by Lauren Saft
“Is this Veronica’s?” I asked Sam as coolly and rationally as I possibly could, trying with every inch of my being to sound as if (and truly myself believe) I hadn’t jumped to any conclusions.
Sam stayed focused on the TV, but I felt his skin tighten. “I guess so. She must have left it here sometime.”
“When was she here?”
Sam took his hand out of his pants. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe that time we all came here after the game a few weeks ago. Calm down, Inspector Gadget, Jesus.”
Another hard swallow.
He pulled me in closer to him and rubbed my shoulder. I relaxed for a minute, but it started to rise again: the goose bumps, the headache, chunks in my throat.
“Veronica was not wearing this that night. She was wearing that heinous black sweaterdress thing.” My heart started to race and my throat closed in. Thoughts, images, occasions ran through my head and crawled over my skin.
“Babe, stop. You’re being psycho,” Sam said, squeezing my shoulders, eyes still glued to the TV.
I wanted to believe that I was crazy. More than anything. And I’d almost talked myself into believing I was, as I’d done the last time I’d had this feeling and the time before that. I tried to find a place where I could believe that maybe I just hadn’t noticed that she had that sweater that night, or some night, but I couldn’t. Not now, not after what had happened. It all made too much sense.
“No, I’m not!” I stood up. I looked down at him sitting on the couch and pointed my finger. “Did you fuck Veronica? Here? Did Veronica fucking come here and did you fuck her? Just fucking tell me.”
He grabbed my wrist and pulled me back down to the couch, but I sprang to the opposite end so that I could see his face. So that he couldn’t touch me. Comfort me. Diffuse me, like he always could.
“No!” he said, but there was this smile, this half smirk, a lack of focus in his left eye, and I knew he was lying.
“Just fucking tell me!”
He rested his forearms on his knees and shook his head.
“Just fucking tell me!”
“Fine!” he said. “I fucked Veronica. Are you happy now?”
I immediately regretted asking. I wished I never knew. I couldn’t take it back and pretend I didn’t know now.
“Oh my god” was all I could say. “Oh my god.”
I looked down at my shaking hands in my lap.
He went to put his hand on my back, and I slapped it away.
“When?” I asked.
“Do you really want to know?”
“After New Year’s?”
“No,” he said. “We stopped fucking after New Year’s.”
I couldn’t swallow anymore; the tears burst. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t talk. I didn’t know what I was even feeling. Anger. Humiliation. Devastation. Destruction. I didn’t know who I was maddest at. I was going to throw up. I noticed everything: when Veronica changed her highlights from honey to caramel, when the bitches at Starbucks used 2% milk instead of skim, when Sam changed the blade on his razor. How could I have missed this? Maybe there was a lot I missed. Maybe I didn’t know anything. Maybe everything I ever believed to be true was a lie. This whole time, I’d been the butt of this whole joke. Did anyone else know?
“Why did you tell me?” I asked through sobs, bleary eyes still focused on my lap.
“You fucking begged me to tell you!” he yelled back.
“Fuck you,” I said. And I got up.
“Babe, don’t leave. I didn’t mean…” He reached out for my wrist, but I snapped it away.
“What the fuck did you mean, then?”
“I’m an idiot. I’m just a dumbass, animal guy who can’t help it sometimes. But, I love you. Don’t go.” He looked at me with sincere regret in his eyes, but not enough.
“She’s my best friend.…”
“I thought Alex was your best friend?”
I swallowed one last time, picked up the bong, and smashed it on the ground. “Fuck you, Sam! Seriously, fuck you.” I was wheezing, and my chest hurt too much to even get the words out.
“What the hell?!” he yelled. “You bitch!”
I turned my back to him and started for the door. The basketball announcers cheered for something behind me.
“You should have just denied it,” I said. “I would have believed you eventually.”
“Now you tell me.…”
I stomped up the stairs and slammed his front door with no concern for what his parents might think.
He didn’t even follow me.
I DROVE AROUND FOR a few hours thinking about driving off a cliff. I thought about how guilty Sam and Veronica would feel if I just died, right then. I thought about how the only appropriate revenge would be the eternal guilt they would both be burdened with if I just died that afternoon.
