Bombshell

by Rowan Maness

I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and hunger hit me all at once.

  “Thanks,” I said, holding my hand out, not wanting to get up and reveal the hidden phone. I thought Dylan would move on to his room, but he sat on my bed and made himself comfortable.

  “You want to know something sad?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Dylan said. He’d finished one Popsicle and opened the ice cream, taking alternating bites from each tub.

  “It’s been about twelve hours since Mom took my computer and phone away, and I’m already finding it hard to believe I exist. I’m atrophying.”

  Dylan shrugged. “I always find it hard to believe I exist. You probably don’t feel it usually because you go on your little Instagrams or whatever and pretend. You and your sub-millennial friends, just avoiding reality at all costs.”

  “Subliminal friends,” I said, smiling. Dylan laughed.

  “Okay, that’s great,” I went on. “That’s a lovely vision of modern life.”

  “Shit’s bleak,” Dylan declared. “But, historically, less bleak than ever before.”

  “Yay,” I said weakly.

  Dylan stood up, gathering his snacks. Something at his neck caught the moonlight and reflected it, catching my eye. Dylan was wearing a necklace, a small silver cross.

  “Where’d you get that fancy lady necklace?” I asked, meaning to make fun of him. I felt an odd pulling at the back of my head.

  Dylan tugged at the chain, looking down.

  “Sylvie—this girl in Chile—gave it to me,” he said. “I don’t actually wear it, but I was just about to Skype with her before the power went out, so I put it on. Can’t escape Catholic girls, I guess—”

  He trailed off, mumbled, “Good night,” and walked back to his room.

  The pulling feeling in my head turned into a thought. A memory. A silver cross dangling in the air. Red and green light bouncing off its shining surface. Someone talking.

  “You sure you want me to do this?”

  “Yes I’m sure.” That was my voice. “Just leave as soon as you drop me off, okay? And that’s it. Then we’re done.”

  From within the boarded-up Dream Palace came the whispered breath of the coyote—

  You know who it is.

  Behind me, the phone rattled with the muted cut-off thump that meant its battery was dying. Believer, summoned by the trickster god one final time.

  Believer: Hope you don’t mind, I went rogue.

  Believer: Just couldn’t stand following your orders anymore.

  I wasn’t Believer. I was the coyote.

  Who was I talking to? The silver cross, red and green light, a car, someone’s car, the rearview mirror—

  “You don’t even realize it, do you?”

  Mr. Lauren’s voice in my head now, the conversation we had in the velvet curtain–lined hallway of the Marquee. And a new memory of what happened directly after seeing him, strange and distant but definitely my own. Texting a blocked number in the bathroom, the words on a screen, clear as day.

  Me: Send the Tumblr to Max in 5 minutes

  “I don’t torture her.”

  “Oh yes, yes, you do.”

  The electricity surged to life, setting off a chain of flickering reactions. The heat lamp above the lizard’s cage turned back on with a tinny click. Across the room, the shark-faced air-conditioning vent now spewed cold air and was once more bordered by a square patch of brightness cast from the motion-sensor light shining from outside.

  I watched, stunned, as a shadow traversed it.

  Someone moving on the street below, passing in front of the driveway lights. Lingering on the sidewalk.

  I turned and looked out the window.

  • • •

  Leah Leary’s face was a blur, her eyes slit like a serpent’s. When I met her on the sidewalk nerves were sparking off of her. She was standing near a creosote bush still stinking from the weekend’s storm. Its bitter fragrance wafted over us as we stood face-to-face.

  I remembered everything. It was the first really hot day of the year, and the anniversary of Peter’s suicide. Rhiannon and Mary-Kate had a lunchtime meeting of the Graphics Design club, and I went into the chapel to eat there so I wouldn’t have to sit alone in the cafeteria. I said a jinxy prayer for Peter’s life and picked at a paper tray of tortilla chips covered in congealed nacho cheese. I ingrained every recovered detail in my memory, afraid I’d lose them again and have nothing to come at Leah with.

  Because she was coming at me.

