Here Lies Bridget

by Paige Harbison

  whispering.

  And the ignoring.

  My face twisted into the expression that unhappy clown face paint is modeled after. I squeezed my eyes shut and wished as hard as I could for an answer. For something that could fix it all.

  1 0 5

  A moment later, I sat up, the tears that raced down my cheeks feeling cool on my hot, angry skin. The next thing I knew, I’d left school without signing out.

  I practically ran to my car, where I sat for a moment, trying to calm down. I stared at the car’s logo in the center of the steering wheel, thinking only of how angry I was.

  My rage repeatedly brought me to the point of action, before I realized again and again that there was nothing I could do. This wasn’t one girl who’d called me a slut who I could get revenge on by getting ahold of the P.A. microphone and announcing that her mother was here with her Ex-Lax.

  Because that, I thought with the smallest sensation of pride, I knew how to handle quite easily.

  But no, this was different.

  My thoughts were too self-pitying and hate-filled for me to calm down. What I needed was to get home.

  I turned my key in the ignition and peeled out of my parking space. I knew it was dangerous to drive when I was so upset and barely able to see out of my blurry eyes. But who cares, I thought—if I crashed they’d all realize how much I meant to them.

  As the thought f litted through my mind, I realized how petty and small of me it was to think that way. Not just that, but how screwed up it was to be that person.

  But of course you know what happens next, because that’s where we began. What you don’t know is that I truly thought it would be the answer to all of my problems.

  And in a way, it was.

  C H A P T E R S E V E N

  I woke up with that feeling you get when you’re staying in a hotel room or at a friend’s house as a kid and there’s that moment where you’re not sure where you are. But the more I awoke, the more I realized I didn’t know where I was.

  I was lying on my back, trying to open my eyes. It wasn’t too bright in the room, but my eyes kept rolling back and my eyelids f luttered closed involuntarily, as if I was trying to look straight into the sun. I opened them into slits, but all I could see was a dark, wooden ceiling. My eyes closed again.

  I was confused, but my exhaustion made me feel passive.

  The first thing I felt was relief; at least I was here, wherever I was. I was thinking and breathing. That meant I was alive, right?

  The second thing I felt was fear. Maybe I wasn’t alive; I mean, it’s not like anyone knows what happens after you die, anyway. I started to panic as I imagined what might be happening to me.

  One option was that I had been in a coma for thirty years.

  But, I amended, who would keep me plugged in that long?

  Maybe I was in a hospital, the crash only a few hours behind me.

  1 0 7

  I tried to pull myself into a sitting position, but my body was too sore. I thought with a cringe of the last moments in my car. What was wrong with me?

  More thoughts rushed into my head: the betrayals of my friends, the fact that few (if any) people loved or cared about me, the fact that everyone was too focused on themselves to think a little bit about what they were doing to me.

  And Anna. Stupid Anna Judge had to come along and ruin everything. And how, I asked myself furiously, how did she do it? Before she came to school a week ago—assuming I wasn’t waking up from a multiple-decade coma—everything was fine. No one hated me, no one was mad at me, no one was stupid enough to talk about me behind my back. Not only that, but they actually liked me. People had thought I was funny, guys checked me out when I walked by and people listened to what I said.

  Now everyone was friends with Anna. Everyone thought she was so beautiful and impressive. Hell, even at my very own party everyone was only interested in me until she showed up.

  How’s that for a walking, talking slap in the face?

  I tried to refocus my thoughts back to the more pressing matter—what was happening now.

  When I strained to sit up again, my entire body shook the way unused muscles do when used for strenuous work. I finally got myself up, and realized I was lying in the middle of a huge…table? I rubbed my eyes, which were still hard to keep open, and looked toward my feet. Empty chairs surrounded the table. A boardroom?

  Of all the scenarios in which I thought I might find myself, a boardroom was not on the list.

  Suddenly, someone spoke behind me.

  1 0 8

  P A I G E H A R B I S O N

  “If you’ve finished with your nap, we’d like to get started.”

  I gasped and turned quickly to see who it was.

  No

  way.

  “Anna?”

  She gave a smug smile and splayed her arms in a gesture that said, “None other.”

  Fear ran up and down my spine. The situation kept making less and less sense.

  But she wasn’t the only one there. I looked at the group of people sitting at that end of the table. Liam, Michelle, Meredith, Mr. Ezhno and Brett. I breathlessly said each of the names, but no one looked at me except for Anna. They were all f lipping through yellow legal pads.

  At least Liam was there. The situation couldn’t be too ter-rifying if Liam was involved.

  “What is going on here?” I said, twisting my aching body onto my knees, my eyes on Liam. I lost a bit of the bite to my question during an awkward moment spent cautiously lowering myself to my feet. “And what do you mean, ‘get started?’

  Get started with what? I was in my car, and now I’m in a boardroom. I have no idea what is happening.”

  I was feeling a little hysterical.

  “I realize that. Which is why we need to get started.” Anna smiled and sat back a little in her chair, her hands crossed neatly on the table. Her calmness was making me even more uneasy.

