The Mean Girl Apologies

by Stephanie Monahan

  Sarah turned to me, and I saw in her eyes how badly she wanted to believe her. How badly she was still holding on to the idea of the four of us. All at once, I was tired. I’d been holding on to so many things that had ended a long time ago, too.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I was thinking it might be best for me to stay home that weekend anyway. I have lots of work to do on my website, stuff I don’t have time to do during the week.”

  That wasn’t a lie. I’d finished my logo and uploaded my portfolio to my About Me page, along with an email for potential clients to contact me. I’d thought about taking Lori up on her offer to advertise at her salon, but for some reason, that seemed like some kind of concession, one that I wasn’t ready to make.

  “Well, if you change your mind, we’d love to have you come along,” Amber said. If I didn’t know better, I might have believed her. I couldn’t tell if Sarah did or not.

  “Right,” I said. I no longer had the energy to come up with much else.

  “I’ll walk to the end of the block with you,” Sarah said.

  “How’s the new place?” I asked when she fell into step beside me.

  “Oh, it’s fine. All unpacked, at least. Derek’s mom came over last weekend and did almost everything herself. She even hung up all the artwork. She stopped asking me where stuff went. I think she got a little annoyed with me, but I’m in the middle of this case and deciding if the lighthouse clock should go above the fireplace or in the bedroom was not the best use of my mental energy.”

  I laughed.

  “Honestly,” she said, slipping on her sunglasses. “I do nothing but eat, sleep, and work, and I’m sure I work less now than I will once I’m out of school, which is so, so sad. Why did we ever want to grow up?”

  I laughed. “To get out of Stonebury, for one, and look how that dream came true.” I was talking about myself, of course. Sarah had always liked it here.

  Her car was at a meter on the corner of Main and Surf Drive. Before she got in, she touched my shoulder again. “Hey, are you doing okay? You seem kind of…on edge.”

  Tell her. Get in her car and tell her everything and be done with it. I shrugged. “Just work stuff.”

  I couldn’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses, but I was pretty sure she didn’t believe me, or at least suspected something else was going on, by the slow way she nodded. “I get it. But miss you. And I’ve been dying to talk to you.” She leaned in closer to me and said, in a voice barely above a whisper, “I saw Mike. In the Shop Saver. I swear I was seventeen all over again. I got all clammy and nervous, and I don’t even know why! I thought that I’d get used to having him around again, that he wouldn’t make me feel so…unsteady, I guess.” She shrugged. “I just wanted to talk to you about it. You’re the only one who would understand.”

  If I had any guts at all, I’d tell her the truth. Now. The only problem was, no words would come.

  “It’s okay, I know you’re busy. Call me when you can, okay? I miss our talks. We need to get together soon.”

  “I know. I will. I’ll see you later.”

  We hugged again, and she got into her car. Standing on the curb, I waved and then started toward home.

  …

  The next afternoon, Gillian came over, bringing a car full of boxes with her. She was moving slowly, so that by the time she officially moved in, she’d be nearly unpacked. I sat at the breakfast nook drinking wine and watched Gillian prepare a homemade pizza. I had no idea she could cook, but it was delicious, and she had only set off the smoke alarm twice. While we ate, she outlined her newest fan fiction, and I sketched out some ideas for the pictures she wanted for her site.

  “You know what we should do?” she asked, attempting to tame an unruly string of cheese. “We should totally work on some sort of book. I’ll write it, you do the pictures.”

  “It’ll have to be photos, because I definitely can’t draw well enough for that.” I had already erased and redrawn Dr. Hottie’s nose at least five times. He was looking less like a New Zealand stud and more like a creepy bird-man.

  “Works for me. What could we do…a travel book? Cookbook?”

  “What else do you make besides pizza?”

  “Nothing, really.”

  “That might be a problem.”

  If I could just keep focused on the bird-man and not think about Sarah, maybe the sick feeling that had anchored itself in my stomach would eventually give way. Instead, as the minutes passed, I felt a mounting dread, not unlike the way I used to feel on Sunday nights, knowing that in only a few hours I’d have to get up and go to school. This was worse, though. At least school ended. This wouldn’t end until I confessed to Sarah, and then the only thing left to end would be the two of us.

