The Accidental Bad Girl

by Maxine Kaplan

  He stuck out his lower lip and muttered, “Didn’t care, you mean.” He stepped toward me and started to launch into yet another diatribe, but I cut him off.

  “You’re pathetic,” I told him.

  He stopped short, looking like I’d slapped him again. “All you’re mad about is that I didn’t notice you. You don’t care about Jody. I couldn’t have done anything to stop Grant any more than you could have. Your feelings were hurt because I didn’t like you back. This whole thing is petty nerd revenge.”

  He collected himself and made a feeble attempt at a sneer. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  I felt my lip snarl. “Oh yeah? Then tell me something. That picture of me you put on Facebook. Why did you have it?”

  Gilly slumped over, burying his face in his hands and gulping wetly for air. When he looked up a moment later, his eyes were red and ringed with shiny damp patches.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice hollow. “God, I wish I could take it back. I got so angry, I couldn’t think—” His voice cracked, and he started sobbing out loud.

  I was alarmed and a little afraid to see him cry. I didn’t trust myself to answer coldly, so I didn’t answer at all.

  He went on. “I was at the warehouse party with Lemon. He knows Trev from judo, and he’s got this raver girlfriend who wanted to do ecstasy with him. He invited us to the party. I didn’t want to be there. But then I saw you.” He took a deep breath. “You looked so happy, and I wanted to . . . I don’t know. I wanted to remember it. I took the picture. Then Powers grabbed you, and you . . . you let him. And you just kept on letting him. For weeks. Like an idiot. Or,” he added quickly, “like someone a lot less smart than you are.”

  He looked at me pleadingly. “Am I making sense?” he begged.

  I shook my head. “No. You’re not. It’s none of your business what I do. Get to the stash. How did you manage to steal it?”

  Gilly continued, “A couple of weeks later, Lemon dragged me to the Fish Hook again, to hang out with Trev. Mason was there. He was trying to get Trev to do something, I’m not sure what, but Trev didn’t want to do it. Mason went really quiet for a minute, and then fucking Powers shows up and agrees to it.”

  “Do what?”

  “I don’t know,” Gilly said wearily. “I was distracted by my sheer hatred of Grant Powers. Anyway, Mason cheered right the hell up and invited us over for a party at his apartment. He drove us over in his car. The Prius in the picture. Turned out it was Simone’s building, which, you know, I knew pretty well at one point. The party was stupid, so I was just wandering around at one point, and I saw Mason sneak off to the basement. I followed him to that office, and that’s where I found the pills. They had a Post-it on them saying they were going to Grant.”

  “Why not go to the cops?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I wanted to scare Mason. The guy was just so smarmy.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, but there was no joy in it. “Fine, yes. Mason is an asshole. Grant is also an asshole. You were having a shitty time at a party. What the hell did I have to do with it?”

  He looked around the room, as if he would find the answer written on the walls.

  “Gilly? Look at me.” He did, but just barely. “Why me?” I asked again, sternly.

  Gilly visibly swallowed and looked away. Finally, he said, “Do you remember what the fall play was freshman year?”

  It was not what I expected to come out of his mouth. I was surprised enough to answer. “I don’t know. Some Shakespeare comedy, right?”

  “Twelfth Night,” he answered. “Naya got Olivia, one of the leads. I did sound and lighting.”

  “OK. Who cares? What does Naya have to do with this?”

  “Nothing. It was you. You and Audrey and Grant. Grant and Audrey used the auditorium balcony to make out all that semester. You—that day you were on lookout.”

  He practically growled the word “You.” I stiffened. “Is this story going somewhere?” I asked.

  Gilly’s eyes were welling up again. “You don’t remember this at all? Really?”

  I cast my mind back to freshman year. Grant and Audrey had just started dating, and Audrey, always with her puritanical streak, often wanted me on the sidelines at their dates back then, essentially as a chaperone.

  I remembered being in the auditorium, several rows away from them, burying my face in my algebra textbook, trying not to want to listen to them but failing, and grasping at every laugh or scrape on the carpeting.