  I hated not being in control of what was happening to me. It had been my problem even when I was a little girl. If I wasn’t sure where I was, or if I wasn’t fully aware of what was happening around me, I panicked. If I lost track of my mother in a department store, I’d be found in the middle of a clothing rack, weeping. It had happened more than once.

  1 0 9

  I looked at the people in front of me. I was breathing hard, watching them. None of them even tossed a glance my way.

  “Michelle.” No reply. “Michelle, I’m serious, answer me.”

  What the hell was with her recently?

  She didn’t move.

  “Liam? Liam, please.” I begged him to answer me, or at the very least to respond in some way. A blink, anything.

  Nothing.

  “Meredith?” Even when Meredith was mad at me, she would never ignore me.

  I looked to Anna for an explanation.

  She just shook her head regretfully.

  “I’m sorry, Bridget, it’s not the time for that right now.” I could tell she wasn’t going to say any more on the subject of the others.

  I took in the room surrounding me. All of the walls were a deep, rich mahogany. Nothing hung from them and there were no windows. I turned to look behind me.

  “No, you won’t find a door,” Anna said, watching me impassively.

  I shook my head. “All right, enough. This is a weird and stupid joke. It is not funny now, and it’s not something we’ll all laugh about later, so let’s just stop it before it goes any further.”

  “You’re right, Bridget,” Anna said. I took a second to be surprised by how easily she’d given up, and by the fact that this was a joke. But then she continued. “It wouldn’t be a funny joke. And I assure you that no one here thinks this is funny.”

  I studied her face, looking for some indication of dishonesty or humor. There was none. Just complete conviction.

  “Okay, this is ridiculous. I don’t even know you. And I seri-1 1 0

  P A I G E H A R B I S O N

  ously
don’t want to end up on CNN because you went nutso and killed me.”

  “You don’t want to die anymore, then?”

  “I never—” My gut lurched. “What do you mean by that? ”

  “Tell us what your thoughts were as you drove home from school, won’t you?”

  I stared at her. How did she know about that? She couldn’t.

  She must have guessed.

  “That was an accident, I didn’t mean to crash.”

  Anna smiled and clearly seemed to be thinking, If that’s what you have to tell yourself…

  Perhaps she was crazy.

  Perhaps

  I was. That was seeming more likely by the second.

  I stood carefully, trying to not let the pain or fear I was feeling deter me from my mission. I creaked over to the wood panel nearest me. I pushed, and instantly felt like a fool. Anna had started looking through her own notepad, and the others still wouldn’t look at me. I pushed on the next wall, then the next, until I’d pushed on every wall but one. Finally I walked over to it, banking all of my hope on it.

  “This can’t…I—this is a dream, right? Some easily inter-preted dream that I’ll understand in the morning?”

  I felt stupid for saying it. People who weren’t in dreams, and who asked if they were…well, that would be called insane.

  Anna said nothing. She merely stared at me benevolently.

  My mind started to spin with anger, the result of feeling foolish and hopelessly trapped. Because I had to try, I pushed on the final wall. A swear word escaped my throat and my heart began to hammer against my chest as I realized that wherever I was, whatever was happening, I was stuck.

  There was no way out.

  1 1 1

  I walked over to a chair a few down from Liam. I kept my eyes on him, studying his features, which looked so fixated on whatever he was reading.

  “All right, let’s get started.” Anna organized the papers in front of her and picked up a yellow legal pad and a pen. “First of all, is there anything you’d like to say?” Her tone was now all business, kindness gone.

  All I could do was shake my head.

  “Just as I thought.” She wrote something down. “All right, then let me ask you another question. What common threads are there between these five people?” She indicated the group that f lanked her.

  “I don’t know,” I said, breathing tentatively. “Obviously we all know each other.”

  “Okay. And do you have any idea why they might all be here to talk to you at this time?”

  The first answer that came to my mind was that I had been in an accident and they were all here because they love me, but something told me that none of these people were here out of love.

  Not if they wouldn’t even look at me.

  So I thought for a moment about her question, but truthfully didn’t have any idea what might bring all of these people to a boardroom in wherever we were. I still didn’t even know what brought me here.

  I spared her these thoughts and shook my head once more.

  “All right. One last thing.” She leaned back in her chair.

  “Would you consider yourself to be popular, Bridget?”

  Something about the way she asked the question made me sure that she didn’t consider that to be the case. But I sat up a little straighter, and said that I did. She scribbled something else onto her pad of paper.

  1 1 2

  P A I G E H A R B I S O N

  “And if you don’t mind my asking, how did that come about?”

  I found that question odd. Most people probably wouldn’t have an answer. But I, as it happened, did.

  It had really begun at the start of eighth grade, when my only three friends got expelled.

  The exact reason why they were expelled was never fully explained to the general student body. All we knew was that it was bad.

  The funny thing was, they’d told me in no uncertain terms that I was not allowed to participate in the prank. After they were caught, I realized I was alone in school. I spent the next summer terrified of going into eighth grade without any friends.