  “I thought I was helping you,” she growled. “You said you wanted to stop. When I saw you in the chapel, you swore to God you would stop. I only agreed to do everything you said because I thought I was going to save you.”

  I remembered watching her walk into the chapel that day. Shane had just told me about Leah’s summer program at MIT, how she’d been selected as one of ten students in the country to go mess around with computers there. She was smart. The coyote whispered the plan into my ear, and I recruited Leah Leary to hack my shit and expose me to the world.

  It was her, picking me up at the utility box, driving me to the park to meet James, the silver cross dangling from the rearview mirror. I made snarky comments about how it would look ironic if she ever died in a car crash. Even in a blackout, I’m an asshole.

  She followed me as I walked to Hunt’s Tomb because she was worried James would murder me. But then she saw Shane. Heard him declare his love.

  So even though I’d told her that was the end, she could stop being Believer, she kept going. She realized I was incapable of remorse. You can only repent if you confess your sins and agree that what you’ve done is deplorable. But I hadn’t told her about James until that night. I’d kept him for myself because even though I’d orchestrated the punishment, I was still looking for a way out.

  She’d seen things when I’d given her my passwords and screen names. She saw the nude photos and the videos and knew that if she posted them to the Tumblr and sent them to my mom and the entire school I’d have to stop. Finally and for real.

  “You’re insane,” I told her.

  “I was just finishing what you started. I did this because you begged me to do it. And I think we both know who’s the crazy one here.”

  She was bigger and taller than me, and though I couldn’t imagine something as crazy as Leah trying to hit me, I was intimidated by her.

  She clutched at her stomach suddenly, like it hurt.

  “Why’d Shane even bother with me?” she asked. She’d been intent and serious before, but suddenly she was on the edge of tears. “If he loves someone like you?

  “You’re so evil,” she said, emphasizing the last word so I’d know she wasn’t throwing it around lightly. She was putting me beyond forgiveness and compassion. “At first I felt bad for you. But you showed me who you are. You’re false, corrupt. You love hurting people.”

  “Leah—” I tried to stop her.

  “He was always on his phone,” she went on. “I never said anything about it. I read all the letters. All the things he was telling you while he was with me.”

  She choked up—her face a mess of tears.

  She said Shane was still trying to help me. Even after I’d said the most hurtful things to him, he’d come home from the mountain that night and broken up with Leah via text. She couldn’t tell him what she knew without exposing herself, so she’d just had to take it when he lied and said he didn’t feel like they had anything in common. She asked him if there was anyone else. He insisted there wasn’t.

  “You have no idea,” Leah said. “Every lie you told made a million other lies possible. He keeps calling me asking me to help track the blocked number, the IP addresses. He still wants you.”

  “Leah.” I tried to appeal to her. “I’m so, so sorry about that. You saw, I had no idea. I don’t have those feelings for him. That’s out of my control.”

  She started moving toward me, and I backed away from her, tripping off the cement, into rocks. I considered yelling f
or Dylan or my mom but was still laboring under the assumption that she’d stop, and I’d look stupid, scared of an angelic Goody Two-shoes in Converse and a denim jumper.

  “Hurting you is the only way to punish him,” she said, the words not quite directed at me. Directed somewhere else, to an invisible Shane, standing there watching.

  “You could be charged with distributing kiddie porn,” I said, spitting out the words to try to make them as threatening as possible.

  “Nobody will ever be able to connect anything to me,” she spit back. “If anyone even gets close, it’ll look like it was posted from your bedroom.”

  “And,” she went on, “you’re an actual murderer. I talked to Morgan—Peter’s sister. Did you even know he had a sister?” Her voice was sure again, rising, and she was still coming at me with an unhinged look on her face.

  “She blames you, too. She was very interested to know you hadn’t stopped lying, even after your moving letter about how sorry you were for killing him. I had to talk her out of coming here with me.”

  Leah reached out and pushed me into the neighbor’s yard, out of reach of the driveway lights. I staggered, and hit the back of my ankles on a brick planter. I couldn’t back up any farther, and she blocked me every time I tried to get away.