  “Once,” I said to Gillian, “that girl Fiona that I was telling you about… She drew this beautiful self-portrait in art class. The teacher was dying over it. I’d thought mine was pretty good, but once I saw hers…” I shook my head. “So you know what I did? I went over to her as we were cleaning up and told her the portrait looked just like her. She thought I was complimenting her, and she said thank you. And then I told her it was just as unattractive as she was.”

  Gillian stopped chewing.

  “Yeah. I told you Jack wasn’t exaggerating.”

  Gillian swallowed and drank from my wine glass, as she’d already emptied hers. After she thought about it, she said, “I’m not going to say that wasn’t mean, because you already know it was. But this is your problem. You won’t let yourself let go of stuff. You’re twenty-two, not seventeen. How long can someone be blamed for the stuff they did in high school? Like Jack said, you can’t turn back the clock. You can only move forward.”

  At that, my head snapped up. I stared at Gillian for so long that she started to panic. “What? Is there something in my teeth?”

  I shook my head. “I have an idea,” I said, “of what the story is that we’re going to write together.”

  “You do?”

  I nodded, very seriously. The anxiety I’d been carrying around for months began to slowly melt away, and I was calm.

  Gillian’s eyes were wide as she waited for me to say something.

  We were up until two in the morning, facing each other on the couch. Gillian yawned, flipping through the pages of the notebook that sat atop the blanket on her lap. She stretched out her fingers before picking up the pen once more. “Is there anything else we should add?” she asked, her voice cracking.

  I shook my head. “Just the title, I guess.” I was the copy editor, and headlines were my job, but it seemed a little weird to come up with the title for a story about yourself.

  Gillian glanced down at her notebook, then back at me. She smiled the faintest smile, then wrote something down. She lifted the notebook so I could see. the mean girl apologies.

  I nodded my approval since I didn’t trust myself to speak. Even I had to admit it was catchy.

  The only thing left to do was run it past Hilary, and that was no small feat. She was notoriously cranky in the morning and had to have at least three cups of coffee before anyone would dare knock on her door. Around eleven, she granted Gillian and me entrance to her office. I told her everything.

  If she could have made any facial expressions, I’m sure hers would’ve run the gamut as I spoke. As it was, her eyes widened at the most unbelievable parts. When I was done, she didn’t speak immediately. Gillian and I glanced at each other, bracing for the worst, which was Hilary thinking we were both delusional lunatics and firing us on the spot.

  “So, this whole time you knew who he was singing about, and you could’ve put it in your article like I asked you to, and you didn’t.”

  I swallowed slowly. Maybe Lori would give me a job sweeping up at her salon, but she most likely hated me, too. I could always move to Iowa with my parents. “Yes,” I said. “I wasn’t ready for anyone to know.”

  She crossed her thin arms over her pinstriped blazer and turned the Gillian. “The article�
�s written?”

  Gillian slipped the paper out of a manila folder and handed it to her. “I can email it to you…”

  Hilary put on her glasses and studied it. “Get it to copyediting—have someone else do it—and back to me by two so it can go in tomorrow’s issue. We’ll put a teaser online tonight…” She looked at the two of us. “Is there any proof? Pictures, notes, something?”

  I shook my head. There was nothing but my word, and though that pretty much meant nothing in the past, it was all I had now.

  Hilary sighed, thinking it over. “All right.”

  Gillian and I looked at each other, not moving. Hilary took off her glasses and sighed again. “I said, get it done by two.”

  I could feel Gillian suppressing a shriek. I couldn’t stop smiling. “Thank you so much.”

  “One other thing. We’re going to need a picture of you.”

  Now I really started to panic. “Me? Why?”

  “Because the readers will want to know what you look like,” she said.

  Gillian was pulling me out of the office, probably before Hilary could change her mind. “We’ll get the photo,” she said. “Thank you so much!”