I thought about driving over to Veronica’s and confronting her at her party, in front of everyone. Causing a huge scene, throwing something in her face, maybe slapping her. But I didn’t have the strength yet, I needed to rebuild, be organized, fuck her in as premeditated and calculated a way as she’d fucked me. If I went over there an emotional wreck, I’d just humiliate myself even more than I already had.
When it started to get dark, my blind rage took me over to Alex’s. I banged on the door, and Josh opened it to find me shaking, hysterical and red-faced, keeled over as if I were about to faint or vomit.
“Holy shit,” he said. “What the hell happened to you? None of you guys came to Veronica’s; Alex won’t come out of her room. What the hell is going on?”
“I need Alex.”
He hugged my wet convulsing body and led me upstairs.
“Wait,” he said, and he ducked into his room. He gave me a big sweatshirt. “Don’t freeze. I’m sure all Alex’s clothes are dirty on the floor.”
“Thanks, Josh.” I looked up at his sad face and hugged him. Wondered what he could possibly think was happening to me, and if I should just tell him, or if, oh my god, he already knew. I turned away and crossed the hall to Alex’s room.
“Holy shit,” she said when I walked in her door. Her room was a mess as usual; clothes, books, CDs strewn all over her floor and unmade bed.
“Sam,” I sobbed, “has been fucking Veronica.” The words tasted bitter in my mouth.
Her face went green, as I suspected it would, but her eyes shifted to the wall. Please fucking god, tell me that she didn’t know about this.… There was no way.
Could there be a way? Could she have known and not told me? Was this yet another thing she hadn’t told me? Could I trust no one? Did I truly have no one in the world to count on? I panicked, thinking about who else might possibly know. The lacrosse team? Underclassmen? I hated everything. Violence bubbled inside me.
Her eyes refocused. “No fucking way!”
I realized I’d have to tell her about New Year’s, about all of it. I suddenly wished I hadn’t told her anything, but at the same time I had never been more grateful to have her to tell. I wanted her to tell me that she’d fix it, kill Veronica, kill Sam, defend me and my honor. As I sobbed in her lap in her messy room and she pet my head and called Veronica an evil cunt, I realized how much I’d missed her, missed the truth and having someone understand and be on my side the way she always did and always was.
“What are you thinking right now?” I asked through sobs as she glared out the window at the unyielding rain.
“So much,” she said. “I am thinking so much.”
VERONICA COLLINS
I went to school that Monday anxious—anxious to talk to Alex about Drew, anxious to see if everyone was talking about how I’d been guzzling green beer and playing beirut while my boyfriend’s dad was dying in the hospital, and none of my friends showed up to my party. I hadn’t seen Drew yet. He told me that he didn’t want to see anyone, and I wondered if that had applied to Alex, too. Somehow, I doubted it did. He called me that night, after he just hadn’t shown up to my party, after he hadn’
t called or returned my calls all day. I was drunk when I answered the phone. I picked up and said, “Oh good, so you’re not lying in a ditch somewhere.” I actually said that. And he said, “No, but my dad is.” It took a few exchanges before I understood that he wasn’t joking, before I grasped what was actually going on. I tried to will myself out of being drunk. I told him I’d come over, that I didn’t care if I was drunk, I’d drive there, anyway. He told me not to, that he was okay, that he needed to be alone and with his family and that I shouldn’t worry.
The rain had finally stopped, and it was the first warmish day of spring. That day when everyone gets excited and overzealous and breaks out short sleeves and bare legs, even though it’s not quite warm enough. I walked into school and saw Mollie and Alex huddled by Alex’s locker.
I said something like, “Hey, guys,” trying to sound appropriately solemn.
