This is going to be way harder than I thought. I need a strategy.
I go back to the sergeant’s home page and for once, I try to ignore the content—the graduation photo, the messages from people who still love him—and I look at the way the page is built. When I am able to stop focusing on his face, I start to notice some design things, like the home page now has only his photo, his name, and the box where people can leave comments. Then, across the bottom, there are names of other pages you can go to for more about him.
I go back to the template and keep going. I erase most of the boxes but leave one where I want to invite people to post comments. I leave another box on the other side of the photo for something else—I’m not sure what yet. Then I name the other pages that I’d like to build eventually: biography, information and articles, and photos. I spend another hour or so choosing colors and fonts, and playing with the special features that allow you to add borders and music and videos. In the end, I decide that I just want it to be as simple as possible, and I delete most of the things I added.
I give the message box a title, calling it, “Say Hello to Dad.” That seems stupid and so wrong that I’m actually embarrassed, so I change it to “Talk to Alfonso.” That’s better, but it still doesn’t seem right, somehow. Then I type, “Talk to my dad, Alfonso Zarelli.” It makes it kind of obvious that a kid built the site, but I’m not sure that that’s a bad thing, necessarily. I’ll leave it for now.
The blank space under his name is a little too symbolic for me—I need to try choosing the photo again. I decide that the best way to do it is to randomly pick one as a placeholder. There’s no reason to choose the final photo now. I open the folder, close my eyes, and slide my finger around on the track pad for a few seconds. Then I double-click and open my eyes.
My dad is in our kitchen, his crazy hair sticking straight up, wearing his favorite striped T-shirt and glaring at the photographer over the top of his coffee mug. If it weren’t for a tiny smile on his mouth, he’d look mad, but I can tell he’s just kidding. The photo makes me laugh a little, and I know it’s totally wrong for the site, but it’s the perfect placeholder for now.
I’m about to save the page and close out of the program when I remember the blank box I left on the other side of the photo frame. I click on the title box, waiting for something to come to me. And after a minute, it does. “Word of the Day,” I type. And then I add the first word that comes to mind.
Indispensable (adjective): absolutely necessary.
candid (adjective): blunt, honest
(see also: Angelo)
15
JANUARY SUCKED.
Mrs. Chen was both right and wrong—no one harassed me over break, but the homecoming thing definitely hadn’t blown over by the time we were back at school. Regina spent the month leaving elaborate nail-polish artwork addressed to “911 Bitch” on all my desks and lockers. She didn’t even expand her color palette, restricting herself to the hot-pink and fuchsia family. I guess it’s her signature.
I still have no idea how she figures out which gym locker is mine, since it changes every time. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s got spies. It’s easy enough for her to find out where my assigned seats are—all she has to do is walk by my classes and look in—but that still takes a lot of time and effort. I imagine that she has color-coded charts and graphs to keep track of where I’ll be and when, and I’m almost impressed.
But her January tactics now seem like nothing. She stepped up her game this month.
Last week, she got someone to hack into the school’s website and post, on the home page, a Photoshopped picture of me in an EMT uniform, running to the scene of an accident. The headline above the picture read, “Worried you might have too much fun at a party? Never fear—Rose Zarelli is here!” She was smart enough not to use “911 Bitch” on the school’s home page, which is too bad. I might have worked up the courage to turn her in if she had.
Peter thinks I should tell Mrs. Chen because, at this point, it really is harassment. But when I ask him if that’s what he would do if he were in my place, he just says that it’s different for guys. Meaning, of course, that he would just fight the guy and get it over with. I guess girls have the right to do that, too, but it’s not my thing. Although I do like imagining grabbing fistfuls of Regina’s hair and pulling really, really hard.
Peter also said that if I’m not going to tell Mrs. Chen, I have to at least talk to Jamie. But that would just make things worse for me in the long run. And what would I say? Hey, Jamie, it was really fun kissing you and all, but your mean girlfriend is now threatening to kill me if I so much as look at you ever again. Could you talk to her, please?
Yeah, right. Like she’d really listen. The more I get to know her, the less I understand what the appeal could possibly be for Jamie.
We haven’t spoken since homecoming. I’m beginning to think I imagined the whole thing.
Now it’s Valentine’s Day, and I’m sitting by myself in study hall, trying to ignore the blight of red hearts taped on the tables, the chairs and every other surface in the cafeteria. Someone even managed to slap one on Mr. Cella’s back without him noticing.
I see Angelo approaching, and I quickly look down at my French book, hoping that he won’t talk to me but knowing that he will. He always does. I actually think that Angelo likes me. Not likes me likes me, but just likes me. And he’s not that bad. He just, well, talks a lot. And I’m trying to cram for my French test. At this point I know that no one really gets any studying done in study hall, but still, I keep trying.
The PA system drones on with the Pledge of Allegiance, and everyone ignores it. Mr. Cella has stopped trying to get us to stand up for it—I think he gave up somewhere around mid-October, which was just fine with me. I’m never saying those words again.