  Did I remember Gilly being there?

  Gilly would likely have been in the lighting booth. But that didn’t make sense, because the lighting booth was visible from where I was sitting. I would have alerted Audrey and Grant, and we would have been gone. Could he have been on the stage?

  “Why don’t you try out for the plays?” I had asked him. “I bet you’d be really good.”

  His face hardened. “That’s not going to happen.”

  I mentally squinted, and a picture of Gilly, shorter and pimply, standing on the dim stage at Howell, appeared.

  “You were doing a monologue,” I ventured. “Why were you doing a monologue?”

  He just scowled. I turned back to this newly discovered memory and saw Gilly, puffing out his chest in pontification, a silly, lovelorn look on his face.

  I saw myself at fourteen—laughing at him. Not just laughing at the speech—which I vaguely remembered as being funny—but laughing cruelly, laughing without even thinking about him, laughing loudly enough that I would distract Grant and Audrey, make them pay attention to me, make them involve me in their two-person world.

  I didn’t remember exactly what I said, but I remembered that I had made sure to make it cutting enough for them to laugh with me. At Gilly.

  I didn’t remember what Gilly did after I laughed, or how he looked. I was a mean girl.

  “You should have heard how Grant was talking about you that night,” Gilly said, pulling me back to the present. My melting heart hardened again—in a slightly different shape, maybe, but as intractable as it had been a few minutes before. He was still wrong. I might have hurt him, but he’d tried to steal my identity. And mean girl, bad girl, good girl, whatever—it was mine, not his.

  He walked over to the antique safe and opened it, taking out a Ziploc filled halfway with capsules. He handed it to me and knelt on the floor, pulling my clothes out from under his bed. They were clean and dry and folded into a tidy pile with Rockford’s knife lying on top.

  Gilly gathered up the pile and passed it to me. I took it, dumping it and the pills in my bag.

  “I already had access to your profile,” he said, quietly, still not meeting my eyes. “I had been checking it. I knew it was shitty to do, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to know more about you. And that night when I grabbed the stash—I never meant to do it, to make it look like you took it. Really, I didn’t. But the way Grant was talking about you, the way he was describing you—”

  “Don’t tell me,” I told him. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Gilly finally looked into my eyes. “I got home that night and just—spiraled. All I could think about was you and Grant, and you and Audrey, and you and Ellie, and every time you made me feel . . .” He couldn’t seem to find the word. He gulped and finished, “I could make you hurt, so I did.”

  I felt sick to my stomach again. I didn’t answer and headed for the door.

  When my hand was on the doorknob, he spoke again. “I regretted it fast, Kendall. After we talked. I really did. And, then, after you got a plan, I tried to stay out of your life. Remember, I tried?”

  I remembered. I remembered feeling bereft and abandoned that day after he’d given me his sweatshirt in the rain, the day he wouldn’t even look at me at school. That was him trying? My throat was dry, but I managed to hiss, “Good to know.” I turned the knob.

  “Are you going to tell him who it was?” he asked.

  “Any reason I shouldn’t?” I snapped back. He didn’t answer.<
br />
  Gilly was facing away from me, slouched in defeat. I remembered him pulling his raincoat over my head. I closed my eyes and saw him put his head against mine, begging me to be careful. Sadness fell over me in a sour, heavy wave, until it felt like I was going to drown in it.

  “I’ll try not to,” I said, and pushed out of his room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I didn’t turn Gilly in. I flushed the capsules. And I took to carrying the knife around in a locked pouch in my backpack. It didn’t seem to matter if I got caught with a weapon, and it seemed increasingly likely that I’d need one someday.

  Saturday afternoon when I got to the basement office, I stopped short in the doorway. Mason was standing in front of a full-length mirror trying on ties. My eyes traveled up his thin profile, every inch in tight-fitting, eye-devouring black, a button-down hanging loose over his hips, a bone slightly visible there when he raised his arms to his neck.

  He turned to face me, revealing a smirk and, where his shirt opened, a triangle of red ribbed cotton undershirt. His eyes were flashing. He knew he looked good.