  When the first day of school finally came, I was exceedingly pleased to find that everyone was being nice to me. Boys were f lirting with me, girls were timidly asking if I was headed the same way as they were to class, or asking if the seat next to me was taken at lunch. I didn’t understand any of it at first, until Jillian—whom I did not know at the time—sat down with me in the library during one of our classes. She talked about normal things at first, asking me if I hated the project we were working on, too, and who I had a crush on (a question I had responded to with a blush as Liam’s face drifted into my mind). Finally, after a furtive glance at another table, she mentioned the prank the other three girls had pulled at the end of the last school year. Judging by the eager-looking girls watching our conversation, it seemed that Jillian was the only one with the guts enough to ask me about it.

  I shook my head shyly and said that I really didn’t want to talk about it. That I didn’t know any more than they did. I remember feeling disappointed as I realized that that was why she’d sat with me; it wasn’t because she liked me. But then she 1 1 3

  looked at me with the widest of eyes, and asked me how on earth I’d gotten away with it.

  And that was the second that it all made sense.

  I was the only one remaining of the four. I was the one everyone was scared of. None of them seemed to know that I’d just been along for the ride with that group, that I had never come up with ideas to terrorize my peers. No one knew that my constant “I don’t think we should do this” and crying were the reason I hadn’t been allowed to hang out with the group anymore and the reason I wasn’t let in on the prank that got them kicked out. They didn’t know anything about it.

  And, given the fact that their fear made me their leader, I wasn’t going to be the one to tell them.

  Once I realized what had happened, I took the opportunity to be a proud but fair leader. I was nice to everyone, eager to maintain my newfound status. I never again wanted to feel I wasn’t one hundred percent in control.

  It wouldn’t be until later that I knowingly began to abuse that power.

  I kept all of this awareness to myself, however, and chose not to share it with Anna. Why was I going to tell her anything? She was doing a pretty crappy job of answering my questions.

  Instead, I just shrugged. “I guess it just happened.”

  After a long moment, in which I felt sure she knew everything I had just remembered, Anna brought her eyebrows together like she was thinking very hard about something.

  “Hmm.” She put the notepad down on the table and stood.

  “There are a few things that I’d like you to see.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Please

  stand.”

  “Are we going somewhere? I thought there weren’t any doors,” I said, feeling fooled.

  1 1 4

  P A I G E H A R B I S O N

  I was surprised to see that she was wearing something that looked like a judge’s cloak. Not only was this weird—she was dressing for her name?—but I was usually the first one to notice another girl’s outfit.

  She looked at the ground in front of my feet. I followed her gaze and saw a pair of Adidas. I didn’t know what she was getting at.

  “…What?”

  “Step

  in.”

  “Step—what, into the shoes?”

  She nodded. I lifted a foot to step in, and then felt idiotic and stopped.

  “Really?” I asked.

  Anna said nothing, but the command in her silence was clear. I lifted my foot again and stepped into the left shoe, looking self-consciously around me, though I knew I had no attentive audience.

  “Fine. I’ll play your stupid little game. But I swear, if I’m being Punk’d right now…”

  “You have to be a celebrity to be Punk’d.”

  I gave a single nasty laugh and the
n took my second step into the other well-worn shoe. The second I did, I felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

  My eyes were shut and I couldn’t open them. I tried to scream but the sound seemed very far away. It felt like wearing someone else’s glasses, with the dizziness and inability to perceive space. There was a ringing in my ears that reminded me of how I’d felt at camp one year when I fainted from the heat.

  Then, all of a sudden, it stopped.

  When I could finally see again, I found myself in another room. But this time, I recognized it.

  C H A P T E R E I G H T

  I was crouched down in the corner of the cloakroom in my fifth-grade classroom. My body felt small and compact, fitting in the corner quite snugly. I could hear a child’s voice in the next room saying, “Heads down, thumbs up!”

  On my lap there was a piece of pink construction paper with a pencil-drawn heart in the middle. I watched my hand writing in loopy, slanted cursive, but I couldn’t control it. I looked at the words that appeared on the page. And without you, this place would be…

  I had a split second of dawning, uncertain comprehension before I heard footsteps coming into the room.

  I looked up to see my very favorite light-up Little Mermaid sneakers come squeaking into the room in front of me.

  I was in Brett’s body. Holy—this was no joke.

  I was feeling everything he felt, understanding everything he thought and doing everything he did, but I had no control. It was like watching a TV show from inside one of the characters while having an intense understanding of another character.

  A stab of foreboding hit me before I heard the ten-year-old Bridget Duke speak.

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  P A I G E H A R B I S O N

  “Brett!”

  The paper was snatched from my lap and I watched myself—

  across from me—read it, all the while feeling the fear that Brett had been feeling.

  I watched the girl’s face, my face, and saw my eyes scan the poem. Watched as my eyebrows furrow as I came upon words I didn’t know or recognize.

  Everything went dark as Brett burrowed his face in his hands very suddenly.