  Hilary shrugged in her blasé way. “It was either this or the story about the businesses on Main Street proposing a ban on parking meters.” But I could tell by the light in her eyes that she knew she had something.

  …

  Stonebury Gazette Issue No. 617 August 5th

  The Mean Girl Apologies: Local Woman Admits She Is The Inspiration Behind Jack Morelan’s “Good Enough” by Gillian Butler, Staff Writer

  Five years ago, high school senior Natalie Jamison fell in love. But no one knew it.

  The boy had been the target of bullies at Stonebury High School, and those bullies were Natalie’s friends. They didn’t see him the way she did. “Cute, smart, talented. Romantic. The most honest person I’d ever met.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to tell her friends the truth, and she hasn’t spoken a word about it until now.

  “I figured he forgot about me,” she says. “But then I heard the song, ‘Good Enough,’ and I knew it was about me. That he hadn’t forgotten.”

  It hurt to hear the song, but it was also the catalyst for some changes she knew she had to make.

  “I needed to apologize to the people I hurt back then,” she says. “I made a list.”

  There were four people on the list, four people to whom she felt she owed the biggest apologies, and she set out to reconnect with all of them this summer. That list includes Jack Moreland himself.

  But her apology, she felt, was not enough.

  “Until I heard the song, I didn’t realize exactly what I’d done to him. I made him feel like he wasn’t good enough, and that kills me, because he is so much more than that. I’m the one who wasn’t good enough. I was mean and I hurt people. I hurt him. I pretended like I didn’t know him because I was too scared of what other people thought. That’s why I needed to apologize to him like this, so everyone can hear it, and everyone will know the truth about him. And about me. The truth is, I loved him then, and I love him now, and I want everyone to know that, too.”

  Natalie says she still has one more apology to make to someone very close to her. “I’ve been putting it off because I’m scared of how she will react. But I owe it to her to tell the truth, and I’m going to do that.”

  She knows she can’t go back in time to make up for the things she’s done, and she’s okay with that. “I don’t want to be that scared, insecure girl anymore. I want to be better.” She would like this apology to be an open letter of sorts, and along with the apology, she has a couple of promises she would like to make here, in black and white:

  I will no longer expect the worst of people. I won’t judge people by the way they look. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

  I promise to stand up for who and what I believe in.

  I promise to no longer blame other people for my own actions—I am the only one responsible for myself.

  I promise that if I don’t have anything nice to say, I won’t say anything at all.

  I promise to be nice.

  …

  Celebrity Weekly Online…Your One-Stop Shop for Celebrity News!

  Breaking! Natalie Jamison, 22, of Stonebury, MA, has come forward to say that she is the muse behind Jack Moreland’s “Good Enough.” Celebrity Weekly has obtained a high school yearbook from Stonebury High’s class of 2009, (see picture at right) and it is confirmed that the two went to high school together, yet there is no proof that they actually knew each other. Keep reading below for the full text that first appeared in the Stonebury Gazette. This is a BREAKING story, and more details will be forthcoming!

  …

  My cell phone started ringing while I was in the shower. By the time I was out, wrapping a towel around myself as my hair dripped on the hardwood floor, my phone vibrated with new messages. They were all from reporters, some national, some local, even a couple from Celebrity Weekly. I dressed quickly and hurried into the kitchen, where Gillian was sitting in the nook with her laptop, a bowl of sugary cereal gone soggy beside her.

  She looked at me, her mouth hanging open. “Holy shit.”

  It was only six-thirty in the morning. The newspapers had probably not even been delivered yet, but the story went live online sometime overnight.

  I slumped in the chair beside her, my hair still wet. “My mailbox is already full of voice mails.”

  “Yeah. Mine, too.” She sounded as if she was trying not to seem excited. “Did you see that Celebrity Weekly picked it up?”

  Oh man. “No,” I said.

  “They even credited me,” she said.

  “Wow.”

  “I know!” She stopped herself. “Sorry. I know this is all really overwhelming.”

  “I guess I didn’t expect it to be out there, everywhere, so soon.”

