“Well, yeah, you dork,” Olivia says in the background. “It’s, like, eleven thirty.”
“Juni,” I say, “how much did you drink?”
“Whaaat? Drink? Don’t worry about it,” Juniper says. “Don’t even worry about. Yeah.”
I scowl, nibbling my thumbnail. Before I can say anything, static rubs against my ear. I catch a snatch of a muffled protest. Then Olivia’s voice says, “Yo.”
“Olivia. Hi. Can you please explain what’s happening?”
“Juni drank a little too much and got sick, so I’m spending the night. We watched The Road to El Dorado, and Juni wants to do Finding Nemo next.”
I picture them curled up in the living room, on the plush rug in front of Juni’s TV. My frustration builds. “Why is she drinking?”
“I don’t know. She wanted to. Sorry about the late call. I know you have to get up early.”
“I mean, it’s fine.” I straighten up, resigning myself to the fact that I’m awake. “Just . . . I thought you two were supposed to be having a chill night in, and this is two weeks in a row she’s done the shitty-drunk thing. You think there’s something wrong?”
“She hasn’t mentioned anything,” Olivia says. “But . . . yeah, you’re right, she’s been weird. I was gonna ask, but I got distracted by the whole impossible-quantities-of-vomit thing.”
“Ew.”
“That’s better, though, right? Get it all out of her system or whatever.”
“Is that how that works?”
“I think so,” Olivia says. “Science!” The sound of a commercial blares through the phone. Her voice grows distant. “Juni, want to put Nemo on? I’m gonna get some blankets.”
“So. Did Dan text you again?” I ask. The second the question comes out, I wonder why I brought it up. Talking about boys with Olivia is never a good idea.
“No, thank God,” she says. “But Richard Brown got a hold of my number somehow, so now I have to deal with that. Even though I made it totally clear I wasn’t into him.”
“Someone’s popular,” I say.
“Not necessarily a good thing.”
I sigh. She always does this weird denial thing, as if guys being interested in her is bad.
“I’m serious,” she says. “What, you think I’m bragging?”
“I dunno,” I say, chewing harder on my thumbnail. From the perspective of someone totally unnoticed by the male population, it’s hard not to hear it as bragging.
“Getting hit on is one thing,” she says. “But when guys won’t leave me alone, even after I’ve made it apparent I’m not interested? That just means they’ve heard I’ll jump on anything that shows me attention. Not a compliment.”
“Okay,” I say, still not getting it. If she stopped sleeping around, guys wouldn’t expect anything from her anymore, right? Isn’t that the obvious fix?
“Anyway, it’s stressful,” she says. “Like, one time I said no to this guy, and he was all, ‘Fine, I’ll find someone better, skank bitch.’ ”
Anger jolts me out of my confusion. I keep my voice from rising, but only because Grace is asleep in the next room. “I—what? Someone said that to you?”
“Eh, don’t worry about it. He was wasted, so—”
“Is this someone we know?”
“No, ’course not,” Olivia says. “I never know guys who act like that. My point is, you never know if you’re dealing with some guy who’s going to get scary-angry or just plain mean if you’re like, hey, sorry, not interested.”
“I . . . okay,” I say, starting to see it from her angle. I don’t know why I feel so reluctant to agree with her. It’s not like I want this stuff to be her fault. “I mean . . . yeah.”
I hear her fumble with what I assume are blankets. “Aight,” she says, “I should go care for our dear, drunken June bug.”
“Night, Liv.” I plug my phone back in to charge and set it on my bedside table, then roll over, burying the side of my face in a cool pillow.
My eyes won’t close. My hands wander to my mouth, and I catch myself about to start biting again. I form fists, protecting my nails.
Skank bitch. Olivia made it sound as if the insult meant nothing to her. How many times has she heard that? How many times has she put up with it and not told me or Juniper?
Or is it only you she’s never told, Claire? whispers that voice in my head.
Of everything, that’s the thought that sticks: that yet again, I’m being excluded. I squeeze my eyes shut, selfishly hating myself, as if it’s the time for that sort of thing.
