers that have glimpses of Kara’s handwriting on them and push the rest aside. I examine the notes, one after the other.
Can I hang out with you and Anna tonight?
NO.
I don’t even soften the blow. It’s just there, hard lines etched into the graph paper—NO—underlined for effect, in case she didn’t get the message, because Kara never got the message. On the other side of the page, her writing again. One question, no response:
Please?
I close my eyes briefly and reach for another note. I started this one:
Quit sulking. Me.
I’m not. Kara.
Yes, you are. You have been since lunch. So Bruce called you fat—so what?
From the earlier days.
It was humiliating.
You’ve been fatter.
I look awful.
So do something about it.
Like what? Have you talked to Josh for me yet?
I remember that next line:
You can buy diet pills over the counter, you know. You don’t even need Josh.
Really?
Yes. I’ll go to Ford’s and show you. I’ll even buy them for you if it stops you from fucking whining.
I stood next to her at Ford’s while she bought the over-the-counter diet pills. And then, from that point on, I watched her melt. It made Anna happy.
Another:
Are you mad at me?
I can’t talk now.
Just tell me if you’re mad at me.
Yeah, kind of. But I wasn’t. I can see it in my handwriting. I wasn’t. I was just saying it because I liked gutting her. I got harder on Kara after the Liz thing. I was so angry, and she was there. She let me.
What did I do? Kara’s handwriting. What do I do?
I crumple it and push the lot of them off my desk, missing one. I don’t recognize the handwriting edging out into the corners of the page, and then I do.
And I don’t want to look at it but I do: