by Val Emmich
She waited for me to think it through, but I didn’t care how rational or convincing she sounded. I didn’t believe any of it.
“I know what this is about,” I said. “I know. You can’t stand that I’d rather talk to him than you.”
She remained seated. She didn’t feel like fighting. Honestly, neither did I.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. Saying it unglued a part of me that was barely held together.
She heard my ungluing, moms and their ears, and she tried to come to me. “I didn’t say you did. That’s not what this is about. I’m just trying to check in with you, that’s all.”
“I can’t,” I said, retreating to the hall.
“Where are you going?”
I reached the foot of the stairs and stopped. There was no hiding up there.
“I can’t be here.”
“What do you mean?” she said, following me.
“There’s nowhere for me to be.”
By the front door, a pile of shoes. My feet dived into stiff canvas.
Mom arrived. “Stop this. We’re having dinner.”
“I’m not hungry.”
The door opened and the cold rushed in.
“You’re not leaving this house.”
She tried to take hold of me, but I was already out.
“This is insane, Tegan. Walking around in this. Why do you have to be this way?”
I turned on the walkway.
“I just wanted to talk to him. Is that so bad? Why’d you have to ruin that?”
Under the porch light, arms crossed, she had no answer.
So I went, and I didn’t look back.
10:50 PM
After tonight’s earlier failed attempt at dinner, I’m finally sitting down to eat. Mac and I are on the floor in the back room. It’s quite a spread, the best worst food I’ve ever seen. Mom’s hot soup would really be the cure for my icy bones right now, but that’s obviously not an option. This convenience store supper is warming up my soul just fine.
“You live in that white house on the corner of Becker, right?” Mac says.
Registering my shock, he explains, “I used to be friends with Blake.”
“Right, Blake Lewis,” I confirm. “He lived next door. His family moved to Texas.”
“This was in, like, third grade. I just remember he had one of those huge arcade basketball games in his basement.”
Mac waits for me to agree, even though I was never in Blake’s house, let alone his basement. Still, I nod like I know.
I sit cross-legged while he stretches his legs out wide, the mouth of Pac-Man ready to gobble me up, except there’s ample space between us. Having already wolfed down his first energy bar, he tears the wrapper off the second with oblivious ease. I usually have to break into snack bags with my teeth or a set of keys. Tonight a pair of museum scissors was my ladylike tool of choice.
“You got any siblings?” Mac says.
It seems his mind is still on his brother. Why else would he ask me this question?
“Only child,” I say.
“Look out.”
“What? I can get along with others.”
There’s doubt in his smile. “Which others?”
I start naming people—“Isla Sheppard, Brooke Mandelbaum”—until I realize he was only teasing and never expected me to start listing my friends one by one. I feel extra shame knowing how withdrawn I’ve become with my oldest friends these past few months—my fault, but also theirs.
“I see you with that guy. Neel, right?”
It’s starting to get weird how much Mac seems to know about me.
“Is he your boyfriend?” Mac asks.
Frappuccino dribbles down my lips. “My boyfriend? Neel Singh?”
I’m flattered that Mac thinks I have a boyfriend and a little insulted that he believes it’s Neel. It’s not that Neel is ugly, far from it (he’s got thick, lustrous hair that most girls would kill for); it’s just that he’s Neel.
“He’s just a good friend,” I say, laughing it off.
Those words—just and good—feel like betrayals. Just makes it seem like I don’t really care about Neel, and good is a downgrade from best.
Isla and Brooke have wondered the same thing about me and Neel. I guess the two of us being in a secret romance together is the only explanation they can come up with for why I might choose to hang out with him over them. Their lack of insight about the situation is part of the problem. But anyway.
Does it mean something that Mac is curious about my relationship status? He’s such a skilled conversationalist, moving effortlessly from one topic to the next, that it’s hard to know what to make of any one thing he says.
He seems to be gearing up now for another question as he sips a protein shake. I’m starting to wonder whether this is strategic: If he’s the one always asking the questions, he never has to answer any.
“I think it’s my turn,” I say.
He wipes his lips. “Go for it.”
I have so many questions to ask Mac Durant. I should start small, but I already know where he lives, that he has one sibling, and that he works at Sneaker World. I guess I could ask him—not that it’s consuming me or anything—but I could ask whether he’s seeing anyone. That wouldn’t be outrageously presumptuous and random, given that he just asked me a similar question, right? I mean, I’m only curious, since we’re talking.
But there’s a more pressing question in my brain. “Are you like this with everyone?”
He pushes aside his empty food wrappers, finally satiated. “Am I like what?”
“I don’t know. You just seem…”
I already started, so I guess I have to say it. “Before tonight, I honestly didn’t think you knew who I was.”
He stares at me. A driver’s license would list his eyes as brown, but only because there’s no shorthand for the color they produce, this warm, sun-beaming gold.
“I know who you are,” Mac says.
I shove a whole Oreo into my mouth. A theory that I had been avoiding all night announces itself: Is it possible his arrival tonight was not a coincidence? Did he mean to find me here?
“Last year there was an assembly,” Mac says, pushing his sleeve up and scratching his forearm. “Some motivational speaker guy came and gave a talk. You remember him? He wore a bow tie.”
