by Erin Gough
“That was because you’d published that article about me and Harriet in the paper!”
“Which I would never have done if only you’d told me what was going on between you and her—and I don’t just mean the storeroom thing, I mean Amelia Westlake, too. That’s what good friends do, Will. They talk to each other.”
I open my mouth to rebut her latest argument, but Nat pushes herself off the wall. I watch her angle through the crowd toward the stage and her boyfriend.
I can’t help thinking she’s being unfair. It’s not like Harriet and I were secretly dating. It’s not like I’m even in with a chance.
I look over to the dance floor again, and there they are—Harriet and Edie. Something rattles in my rib cage like a secondhand car.
What am I doing, daydreaming that Harriet Price will ditch her perfect life and make a getaway in the passenger seat of the shit box that’s mine? What is wrong with me?
Seriously, what the fuck?
The facts are right in front of me. For Harriet, tonight is not about taking a stand. It’s about her realizing a long-held dream: to be queen of the bloody prom. She’s at the center of the picture with her perfect partner. This moment—her and Edie on the dance floor—is what she’s been striving for. Operation Formal has nothing to do with anyone else, least of all me. None of our operations have had anything to do with me. Harriet has practically engineered every one. I’ve merely been a vehicle, her cover and, if need be, the one who’d take the fall for her.
The worst of it? Even though I know this, it makes no difference. I have taken the fall and will again, if it comes to that.
Harriet “preppier than a canvas beach tote” Price. Tennis champ. Math star. Private-school pinup girl. Harriet Price, who lives in a house the size of a suburb. Harriet Price, the girl who is—almost in spite of herself—one of the kindest, most generous, most principled people I’ve ever known.
It doesn’t matter that she’s with someone else or that she has the power to do me over and probably will. It doesn’t matter that we are objectively, spectacularly ill matched. I have moved beyond distaste, then beyond mere indifference, then beyond liking, then beyond infatuation. The place I’ve arrived at is as intoxicating as it is consuming, and I see no way of giving it up.
chapter 32
HARRIET
I turn away from Edie to find Will in the crowd. I finally see her, pressing her weight against the double doors.
She is leaving.
Light from the street spills in through the opening as she walks out of it. The doors slam shut.
Edie stretches out a hand to pull me back into a hip grind. I bat her away.
“What’s wrong with you tonight, Bubble?”
“Nothing. I’m perfectly fine.”
Doesn’t Will realize I did this for her? I rearranged an entire function to make sure she could be here. It is not even eight o’clock at the scene of Amelia’s greatest victory yet. What is the point of our victory if she is not here to taste it?
“You’re acting really moody all of a sudden. Is it the music? I know this isn’t our favorite type.”
“Remind me, Edie, what type of music do we like again?”
“There’s no need to get catty.”
“I’m serious. I’m interested to know what I’m interested in. Nothing playful or political, obviously. We’ve established that.”
My girlfriend peers at me with confusion, and I peer right back. It sounds strange to admit it, but I cannot remember doing this before—staring directly into Edie’s face. She looks suddenly unfamiliar. Not a single feature provokes my affection. I try to recall which of her qualities appeal to me, but I draw a blank.
“Hey! Where are you going?”
When I get to the bar, I order a kamikaze. I throw it back and order another one. That’s when Edie grabs my arm. “Harriet. You’re acting very strange. You need to talk to me.”
What can I say to her? That I’ve forgotten who she is to me, or why we’re together? That this isn’t how I imagined my night of nights turning out?
Of course it isn’t. It is a different venue, with different music and different food. None of it is anything close to my original preparations. That is not the problem. In fact, I like how different it is.
The problem is how I feel, but also how I don’t. There is no joy, no triumph. Not without Will here to share it.
“Just tell me what I can do to make things okay,” Edie says, so gently that I am tempted to forgive her for everything.
I tell her to take me home.
chapter 33
WILL
Out in the mottled dark, a salty smell streams off the harbor, mixed with the stench of cologne, perfume, and spilled beer.
Friday night in the Rocks: what a party.
I walk. Up under the bridge, where car wheels hit the hinges of the road above. Past the harborside hotels. Past the Museum of Contemporary Art and its deco facade casting long shadows like something from a 1920s horror flick.
It doesn’t take long to reach Circular Quay, with its tourists and fluorescent lights and children with rainbow-colored ice cream. A ferry honks. Water laps at the pier. I could jump in, surrender to the weight of its swell. I am exhausted enough to consider it, but I have somewhere to be.
Past terminals two through six, past buskers juggling bowling pins while break dancing, past the opera crowd devouring forty-dollar fish-and-chips at candlelit tables.
I approach Dish carefully from the side. I check my watch. Five to eight. Then I clock her. Croon, just meters away. I slip into the shadow of a pillar.
She is standing outside the foyer, surrounded by a small group of teachers. All of them have made an effort: formal gear, makeup, the works. It’s almost touching. Hadley is there, too, his hair gelled into a peak. My warm feelings evaporate.
A head turns in my direction, sees me. Bracken.