“Hey, Sweater, how ya holdin’ up?” Angelo asks, standing above me.
“I’m fine,” I say without raising my head.
From the corner of my eye I see him notice one of Regina’s special messages on his seat. “This graffiti shit is crazy.”
“They’ll stop eventually.”
He snorts like I’ve said something hilariously stupid as he sits down, sprawling across several seats at once.
“Hey, Happy Valentine’s Day,” he says. I don’t answer. “You doin’ anything romantic tonight?”
“Not as far as I know.” I slowly turn the page of my book.
“You’re always readin’, ya know that?”
“I like to pass my classes,” I say.
“You wanna be a doctor or something?”
“A doctor?” I look up at him, confused.
“Yeah, doctors are always readin’, aren’t they?”
“Um, I don’t know.”
“Isn’t your mom a doctor?”
“Sort of, I guess.” I go back to reading, hoping he’ll take the hint for once.
“Your pop was an engineer, right?”
Angelo has never mentioned my father before. I check to see if he’s messing with me, but he just looks interested.
“Yeah, he was.”
“You miss him?”
I nod.
“I have a cousin in the marines in Iraq.”
I nod again. Angelo appears to be waiting for me to say something, but I can’t. Weirdly, I have no idea what to say to someone who has a cousin who’s fighting in Iraq. Now, if his cousin had died there, well, then I’d be qualified to say something deeply profou
nd to Angelo.
“Sweater, how come you never ask me about me?”
Stumped again. It never even occurred to me that Angelo would want to talk to me about himself. But now that I think about it, that sounds suspiciously like a lame way to excuse extreme self-absorption.
“Um, I don’t know, Angelo. What do you mean?”
“Well, like, we sit here at this table, just you and me, almost every day except the weekend and except when I cut, but, like, I’m always the one doin’ the talkin’ about, like, whatever. You never ask me questions like I ask you. You scared?”
“Scared? Like, scared you’re going to hurt me or something?”
“No, like, scared your pals won’t like you anymore if they think you and me are friends,” he says, taking a swig from his milk carton. For some reason, he’s opened all four corners and milk spills down the front of his shirt as he drinks. And then I notice something that completely blows my mind and changes everything I ever thought about Angelo.
Angelo, of all people, is wearing a Neko Case T-shirt.
I’ve seen Angelo in Nirvana and Metallica shirts—I thought he was a metal-grunge guy who was stuck in the glory days of Lars Ulrich and Kurt Cobain. But this…this is too much. Neko Case is a goddess and I didn’t expect anyone in this stupid school—not a single person—to have any idea who she is, never mind wear a shirt with her name on it.
“Is that a…Neko Case shirt?”
He looks down at his shirt and then back up at me. “Yeah. That’s what it says. N-E-K-O.”
“Is it yours?”
“Well I’m wearing it, ain’t I?”
“Yeah, but I mean, did somebody just randomly give it to you, or is it actually yours?”
“I got it at the concert,” he says, like it’s no big thing.
“You saw Neko Case live?” I practically shriek.
“Sweater, what’s the big deal? You a Neko fan?”
“I love her. She’s…she’s…I just, I’m surprised because I didn’t think that you…that she…that that was the kind of music you’d listen to.”
“You think I’m too dumb to listen to a smart girl singer like her?”
“No! Nothing like that. But I’ve only ever seen you wear shirts for bands whose singers are dead, or who don’t actually tour anymore.”
“Metallica still tours!”
“They do?”
“Sweater, Metallica is one of the greatest bands that ever existed. They will never break up. Ever. Ain’t you seen Some Kind of Monster?”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, man. You gotta see that movie. It’s old, but you can totally download it. It’s all about, like, the psychology of being in Metallica, and how it almost killed ’em to create that shit together, you know?”
I can hardly believe my ears. “Are you a musician, Angelo?”
He chuckles a little and takes a final swig from his milk carton. “I don’t know if anyone would call me that, but I play some guitar.” He stands up and starts air-guitaring in the cafeteria, and no one even blinks. I have the weird sensation that Angelo, with his long hair and car grease under his fingernails, is invisible to most of the student body at this high school.
“Are you in a band?”
“Yeah. We’re called Fuck This Shit, so we don’t get hired a lot, but we’re pretty good. We’re gonna go on tour after graduation.”
“That’s awesome.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Sweater. I can be a pretty cool, nice guy.”
“I know.”
“You think I’m nice?”
“Well, yeah, you’ve always been nice to me.”
“Except for when I made you cry.”
I blush, thinking of the day when Angelo wanted to know if Jamie and I were “doin’ it.” That was back when I would see Jamie on a regular basis. Due to Regina’s campaign of terror, I’ve been avoiding him again. And he hasn’t made an effort to talk to me, either. Not that I should be expecting him to. It’s not like we’re… I can’t even finish that thought.