“Right,” I say, nervous about where this is going.
“He was talking about this kid who jumped off a bridge. He said maybe it could’ve ended differently if the people in his life reached out. I looked around, and it seemed like no one was listening. People were on their phones or making jokes. The guy was pretty goofy, but I was trying to hear him out, and I felt like I was the only one. Until I looked across the gym and saw you.”
“Me?”
He confirms with one slow nod.
I wipe cookie crumbs from my lips.
“I just remember your eyes were glued to the guy. Like, what he was saying mattered to you. Maybe it didn’t, I don’t know—but the way you looked, it sort of matched how I was feeling in that moment.”
I remember the assembly and even where I was sitting. At some point, I probably noticed Mac on the opposite bleachers, but I have no specific memory of seeing him. The fact that Mac was across the way noticing me and that he could sense even a little bit of what I was feeling is absolutely ludicrous. It’s true the speaker’s story had connected with me. Not in a dangerous, life-or-death way. It left me feeling disconnected and lonely—surrounded by hundreds of people but anonymous, unseen. Turns out, in that very moment, I was literally being seen.
Mac runs his fingers through his messy hair, messing it up even more. Not in that self-aware way guys do. He doesn’t care about what his hands or his hair is doing. His mind is preoccupied.
“There’s so much superficial shit going on at school. I just don’t have time for it,” Mac says.
I nod in a natural and not-at-all-anxious way. “I know what you mean.”
/> His eyes won’t let me go. “I thought you might.”
The horror: I assumed he was shallow, and meanwhile he saw the depth in me. I grab another Oreo and twist off the top.
“Hand me one of those, will you?” Mac says, stretching closer.
I throw him a cookie instead. He catches it easily, as if there’s nothing I could throw at him that he wouldn’t accept. But I can’t tell what, if anything, truly penetrates his surface.
I ask him, “What’s your way in?”
He shoves the whole cookie in his mouth. “My way in?”
“Yeah. Your weak spot. Your Achilles’ heel. If someone wants to win you over, what do they have to do?”
His full cheeks need time to make room. He gives the question serious thought.
“Just be honest,” Mac says. “That’s it, really. Anything fake, I can’t stand.” He reaches for the bottle that he brought from home. It’s been waiting ominously by his side this whole time. “That’s sort of why I ended up here.”
He twists the cap off the bottle, and the motion twists my insides.
A quick sniff. He tilts back his head and swallows. He looks horrified as he extends the bottle to me.
“You’re not making me want to try it,” I say, accepting the torch.
His voice gets caught in his throat. “It’s rough. I’m not going to lie.”
The label reads SMIRNOFF. It’s vodka. I feel weird drinking when I already sense where this is going, but I also know that I won’t be able to get through it without a little numbing. I blow out air, a deep-sea diver going down. A rushed, big gulp, and I’m coughing.
Mac laughs with compassion. “You all right?”
I insist that I am, even though I can tell my face has turned as red as my sweatshirt. I’ve only drunk vodka mixed with soda (at Isla’s once; her parents pretended not to know).
Recovering feebly, I offer my verdict: “It’s delicious.”
I give him back the bottle. He feels its weight. “I don’t really drink,” he says. His glee fades, jaw tightens. A fog sets in, that same darkness he arrived with tonight and seems to only temporarily keep at bay.
He brings his knees in, the heels of his shoes kissing the floor. A curling up. It creates more space between us, but I suddenly feel crowded in.
“My mom was supposed to pick me up from work, but my dad showed up instead.”
Hearing this, I wish I hadn’t given up the bottle just yet. I may need more numbing. Like, immediately.
“In my house, any sudden change of plans is bad news,” Mac continues. “They had a fight, I guess. My mom left and went to stay at my aunt’s.”
He pauses, perhaps wondering whether he should stop before he begins. His arms dangle over his knees, his fingers strangling the bottle’s neck. He checks my face, and whatever he sees convinces him to go on.
“Ever since my brother left for college back in the fall, things have gone to shit. He started drinking again, my dad. He had quit for a few years.”
He brings the bottle up and hovers his nose over its top.
“I could tell from the smell coming off him. Even before I got in the car, I knew. The way he meant to unlock the door but lowered the window instead. How the radio was too loud.”
Mac lowers the bottle to the floor but keeps it in his grasp.
“He started driving and I heard a sound, something dragging on the road. In the mirror I could see snow shooting up behind us. I asked him what it was and he shrugged it off. We got to the house and I saw the mailbox, what was left of it. He didn’t say a word, just pulled us into the garage. I got out and saw this big dent in the bumper where he must have backed over the mailbox. I started cleaning it up. I didn’t know what else to do. Meanwhile, he’s in the driver’s seat, engine running, blasting some song he loves, not a care in the world.”
Mac stares into the clear bottle, seeing things, but not quite feeling them. He doesn’t look like he needs a drink to be numb.
“Then the garage door starts coming down and I’m thinking, great, he’s going to get himself killed.”
He breaks for a time, leaving me to sit with that image, his father’s fate in the balance, at risk of carbon monoxide poisoning.