Mollie just whipped her shiny ponytail and marched down the hall, completely ignoring me. I knew that I was going to pay for the way I’d handled everything. That everyone was now running around talking about what a shallow party girl I was again. I knew that I was wrong to have given him space when he asked for it, that I should have not listened and gone to his house with flowers or cookies or a mix CD of sad songs. I should have known that that’s what I was supposed to do, that that’s what a good girlfriend would have done. I figured Mollie, as the ultimate professional girlfriend, was appalled at how I, the raging slut dressed in girlfriend’s clothing, totally screwed the one responsibility I had in a time of crisis: showing up.
Alex slung her backpack over her shoulder and shifted her weight. Hallway chatter was beginning to drain around us.
“I really messed up, didn’t I?” I asked.
“You think?” I detected sarcasm.
“Is Drew pissed?”
I played with my rings and wondered why Mollie would care so much that I was a shitty girlfriend. Why wasn’t Alex the mad one?
She shook her head and made her way toward homeroom, leaving me dumbfounded, standing cross-armed like an asshole in front of her locker.
“Lex!” I screamed down the hall, but hearing her name only quickened her step.
IN HOMEROOM, SHE SAT in the back between Kelly Sanders and Nikki Clayman. She glanced at her untied shoelaces, her chewed-up pen, out the window, at the back of Kim Frasier’s head, everywhere but at me. I gazed at the maps on the walls, wondered if I could go live on that Greek guy’s boat until someone else did something selfish and stupid and no one cared about this anymore. Crying in homeroom wasn’t an option, but tears were fighting their way out. I couldn’t believe that they were so mad at me, that they were taking this so personally. How was I supposed to have known the right thing to do? How did they know the right way to act in these situations? It’s not like I found out his dad died and threw a party. It’s not even like anyone called me and told me when it happened so I could even know to stop the party and go to where I was supposed to be. No one tells you how you’re supposed to act in these situations—Drew’s dad freakin’ died. He said he wanted to be alone! I wasn’t going to argue with him, tell him that I knew better, because I didn’t. How did they? I called him again and again, tried to get him to talk to me, be with me, let me be a part of what was happening, but he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t let me in. What was I missing that everyone else seemed to get? Why was I so disconnected from Drew, from everyone? No matter how physically together Drew and I were, we were miles apart. I felt like I was slipping through the cracks, with Mollie and Alex, with my parents, with Drew. No matter how loud I screamed or how close I physically was, I just kept disappearing. My head swelled with everything I could have done differently.
“Miss Collins,” Mr. Boardman said.
I looked over at him, chunks rising in my throat, panic setting in that I’d just lost my boyfriend and two best friends forever, for no reason other than that I was dumb, ignorant of the unwritten social understandings that everyone else seemed to instinctively know. Maybe more stuff they learned in the books I’d never read and movies I’d never watched.
“Miss Collins, you look distraught today. Is something wrong?” Tears welled in my eyes. I wondered how many people already knew, were already gossiping about what an insensitive, self-involved flake I was.
“Nope, I’m good.” I feigned a smile. I looked over at Alex, sitting between Nikki and Kelly with her arms crossed, sneering at her lap. I looked around at the other girls, who all seemed to be whispering and staring with accusatory eyes. Normally, I got a rush out of people talking about me, but this was different. The swarming eyes weren’t the usual shade of jealous and intrigued, they were angry, thirsty for blood. The blue walls, the maps, the posters of smug old Shakespeare, closed in, and I asked to be excused.
I went to the bathroom, sat in a stall, and let the tears fall. I told myself I could fix it. I’d go home and call Drew and do the supportive girlfriend thing and everything would be fine. Christ, it had been only two days. How had everything changed, my whole life been ruined? In two days? I truly believed that I could fix it—that I’d get them all to love me again. They’d been mad at me before. Mollie and Alex didn’t talk to me for a week in eighth grade because Mollie’d heard that I’d told Max Fischer she had an eating disorder. Which she did. She got over it and started loving me again when she got mad at Vanessa Cooper for making out with Brad Burns, who she’d declared she had a crush on like two weeks before. That’s all this was. She and Alex needed to be mad at me for a while, but it would pass; it always did. I started to calm down.
Sitting in the stall, I noticed the lilac paint chipping around the door hinges. Why did the bathroom always smell like the monkey house at the zoo? I did my yoga breathing and told myself not to panic. That this was a bad day—I’d had them before.