IT STARTS RAINING AT 3:00 AM ON SUNDAY MORNING. The rain starts and stops outside the window over and over. Sleep, I tell myself, but it doesn’t come, not like the focus I can drive myself into onstage. Lying here, I can’t clear my mind, let alone get out of my head into some other safe haven.
I hate nighttime. In the chunks of night before I drift off, my brain bombards me with every thought I’ve been kicking back since morning. Tonight, the spinning wheel has stopped on the topic of sadness and how unoriginal it is. People have always been unhappy. It’s only in the last hundred years—or fewer, maybe—that people have started thinking that unhappiness is this abnormal thing, that we’re all entitled to happiness somehow. Such bullshit. That’s not how the world works. I bet in Grigory Veselovsky’s time in Russia, all the serfs or peasants or whatever were probably major-depressive by our standards.
So for the last three hours, I’ve lain here being unoriginal. I don’t know.
Crying ceased to do anything for me ages ago. I just stare, these nights. Stare at the window, until a fitful sleep drags my mind under, kicking, thrashing, silent.
· · · · · · ·
A KNOCK COMES ON MY DOOR. I GLANCE TO THE wall, at the old-timey novelty clock Dad got me for Christmas back in seventh grade. It has a quote from Shakespeare’s As You Like It—“One man in his time plays many parts”—and the comedy-tragedy theater masks below.
The clock reads 6:00 PM. A whole day gone, and I hardly noticed. Thank God for the Internet. With a little help from addictive games, I can forget myself at home, turn into a shell of my own mind. It’s nicely numbing. This weekend, I’ve been marathoning Blade-X, which, despite its unfortunate name, is not a cheap brand of grocery-store razor, but a first-person shooter involving large quantities of badly animated blood.
Another knock. “Yeah, what?” I say, as my avatar slams a crate into a metal wall. A shiny shield falls out, and I strap it onto my back.
The door creaks open. Olivia slips in and shuts the door behind her. “Hey.”
“Yo,” I say, not pausing the game.
“Have you been in bed all day?”
“Yup.”
“What do you want for dinner?”
“Not hungry.” Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten with her and Dad on Friday. I hope she doesn’t think that’s going to be normal. The energy I had the day before yesterday is long gone.
“What are you playing?” she asks, walking to my desk and sitting down.
“It’s called Blade-X.”
“Sounds, uh, stimulating.”
I don’t reply, sheathing my knives so I can climb up a water tower.
“Do you meet many people playing those?” she asks.
“I don’t have, like, a social life through gaming, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Okay,” she says. “ ’Cause this whole isolation thing doesn’t seem super-fun.”
As I edge around the side of the water tower, bullets spray up at me from below. I roll to one side and start climbing the second ladder, tilting the perspective. There’s got to be an entrance here somewhere. . .
“I was glad you surfaced Friday, because you’ve seemed so mad lately,” Olivia says. “I’ve been trying to give you space, ’cause I thought it was something I did.”
I’m hardly listening. I’m dying up here. Climbing the ladders drains my energy, and dark, insect-like enemies have started swarming out the top of the water t
ower. I can’t fight them with my vitals bar empty—I have to get inside, somewhere safe.
Olivia continues. “But someone said maybe you were going through something, so I thought I’d ask if—”
I slam the pause button, disbelieving. “Whoa, wait. ‘Someone’? You asked someone about how to, like, fix me?”
“What? That’s not what I said.” Olivia drums her gold nails on the glass top of my desk. “Look. I know it’s not my place to tell you what to do with your time, but—”
“You’re right. It’s absolutely not.”
“But, Kat, you’ve got to get out of bed. You’ve got to eat and have an actual sleep schedule. That’s not a lot. That’s, like, bare-minimum, day-to-day stuff.”
I don’t bother replying. What is there to say? I have all the personhood of a rock these days. No appetite. No circadian rhythm. No interests, except the play. Who cares?
“And if you can’t do this stuff alone,” she goes on, “someone has to help you. I wish it weren’t me, because you hate me, for whatever reason, but—”
“Oh, shut up. I don’t hate you.”