  She kept talking. “I never liked you. I thought I wasn’t being gracious enough, that there must be something redeemable about you. But the more you showed me, the more I knew I was right.”

  “I’m sorry,” I squeaked. She wasn’t hearing me.

  “It’s shameful,” she said thoughtfully, “But I started to envy the way you can hurt other people and not let it affect you.”

  “Leah,” I said. “You hurt me. I’m hurting, a lot, I swear.”

  She laughed.

  “Look,” I continued. “You want me to beg for forgiveness? If you want to hear how deeply embarrassed I am, I’ll tell you all about it—let’s just take a deep breath and go up to my bedroom and you can hear how sad and sorry and depressed I am, and we can just fucking figure this out and it’ll be over.”

  “You’d just be putting on another show. I’ve watched you. I see you now.”

  An idle wind cut between us like a roving knife, blowing strands of the neighbor’s palo verde across my face. Leah was momentarily distracted by it, and I rushed her. Her arm shot out and struck my face—Leah shrieked, suddenly her normal self again, not a vengeful attacker but a heartbroken teenage girl.

  That’s the last thing I saw. Leah’s face melting from anger to horror to helplessness as she knocked me backward hard and my feet slipped on the rocks and my legs buckled. Pain exploded at the small of my back a split second before my head hit the edge of the brick planter and everything went black.

  CHAPTER 25

  My mom let me stay home from school the rest of the week. She was the one who’d answered the door when Leah knocked, crying hysterically, repeating, “I didn’t mean to kill her; I didn’t mean to kill her,” over and over again. I think the few seconds between that moment and when she found me passed out in the neighbor’s rocks, bleeding from a gash in my head, did more to return me to her good graces than anything I could’ve done on my own.

  Leah’s parents met us in the waiting room at the ER. I was propped up on my mom’s shoulder, dizzy and seeing double, when they arrived, but I managed to stop Leah from confessing absolutely everything. Yes, she’d posted the link to the Tumblr on the Xavier Facebook page, and yes, I’d enlisted her to be my stalker, but I insisted that the nudes were my own doing. I swore Leah tried to convince me out of posting them.

  Part of me really did want to get back at her, but I saw how pointless it would be. I’d gotten kicked in the ass and I deserved it, no matter what Dr. Judson or my mom or Dylan said. Nothing I did to Leah could change the fact that the entire populace of Xavier and Brophy had seen me naked literally and metaphorically.

  A doctor led me to a windowless exam room and asked me questions while stitching me up. I had a hard time answering them. She asked if I knew the day and year, and all I could think of was something I’d heard in a documentary about Janis Joplin—“As we learned on the train, it’s all the same fucking day, man.” The doctor did not find it amusing, and diagnosed me with a mild concussion.

  At home, the physical effects of the past few days hit me fully. I didn’t get out of bed until Thursday morning, when Dylan burst into my room dragging his record player across the carpet. He hooked it up and started blasting a B-52s album. He jumped on my bed and yanked the blinds open on the newly repaired window, singing at the top of his lungs.

  You’re living in your own private Idaho

  “Go away,” I muttered, kicking at his legs.

  “Mom said to get Joss out of bed,” he said, out of breath.

  “Go away!” I yelled.

  “Dylan does what he is told!”

  I kept kicking him until he jumped down and cranked the volume on the record player as high as it would go, leaving it that way so I had to crawl out of bed with the comforter wrapped around my body in order to turn it off.

  I saw Dr. Judson later that day. I don’t know what good it did, but I told her everything. I even told her about Shane and Leah and what I’d done to both of them. My mom came in and joined us and we talked about the measures the school was taking to protect other students from such “vicious, targeted bullying.” My mom’s coworker recommended an attorney who would perform the service of “expunging sensitive material” from the Tumblr and beyond.

  Mr. Lauren took some quick thinking to clear up. All Leah knew, it turns out, was that I’d texted and sent photos to someone who said his name was Miles. But the phone number didn’t match the phone Mr. Lauren had on him when he was called in to talk to administration. He’d decided to resign, even though I insisted nothing happened between us. All my secrets were gone. My hands were empty. I had to keep something to myself.