I was about to reemerge, when the bathroom door swung open. I didn’t recognize the voices. The girls were talking about a Macbeth paper that neither of them had written yet. Macbeth. Sophomores. I didn’t want to deal with them asking if I’d been crying or why, or them seeing that I had and then making up why and spreading rumors about it, so I decided to wait in the stall until they left.
“So, did you hear the big gossip?” one said.
“Which big gossip?”
Sadly, I found myself excited at the thought that I was going to get to overhear some big juicy piece of sophomore drama. The first one hopped into the stall next to mine, and I tried to place the purple Doc Martens. Who in tenth grade wore purple Doc Martens? Mollie would know.
“Apparently,” the one in the stall started, and then paused as her pee stream splashed the toilet water. The other ran the sink. “Apparently, Veronica Collins fucked Mollie Finn’s boyfriend.”
First, I got dizzy—saw flecks of white and felt the blood slowly drain from my head. Then everything faded to black, like when you stand up too fast, except I was still sitting down.
The water stopped running, and I heard the slam of a palm on the wet counter.
“Shut up!”
The other one flushed and left the stall.
“I know.”
“What a whore! She’s really fucked everyone now, hasn’t she?”
“I know.”
Their voices echoed around the empty bathroom. My head started pounding; I still felt dizzy. I couldn’t remember the last time I had breathed.
“This is going to be bad,” the one with the Doc Martens said. “I would not fuck with Mollie Finn. She’s kind of insane.” Their voices faded out of the bathroom behind another rusty swing of the heavy door.
I turned around and threw up.
How had she found out? Had Sam told her? Had Sam told someone else who told her? Why would Sam tell her? Why would Sam tell anyone? And now, of all times—why now? I threw up again.
By the time I finally willed myself out of the bathroom, the halls were empty; first period had started fifteen minutes ago. Mr. Boardman stood by his classroom door. He skulked over to me and put
his pudgy hand on my shoulder, which caught me off guard.
“Veronica, are you okay? You had me worried in homeroom. You’re not your usual vivacious self.” He looked at me through his thick black glasses with sincerity in his eyes. I thought maybe he might be a really nice guy to the people in his real life.
“I’m not feeling well,” I said. “I think it’s a stomach bug. I’m going to go to the nurse.”
He nodded and told me to feel better, and the look in his eyes made me think that maybe he knew it wasn’t really a stomach bug, but he didn’t say anything. I knew that he wouldn’t.
ALEXANDRA HOLBROOK
The funeral was on a Thursday; we all missed school. Drew’s whole Crawford class was excused to be there. The service was graveside, and it was unseasonably warm, had been the whole week. Drew’s dad was buried toward the back of the cemetery, away from the road, in the hills where the newer graves were. The blossoms had begun to pop on all the trees; it seemed unfair that this was the first time we’d all had an excuse to do something outside.
Veronica sat next to Drew and held his hand through the entire service. Mollie sat next to me and held mine. Seeing Veronica touch him made me itch and seethe and want to chew the hair off my own head. I felt her hand on his back in my lungs, her lips on his ear in my legs. I hated that he seemed even more intoxicating to me now, that the sex and the sadness were only making him more attractive to me, as if I weren’t obsessed before. All these years I’d been afraid that the reality of actual sex with actual Drew would ruin the fantasy of dreamy sex with fantasy Drew, but the officially documented memory only made the reveries worse. Before, all I thought about was what it would be like to touch him, kiss him, bury my nose in the nape of his neck and smell his skin. I’d run different scenarios in my mind, imagined him feeling, tasting, being different every time. I imagined scenes in his room, my room, his car, abandoned log cabins, but now, now that I had touched him, kissed him, felt my cheek on his naked chest, I just kept playing that one, the real one, over and over again in a morbid loop—wondering if he enjoyed it, wondering if I did something wrong or I smelled bad or tasted weird and if that was the reason we hadn’t talked about it, and the reason he hadn’t tried to do it again. Or the reason he hadn’t broken up with Veronica yet.