“It’s not as if you like me,” Olivia says, her voice rising. “And I don’t know when that happened, but you know what? It would’ve been great if you’d given me some sort of memo.”
I’m quiet. As I look at her, unwelcome reminders swim up to my mind’s eye: images of us passing notes in fourth grade and climbing trees in fifth, binge-watching movies late at night in sixth grade and reading idly in the same room in seventh. Years’ worth of memories start crawling into the back of my mind whenever she hassles me like this.
I unclench my jaw and say, “I don’t like anyone.”
She stays conspicuously silent. For a second I wonder if I might’ve hurt her feelings.
Olivia looks away, out the window. I wonder for a second if she’s going to cry. I haven’t seen her cry since elementary school. Does she even have tear ducts anymore, in those neatly lined eyes?
I look back at my laptop screen and hit play.
She stands. “If you change your mind about dinner, I’m making soup.”
I hardly hear her. There it is—a crack between the water tower’s metal plates. I shoulder my way through the entrance into the dark. Finally safe.
PRINCIPAL TURNER GREETS THE SCHOOL ON MONDAY morning with a lighthearted little announcement: “Students and faculty, we have determined that the next step in our investigation process will be to conduct brief interviews of the student body. All interviews will be strictly confidential and conducted in a safe, closed environment.”
I glance around, but nobody else in first period seems appalled by this. Apparently, they don’t mind that this teacher-student-romance thing has turned into the Spanish Inquisition.
I sit stiffly at my desk, staring down at a list of differential equations. This weekend I batted around the idea of speaking with Juniper Kipling, but the fact that phone conversations are the bane of my existence provided something of a deterrent. Also, calling her up out of nowhere to accuse her of this seemed a bit uncomfortable, to say the least.
Still, though, I have to talk to her as soon as possible. If she’s being coerced into something, I can’t keep my mouth shut. In fact, these interrogation sessions provide the perfect opportunity to tell the authorities what I know, if it seems appropriate.
At the beginning of lunch, I wait outside the cafeteria, hoping to intercept Juniper. Clumps of people edge around me, their eyes passing over me so smoothly, I might as well be painted to match the wall.
I spot Juniper halfway down the hall. She’s flanked by a pair of girls: a tall brunette with the rectangular shoulders of an Amazon, and a short redhead with thick silver eyeliner. The brunette says something, and the trio bursts into laughter, their smiles matching in a way that suggests they learned how to smile together. As they approach, I clear my throat, balling up my fists. I step into their path.
“Excuse me,” I declare.
The three stop, looking at me with identical bemusement.
“Uh, hey,” says the brunette. “You’re Valentine, right?”
“Yes.” I address Juniper, my nerves buzzing. “May I speak with you for a minute?”
“Me? Sure.” Juniper glances at the tall girl. “I’ll catch up with you guys in there.”
The brunette and the redhead vanish into the crowd, and as Juniper and I back away toward the wall, a familiar droning voice says, “Freeeak.”
I turn, heat prickling my cheeks, as a pair of guys a head taller than I brushes by. “Could you at least find something entertaining to say?” I snap after their matching backpacks. They don’t flinch at my voice.
“Dean,” Juniper calls. At once, both boys glance over their shoulders. One is lean and wiry, his hair buzz-cut short. I recognize the other: the same long-nosed, curly-haired swimmer from last week, who didn’t apologize then, either.
Juniper narrows her eyes at the guy with the buzz cut. “Was that you? Did you say that?”
“Um,” Dean says, glancing at his curly-haired friend, whose gaze darts around the hall, not sticking anywhere in particular.
“Apologize to Valentine,” Juniper says, approaching them.
“Oh God,” I mumble. “Please, you’re under no obligation to white-knight me.”
“It’s a public service,” she says, looking back up at the guys. They’ve stayed still too long—the crowd spits them out, and they hover by the cafeteria doors. As Juniper’s eyes harden, I thank God that I’m not in her vicious sight line. “Apologize,” she insists.
Dean shrugs. “Whatever, sorry,” he says with hardly a look in my direction. He nudges his friend. “Come on, let’s get our table.”