“You didn’t mean to make me cry. I don’t know what happened that day. I was just embarrassed or something.”
He leans in conspiratorially. “I know Jamie kissed you. He told me.”
I look over my shoulder to make sure that none of Regina’s spies are around. Susan and Lena both have period-one study hall, although they’re hardly ever here. I’ve never understood how people can so easily get away with cutting. My karma doesn’t work that way. I always have to play by the rules, or I get caught. Almost instantly. Which is why I’m surprised that Regina doesn’t already know that I kissed Jamie. If she’s this crazy over the fact that she saw him follow me twice, I wonder what my life would be like if she knew what had really happened.
I lean across the table and whisper, “Angelo, we shouldn’t talk about that. I mean, you know, Regina’s scary and—”
“And you have a boyfriend?”
“Robert’s not my boyfriend. He was just my date to homecoming. That’s all.”
“That ain’t what Jamie thinks,” Angelo says, tearing pieces off his milk carton and dropping them on the table, making a little mountain of soggy, waxy cardboard.
Why would Jamie think I lied to him about Robert?
Or maybe the more important question is, why is Jamie telling Angelo things about me? Is it possible that he’s genuinely, truly interested in me? How could he be? We might as well be from different planets. Robert, as Tracy likes to remind me, is in our group of friends and a much more suitable boyfriend for me than Jamie.
But what does that mean? What is suitable? If you like someone and they like you back, shouldn’t you just be able to go out with them?
Whenever I say that to Tracy, she sings this little song she wrote for me called “Rosie and Her Rose-Colored Glasses.”
“Jamie told you that?”
“Jamie thinks the guy’s your boyfriend. Want me to set him straight?”
As if on cue, Tracy arrives wearing her gold-and-black cheer uniform, her arms full of red carnations. The cheerleaders have sponsored a Valentine’s Day flower sale in order to appear wholesome in the wake of the YouTube scandal and to raise money for the new outfits they want, which are so far from wholesome they should be illegal. She showed them to me online, and I tried to pretend that I thought they looked good. But they were so small, I could barely tell what they were, never mind whether they looked good or not. She told me to stop being such a prude. I gave her my speech about how I think women should be valued for more than how they look bouncing around in spandex, but she just said that feminism is out and kept showing me tacky uniforms that she knows the school will never let them buy.
“I’ve got a flower delivery for you,” she says in a singsong voice. She hands me a carnation with a card attached to it and then stands there expecting me to read it while she waits, even though we both know it’s from Robert.
“Thanks, Trace.”
“Well, open it!”
“That’s okay. I’ll wait till later.”
“Hey, Trace, you got one of those things for me?”
Tracy looks flabbergasted that Angelo addressed her by name. And she calls me a snob?
“Let me check,” she says, looking at him as if he were something she scraped off the bottom of her shoe. And then something weird happens. Her face brightens, she giggles and she says, “As a matter of fact, ‘Angelo Martinez, Study Hall Period 1,’ I do have one of
these things for you.” She hands it to Angelo with a big grin, as if the fact that someone sent him a flower causes a complete metamorphosis and Angelo is no longer a vo-tech guy with dirt under his fingernails. He nods and accepts it, like he’s been expecting it.
Looks like Angelo isn’t quite as invisible to the student body as I thought.
“Thanks, Trace,” he says. She’s still standing there, waiting for both of us to open our cards, when Stephanie calls from their table across the cafeteria, “Come on, Trace, I want my flower!”
Tracy rolls her eyes and heads in Stephanie’s direction. Angelo watches her go, her short skirt swishing, swishing, swishing as she walks away. I can’t really blame him. That’s exactly what those skirts are designed for.
“Nice flower you got there,” he says, grinning as he gets up, reaching into his pocket for a cigarette. “I’ll tell Jame you say ‘hey.’” He winks at me and walks away, his lighter in one hand, his flower in the other.
I want to tell him not to tell Jamie anything, but I know it’s pointless. I look down at my flower and sigh. I might as well just get this over with.
I feel a tiny pang of guilt that Robert sent me a flower. I never officially accepted his apology, and he finally stopped trying last month. I don’t know why I didn’t just tell him it was okay—I don’t even care about the condom thing anymore. A few days ago, he emailed me for the first time in a while to tell me that he’s going to audition for the drama department’s spring production of Macbeth. I hate amateur Shakespeare, but I should wish him luck anyway, as a kind of peace offering. I realize that, aside from the play, I have no idea what’s going on with Robert for the first time since, well, since I’ve known him, I guess. It’s a weird feeling.
I rip open the little white envelope and pull out the cheesy “Happy Valentine’s Day!” florist’s card illustrated with googly-eyed hearts that appear to be jumping up and down on pogo sticks. But when I look at the center of the card and see the message written in neat, blocky handwriting, my heart starts to do its own pogo-stick routine. Even though I’ve never seen the writing before, I know instantly who it belongs to. It says:
Confessions of an Angry Girl Page 16