We lock eyes for half a second. I feel strangely calm as I wait for her to raise the alarm.
Instead, she looks away. She says nothing to anyone. I breathe out deeply and slip further into the shadows.
“It makes no sense.” I recognize Fowler’s voice. “Where could they have got to? A whole year group!”
“Are you sure this is the right place?” It’s Deputy Davids.
“Of course it is.” Fowler again. “This has to be another one of their awful pranks.”
“No need to get so worked up,” Bracken soothes. “They’re just kids having fun.”
Good old Bracken.
“Are you having fun, Deidre? Because there’s about a thousand other things I’d rather be doing right now,” mutters Fowler.
“If it’s some sort of prank,” says a man I don’t recognize, “how did no one know it was afoot?”
Voices talk over each other. It’s impossible to hear what they’re saying. They reach fever pitch.
“All right, all right,” says Croon wearily.
The man pipes up again. “There’s no point going over this tonight anyway. It can wait till next week’s board meeting.” His voice is sharp.
There is a brief silence before the group begins to talk over each other again.
Croon holds up her palms to quiet them.
I’ve heard enough. I’ve risked a lot by simply being here. I push off the pillar and find a crowd to blend into.
chapter 34
HARRIET
“What do you mean, you haven’t done them?”
It is Monday morning. Edie is poised on my front doorstep, where with one hand on the frame, I am struggling to remain upright. It is odd that I am so tired given that I spent most of the weekend asleep.
I don’t know why, but as soon as Edie dropped me off after the formal, all I wanted to do was close my eyes. I slept so late this morning that I haven’t even had a chance to brush my hair. By contrast, Edie’s ponytail looks extra smooth, if a little higher than usual. Her uniform is freshly ironed. Her knee-high socks are so aligned that she may have used
an actual tape measure.
She is here to collect her notes for the National Public Speaking Competition, which I have completely forgotten to do. Again.
“Is this about Friday still?” she asks. “I wish you would tell me what got into you.”
“I’ll prepare the notes tonight,” I say. “I’ll make it a priority as soon as I’m home.”
Edie’s mouth becomes a circle. “Tonight’s no use. The competition is this afternoon.”
Oh dear. How could I have forgotten it was today? My mind has become a sieve. “Then I’ll do them at school,” I say. “In my free period. I’ll duck out and Uber them over to you.”
She narrows her eyes. “I’m relying on those notes, Bubble. You know that, right?”
“Yes, I do,” I say, hearing the tetchiness in my voice.
“You promised you’d do this one thing for me.”
“I understand.”
“I hope so. Because Bianca Stein is still looking for a doubles partner.”
What a sly fox she is. “I’ll get them to you by twelve thirty. You have my word.”
chapter 35
WILL
Mondays never fail to suck, but this one sucks harder than most. From the moment I arrive at school, everywhere I go people are crapping on about Harriet’s formal.
“It was, like, the perfect mix of relaxed vibe and occasion vibe,” Kimberley Kitchener is saying two lockers down when I collect my textbooks before roll call.
“Who needs a sit-down dinner of overcooked fish and floppy cheesecake?” Zara Long chirps as she and Inez Jurich walk behind me in the corridor. “Burgers are the way of the future!”
Seriously, these girls need to get out more.
Yes, Croon deserves to be humiliated for giving in to the bigoted school board. But I’d personally rather forget about Friday night altogether.
I resolve to spend the day hiding out in the art studio. However, at three minutes to nine I make the mistake of ducking into the common room to borrow a packet of assorted cookies to take with me.
“Will!”
She is perched on the couch with a stack of debate cards on her lap. She has a fountain pen poised over the top one. She is also staring at me in a way that makes the breath leave my body, and for a moment I think I have everything wrong.
Then Harriet opens her mouth.
“Where did you end up on Friday night? I noticed you left pretty early.”
I balk at her brightness, and the way her upbeat tone makes her question mere inconsequential chatter. Suddenly I don’t want to be in a room with her. “Best not to talk to me in public, Harriet. Remember the rules.” The words come out snarkier than intended.
She blushes. “Oh! I guess they still apply, don’t they? It’s just with everything that’s happened…”
I glance at her debate cards. “Are they for Edie?”
This is my attempt to change the subject—to make things less awkward—but obviously I’ve done a pretty bad job of changing the subject and a pretty good job of making things more awkward. Harriet looks helplessly down at her lap. “Yes,” she says. “I promised to help her with her competition today. I have to get these to her by twelve thirty.”
“Or?”
Harriet’s look of discomfort intensifies. “Or she’ll dump me from the Tawney team again.”
That Edie: what a keeper.
I keep my sarcasm to myself.
The loudspeaker above Harriet’s head suddenly crackles, even though it’s too early for roll-call notices. Someone coughs into the microphone. “Attention everybody. An emergency announcement,” says Deputy Davids. The speaker squeals loudly. “An emergency announcement,” she repeats at a lower volume. “Year-twelve students are to report to the Assembly Hall immediately. I’ll say that again. Roll call will be conducted in the Assembly Hall this morning for all year twelves. Attendance is compulsory.”