But as Dean heads into the cafeteria, Juniper turns her accusatory stare on the curly-haired boy, and he lingers behind. “Lucas, seriously?” Juniper says, sounding disappointed. “You’re going to stand there and watch that happen?”
Lucas wilts, his shoulders slumping. Abysmal posture notwithstanding, he has nearly a foot on me, his shoulders so wide that I feel as if I’m facing down a bear. His guilty eyes are the dark brown of wet bark. Looking at his glum expression, I somehow feel bad for him, although he’s hardly a victim here.
He opens his mouth, presumably to apologize, but I interrupt: “It’s fine.”
Even as my words come out, I wonder why I’m saying them. It isn’t fine. From the rough end of things, silence looks an awful lot like complicity.
Before I can speak further, Juniper’s brunette friend bounces back out the door to the cafeteria, wheeling to an ungainly halt. “Hey, Juni,” she says. “Can I steal you back? Claire says we ‘need to talk’ about Saturday night, which is, like, the most terrifying thing in many moons. I think she thinks I funneled the wine down your throat or something.”
The sound of a cleared throat makes all of us turn. Mr. García, striding by, has slowed his pace, his brow furrowed. He doesn’t say anything, but gives Juniper and Olivia a look.
“I mean, uh,” Olivia says as he passes, “nobody here consumes alcohol, because we are all under the age of twenty-one.”
García’s frown deepens. He disappears down the hall, and Olivia makes a face after him. “How is he a hard-ass about drinking? He finished college, like, two hours ago.” She glances at me. “Also, hey, sorry for interrupting. Also, also, I’m Olivia. Nice to meet you.”
Juniper gives me an apologetic look. “Valentine, do you mind if I catch you later? I kind of need to talk something out with Claire. This isn’t something urgent, is it?”
“I mean, it’s—” I cut myself off. If I say it’s urgent, I’ll interest Lucas and Olivia far more than I’d like. I try to say no, but it doesn’t come out; my throat has gone tight, scared into disuse by the three of them looking at me at once. They are all taller than me and all very good-looking. This is the most woefully unbalanced conversation of my life. “Fine,” I say, lifting my chin as much as I can without feeling ridiculous. “It could be post
poned if you . . . yes.”
“I’ll catch up with you tomorrow?”
“Right.”
She stops in the arch, looking back with something like determination. “Also, Valentine, I’m having a thing at my place on Saturday around nine. Feel free to come by if you want.”
My first instinct is hysterical laughter. Miraculously, I tamp it down. “Right,” I say, trying not to sound too incredulous. Me going to a party: definitely a viable option. “Thank you.”
The two girls disappear back into the cafeteria. Lucas dallies by the door, examining me.
“Good-bye,” I say pointedly.
But he doesn’t move. “I’m sorry.”
“I already said it was fine.”
“It’s just, Dean’s swim captain this year, so the rest of us kind of put up and shut up. And since regionals are only a week away, he’s twice as hard-core these days, which—”
“I don’t care.”
Lucas looks taken aback. “Uh,” he says. “Fair, I guess. But I am sorry, okay?”
There’s something not quite Kansan around the edge of his accent; he spits his consonants too hard, flattening his vowels. He has an overeager sort of voice, quick and insistent, as if he’s terrified he might lose my attention for a second. God, people who try too hard are so embarrassing.
I’ve hesitated too long. He seems to think it’s an invitation to keep talking. “I’m Lucas McCallum,” he says. “What’s your name?”
“Valentine Simmons.”
“Quite the name.” He grins, and I feel disgusted, looking at his smile. It’s stupidly photogenic, the type of Hollywood-handsome that verges on absurd. This kid is going to go through life and get everything handed to him on a silver platter because he looks like some sort of minor Greek god. I hate him a bit already, and it baffles me that he seems so desperate for validation. Hasn’t he, like every other attractive person, been trained to expect the world to fall into his lap with no effort whatsoever?
“So,” he says, “what up, Valentine Simmons?”
“Not much. Lunch awaits.” I turn on my heel and take all of one step before he says, “Not in the cafeteria?”
Seven Ways We Lie Page 11