He takes a second drink. This one goes down smoother. He passes me the bottle. I wait before drinking, unsure whether I deserve to blunt the sting of what Mac is revealing.
“It’s been building for months. Back in the fall, there was this one night…”
I go ahead and take the drink.
“My team finished in second place. Coach took us all out for dinner to the Cheesecake Factory. We spread out over a few tables. At some point I look over and there’s my dad, seated at the bar. He wasn’t supposed to be there. He had been at the game that afternoon, and I’d already said I was getting a lift and would see him at home. He must have found out that some of the other parents were planning to hang at the restaurant until we finished. But he wasn’t with the other parents. He was by himself at the bar. There was nothing I could really do about it. I just tried to ignore him.
“Near the end of the meal, we heard this loud crash. Our goalie points to the bar: ‘Bro, is that your dad?’ He was lying on the floor, flat on his back, the barstool knocked sideways. Coach told the team to sit down and finish eating. I went over to help. Another parent offered to drive him home, but I called a car instead. I felt like I should go with him, so I missed the end of the dinner. My mom had to bring him back for his car the next day.”
I’m certain now that I don’t deserve any dulling of the pain, but I drink more anyway, and when I’m finished, I push the bottle as far away as it’ll go.
He leaves it where it is. He brings his knees in tighter.
“It’s the same shit my brother was dealing with for years, but I was clueless about it. I sort of knew, but I didn’t really know. I was spared somehow. I guess just from James being there.”
This last bit feels new even to Mac, a discovery in the moment. He stares into space, conjuring images I can’t see.
“Then there’s the fakeness,” Mac says. “I’m trying to help my dad off the floor of a restaurant and one of my teammates is sitting there fucking filming it and the video gets sent around. I don’t know who did it, but someone knows. Now I’m supposed to get on the field with these guys? Not going to happen. I had to quit. I had no choice.”
Mac shakes his head, still trying to make sense of it. “Anyway, I’m guessing you saw the video.”
I remain quiet.
“Seems like everyone did,” Mac says, resigned to the fact. “It got posted by Nightshade and spread from there.”
He looks at me a second time. He’s bared his soul and he needs me to say something.
“Yeah,” I tell him, sinking through the floor. “I think I heard about that.”
You don’t want to hurt people. You just want fairness. Unfairness is the natural way, one person born like this, the rest born like that. One parent is here, the other… And so, fairness is a job that humanity takes on. That you take on.
You’re focused on the Finley Wootens of the world. The elite. The privileged. The coasters. The ones who get all the attention and don’t deserve it. Those blessed with too much this or that—resources, ability, luck. The popular, pimple-free, fit, cocky, joyful, comfortable, protected, applauded, desired, gifted. Whatever they are, the rest of us are not. And that’s not cool. Not anymore. And they should know it—that it’s not cool anymore.
You go after them one by one, the same way you went after Finley. You’re still on a wild high after taking her down, not hesitating, just typing, typing, typing. Using the new anonymous account you created for this sole purpose, you call out all the fakeness, arrogance, and hypocrisy you see around you. Like how the self-righteous environmentalist grabs the hugest stack of napkins at lunch and tosses most of them unused in the garbage. (Not even in the recycling can!) Or how snooty fashionista Ana’s recent passion for long dresses might have something to do with get
ting her name tattooed in cursive on her calf and the long rising swoop after the second a looking awfully similar to the letter l. Or how the principal’s saintlike pet vapes every day with the custodian behind the computer lab between fourth and fifth periods.
Nightshade is a private account. Your profile pic is a LEGO knight figure. There are no posts on your page. You’re commenting on what other people post. You don’t create content; you destroy it.
And shockingly well. At school you hear people react to your commentary. On social media, they discuss it like the new season of a popular series.
Nightshade strikes again!
Has to be a student. The things they know.
Definitely. I have my guesses.
This person is evil.
Relax. It’s harmless.
Harmless? Are you crazy? This is wrong! It’s harassment!
I know I shouldn’t laugh, but it’s hard not to.
You wouldn’t if it was about you.
Anyone else paranoid they’ll be next?
Totally! Second guessing everything I post!
I’d be honored to get the shade.
Don’t encourage this loser.
Too late.
I don’t think I’ve ever hated someone so much in my entire life.
Same.
I disagree. This guy’s a genius.
Amen!
The stir you’ve created makes you nervous. Proud, too, honestly, because you’re not only affecting what people talk about, but how they behave. In public, at least. The environmentalist stops wasting napkins. The principal’s pet curbs his vaping. Still, did you go too far? Years of pent-up hurt and frustration burst out in a firestorm of verbal fury. You just couldn’t hold it in any longer.
People send threatening messages to your account. What surprises you is that the majority of the hate you receive isn’t even aimed at you. These messages are from people who have hurtful things they want to say about other people, and they want you to say it so they don’t have to. You’ve tapped into something. Touched a nerve. At first you ignore these requests. You want no part of them. You’ve gone far enough. But something gnaws at you. A deep craving rising to the surface. Quiet for so long, you now have a voice, and people are asking you to use it. Why deny them? Why deny yourself?