By the time Harriet and I have walked to the hall in awkward silence, pretty much everyone has arrived. Deputy Davids is fussing about at the foot of the stage marking names off a roll, and when she isn’t fussing, she’s playing traffic controller, guiding girls toward the front rows. It’s clear this isn’t her event—she’s merely the warm-up act. No prizes for guessing who’s starring in the main part of the show.
We haven’t said anything to each other, but I’m sure Harriet knows as well as I do what this is about.
“This could get heavy,” I warn her as we pass through the doors.
“I know.”
“We need to think about what we’re going to do.”
“I know.”
“So. What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Harriet says, before adding, “Let’s split up.” She peels off from me and practically gallops down the front to where Liz Newcomb is already seated.
There is sense to her approach, but still.
I find Nat in the third row. I hesitate before sitting next to her. After our conversation on Friday night, I’m probably the last person she wants to see, and I’m not sure I want to see her. But sitting somewhere else would be completely weird.
“This is it, isn’t it?” I say, sitting down.
I can tell she’s deciding whether to speak to me. “They don’t know a thing,” she says finally.
“What makes you so sure?”
Nat glances at me. “The fact we’re all here. It’s as close as they can get to narrowing down the culprit. They’re hoping to force a confession.”
“But surely they’ll start with me.”
“They know it’s bigger than you.”
“How?”
Nat shifts in her chair. “My guess? Because nobody’s snitched. Which means Croon suspects there are more people in on it. If it was just you, somebody would have snitched on you by now.”
“You reckon?”
“You’re not exactly Miss Popularity around here.”
“I see you’re still mad at me,” I say. “Just for the record, I think you’re being bloody unfair.”
She turns to face me properly. “I know I was.”
“You do?”
Nat nods and relief sweeps through me.
“It makes sense you didn’t tell me about Harriet,” she says. “She’s with someone else. And things between you and me were… unclear.”
“Exactly!”
Nat pauses. “The whole Amelia Westlake thing is a different story, though.”
I hear an edge to her voice, and it scares me. “What do you mean? I thought we’d resolved all of that. When we let you”—I lower my voice—“get in on the game.”
“I’ve been doing some thinking since then,” says Nat. “A lot of thinking. The fact is, you deliberately kept the whole thing from me so I’d publish your cartoons.”
“Which was wrong,” I admit.
“You jeopardized my position at the Messenger.”
“Yes.”
“I could have lost my newspaper. Lost the chance to use that experience to get into journalism. Which is all I’ve ever wanted. As you know.” Her voice is cold.
“Yes,” I say, quieter this time.
“I’ve been thinking about it for weeks now. Trying to find a way to forgive you, I guess. I know you haven’t had much experience at friendship.”
She’s not pulling her punches today. Nat can be cruel, but she’s never been this cruel to me. “I’ve had friends,” I say, my voice weak.
She gives me a level stare. “You mean from your old school?”
“Sure.”
“Who you just happen to never talk about?”
I’m silent.
“It’s okay,” Nat continues. “I worked it out a while ago. Your mum didn’t spend all that money to send you to Rosemead just for the sandstone buildings. It was because you were so miserable where you were. The kids there no doubt hated you because you were a self-righteous shit. You probably made them feel guilty for doing nothing about the causes you thought they should be fighting for. Basically
the reasons they hate you here.”
I draw circles on my knee with a finger so that I don’t have to look at her.
“Except for me,” she goes on. “That’s why I like you. Because you care about the world. And me liking you has meant that Rosemead has been bearable for you. Which makes it really hard for me to have to say what I’m about to say.”
My stomach hollows out.
“Of course I understand the point of what you did. But you put my interests last. Friends don’t do that to friends. That’s the bottom line. It was an arsehole move, Will.”
I’m about to reply when I hear the sound of heels on polished timber. The chatter in the hall falls away. Great. My only friend thinks I’m an arsehole, and because my day isn’t bad enough, enter our beloved principal.
Croon peers down calmly from the stage. “Friday night,” she says. “None of you leave here until I find out who was responsible.”
There is the sound of shifting bodies as girls glance around at one another—intrigued, annoyed, amused. This part of the proceedings is broken by the dramatic sound of Deputy Davids pressing her full weight against the bar lock across the doors at the back of the hall.
Heads turn at the sound of the lock clicking into place, then turn back to the front, expecting Croon to say more.
Croon drags a chair to the center of the stage and sits down on it.
What follows is a Guinness World Records–breaking staring competition between the principal and the entire year level. I wait, along with everyone, for her to say something else. Anything else. Usually at this point in the “we sit here until someone fesses up” exercise, teachers like to indulge in some rhetorical ranting. Now would be the perfect time for Croon’s signature “I find this behavior deeply disappointing” lecture, for example, but I can tell by the look on her face that this is too big for that. The humiliation of Friday night has genuinely shaken her.
About three minutes pass. Croon hasn’t spoken, and people start exchanging disbelieving glances. Is she really doing this? How long is she going to keep it up?