  On Friday Mary-Kate and Rhiannon came by on their way to prom. My mom still refused to let me have access to a laptop or phone, so they surprised me just as I was about to try to tackle a mountain of makeup assignments and missed homework.

  “Joss, your friends are here!” my mom yelled from downstairs.

  Friends?

  I pictured Anna, Emma, and Rosie at the front door, like, Can Joss come out and play, Mrs. Wyatt? You know, we really miss her.

  Deb Mahoney’s voice brought me back to reality. When I walked past her to the Hummer limousine waiting at the curb, she regarded me fearfully, like I was a condemned inmate.

  At least my mom’s not chaperoning prom.

  Inside the limo, Mary-Kate was wearing a mint-green gown, looking at her reflection in a compact mirror, making a disgusted face, picking at her eyebrow. Mae was sitting next to her in a black minidress, and across from them Rhiannon and Trevor were arranged on the leather seat, Rhiannon lying across Trevor’s lap to keep her satin dress from wrinkling.

  Mae was telling Mary-Kate, “Seriously, nothing is wrong with your eyebrow.”

  I knelt on the limo floor, at Mary-Kate’s feet, and felt a little self-conscious about my greasy hair and the pineapple-print pajamas I’d been wearing three days straight.

  “You look really pretty,” I told her.

  We looked at each other, and I thought about how sometimes there’s a kind of communication you have with another person that is so intimate it’s almost banal. Maybe my friendship with Mary-Kate wouldn’t survive past high school, but at that moment I was thankful she saw me, knew me enough to understand with a look that I was sorry, so sorry, for hurting her and for being a shitty friend. There is immeasurable value in being able to tell a person something without uttering a word. It’s impossible to do via e-mail or text because the degree of intimacy is lost. Using words removes you a degree, separates you from the actual emotion.

  Mary-Kate reached down and wrapped me in a hug and held on to me for a long time.

  “My eyebrow is so messed up,” Mary-Kate whined whe
n we finally parted. “How come it’s always one side of my face that looks jacked? I can do one side perfectly and then the other one looks like a sad clown. Am I crooked?”

  “You are not crooked,” I said. “And your eyebrows are perfectly matched.”

  “They’re not supposed to be perfectly matched! I read that they’re supposed to be like fraternal twins.”

  “Gross,” I teased. “Where’d you read that?”

  “In a terrible magazine you’d make fun of me for reading,” she said, staring at her face in the mirror again. Mae reached out and yanked the compact out of her hand, throwing it out the limo’s open moonroof.

  “I’m not going to make fun of you for reading terrible magazines anymore,” I said. “I swear. They’re not terrible, anyway. I am.”

  “No, don’t stop,” Mary-Kate said. “I’d miss it. Sometimes I do Joss commentary in my head. Like, ‘Mary-Kate, eyebrows are stupid anyway. What are they even for? What’s their function?’ ”

  I asked what was going on at school and she filled me in. Apparently everybody who’d commented on the Facebook post was given after-school detention, and some of the Brophy boys who’d been particularly lewd and shared it on their own walls were suspended. I was infamous for a couple days, but then prom excitement took over everyone’s forebrains and people moved on.

  “Good,” I said. “I’ll probably be back Monday. It’s extremely difficult to be at home without the Internet. I feel like a frontierswoman. I’m dangerously close to developing hobbies.”

  Rhiannon made a sound—an annoyed chh. Like, Yeah right. Like, Hey, you need to talk to me now. I looked to Mary-Kate for direction. She shrugged. Like, Fix what you broke, Joss.

  I turned to face Rhiannon.

  “You okay?” I asked, knowing her tough heart wouldn’t want to hear “I’m sorry” again.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “But I’m not really ready to be all cool, cool, cool.”

  “I get it.” I nodded. “If the roles were reversed, I probably would’ve killed Trevor in revenge already.”

  “Hey,” Trevor complained.

  Rhiannon managed a little smile.