  And it was out there. When we left the apartment for work, there was a guy I didn’t recognize pacing up and down the lobby. He wore a white button-down shirt and gray dress pants, and at first, I didn’t think anything of it. He stopped dead when he saw us, though. “Are you Natalie Jamison?”

  “Ummm.”

  “I’m Rick Peterson from Celebrity Weekly.” He flashed a card at me, but I didn’t have enough time or bearings to confirm he was who he said. He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. “Would I be able to talk to you for a minute?”

  “Uh, we’re on our way to work,” I said, flustered. I turned to Gillian for some help, but she was almost as starstruck as she was when she’d met Jack.

  “That’s okay, it will only take a second.” He flashed a smile. He was quite cute, which was probably why he was hired. Hard to say no to.

  But I was okay with it. I shook my head. “I’m sorry, not at this time.”

  “Aw, come on. I drove from the city. I’ve been up since four.” He smiled again.

  “Really?” Gillian asked. “Just to interview Natalie?”

  Rick turned his smile on Gillian, and I had to take her arm and lead her past him, down the hallway, and out of the apartment. The parking lot was curiously silent, with only the sound of an ocean breeze sweeping through the trees. On days like this, I’d normally walk to work, but today I headed right for the car.

  The offices of the Stonebury Gazette buzzed like a real newspaper office that morning.

  Jason in sports hurried over to us as soon as we arrived. “Guys, a heads up would’ve been nice.”

  “Why?” Gillian asked.

  “The phones haven’t stopped ringing since I got here.” His annoyed expression softened when he looked at me. “You little heartbreaker.”

  I rolled my eyes, pushing past him to my desk, where Hilary was waiting.

  “You have no idea how many hits our site has had so far. We’ve already surpassed the record set when we ran the story about that woman who insisted she saw the image of Jesus in her pizza.”

  “Wow,” I said,
sinking into my chair. “That’s a dubious honor.”

  Gillian and I watched as Hilary practically skipped back to her office. “Holy mother of pearl,” Gillian whispered. “I think we’re her new favorites.”

  I smiled weakly. The phone on my desk urgently blinked red. When I opened my Outlook, I immediately got a mailbox full message. I scanned my messages eagerly, looking for one from Jack, but it seemed like he was the only person on the planet who was not trying to contact me. There were, however, three from Sarah.

  Message one: NATALIE!! WTF is going ON???

  Message two: Is this why you’ve been avoiding me?

  Message three: And what did you mean about one more apology? What happened? CALL ME!!

  I would deal with Sarah tonight, when I had time to think. I spent the morning cleaning out my voicemail and my Outlook messages, and around eleven o’clock, Gillian swiveled around, a weird look on her face. “Um, have you been on our site?”

  “I’m going on now.”

  “Oh.” She wore an expression somewhere between fear and pity. “Well, don’t read the comments, okay?”

  The comments. Since I’d become an avid reader of Celebrity Weekly, I’d been introduced to the horrifying world of anonymous internet comment boards, the place where all goodwill went to die.

  Of course, now that she told me not to read the comments, I immediately scrolled to the bottom. “Oh, dear…” I heard her say.

  There were 116 comments—five pages total.

  Madison411: Sorry, don’t believe it. That girl is so not cute enough, then or now, to be with him. She’s FAT! It’s a HOAX!

  luvJM: I don’t believe this! JM says GE wasn’t about a real person. I believe him. Whoever this is just wants publicity.

  yourmomsez: Who gives a $hit? Boreland’s “music” blows.

  hippiechic: You guys are so rude. She’s really cute. I think it’s her. Look at her eyes and dimples. Remember he mentions green eyes in BREAKDOWN and the dimples in CAFÉ NIGHTS?!? Oh, and just because someone’s not a size zero doesn’t make them fat!

  kikidee523: This chick looks like a bitch. F her if she really did do this to Jack! Guess she’s not too embarrassed to admit it now that he’s a star and she’s a piece of crap! I hope, if this is true, that Jack tells her to go F herself!