  “What do you think?” he asked, holding up two ties. “Maroon or black-and-white pinstripes?”

  “Depends on the occasion,” I eventually answered. “Who are you trying to impress?”

  “Why, I’m trying to impress you, my dear,” he said, inclining his head toward me. “But since I don’t think that’s going to happen, I thought I’d settle for your classmates. And mine.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You and I are going to a party together tonight,” he said, turning back to the mirror.

  “Really? I don’t believe dating you is in my employee contract,” I spat as he frowned at his reflection and started to unbutton his shirt.

  “Dating! God, you are in high school, aren’t you?” he said, chuckling. “I forget sometimes.”

  “Yes, I’m very immature,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “What is this party, and why are we going?”

  He shrugged out of the shirt, flexing a little. The pale hairs on his arms caught the light, making it impossible not to stare at the dark tattoos twisting around them. “Do you remember James Greenberger?” he asked.

  The question surprised me. “James Greenberger? Yeah, he went to Howell. He was a senior when I was a freshman.”

  “And now he goes to Columbia. His twenty-first birthday party is tonight. It’s going to be a blowout. Most of your class is invited. Well, the important people in your class.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You didn’t have to be,” he said, smirking again. “I am, and the general assumption was that you would come with me. Get changed.”

  “Into what?”

  He walked to the cupboard and pulled out a Nordstrom bag. He handed it to me.

  I took it gingerly. “What is this?”

  “It’s a present. Happy ten-week anniversary.”

  I almost laughed. My life had unraveled so completely in just ten weeks? I unwrapped the tissue paper inside the bag and found a strapless dress made of raw silk, with an asymmetrical hem and a built-in push-up bra. It was bright red.

  “How do you know it will fit?”

  “I made a guess based on some concentrated observations,” he said, folding his arms over his chest and leaning against the desk. “Try it on.”

  I looked at his face, at the hint of a smile. He was waiting to see if I would break. I wouldn’t.

  Looking him in the eye, I kicked off my shoes. He didn’t blink, and so I unzipped my sweatshirt and let it fall to the floor, quickly followed by my jeans. Still looking right at him until the moment the fabric blocked my eyes, I pulled my T-shirt over my head.

  I shook out the dress. I hated not wearing a bra, but it wasn’t as if I had a strapless just hanging out in my backpack. I again caught Mason’s eye. He was looking at me admiringly and not only at my body—although there was a flash of that in there, too. Determined to brazen this out, I reached behind me and unhooked the bra, tossing it to the floor, before stepping into the dress. Mason stepped behind me and zipped up the back.

  I went to the mirror. The dress fit perfectly.

  “You never told me which tie,” he said.

  I turned and surveyed him. That red tank top matched my dress to a tee. “No tie,” I told him. “Put the black shirt back on and wear it unbuttoned.”

  He came over to stand with me in front of the mirror and shrugged the shirt back on. He looked at the two of us standing next to each other in the mirror.

  “Perfect,” he said, appraising us almost clinically. “Shoes for you are in that bag, too.”

  I checked, and there were indeed black stiletto boots. And a bottle of pills.

  “Did I forget to tell you?” he said, smoothing his hair over his forehead. “You’re working tonight.”

  “As what?” I muttered, staring at the boots.

  His phone went off. He reached for it automatically, but when he saw the number, his shoulders shook a little, and he threw the phone onto the couch, as if he were tossing off a beetle that had landed on his arm.

  “Who was that?” I asked, genuinely curious. I had barely ever seen him rattled.

  The phone was still ringing. As Mason watched it go off, a smile of sorts, simultaneously satisfied and grim, settled onto his face. He gave his phone the finger. “Let him wait for once,” he said, to no one in particular.

  He turned back to the mirror and looked at his reflection—and then at my reflection next to him. “That was my father,” he said carefully.

  He was still looking at my face in the mirror. He seemed to be waiting for a reaction, so I said, “Oh?” and busied myself with my hair.

  “Do you get along with your parents?” He turned to look at me.

  His face looked almost sincere, so I answered him honestly. “I used to.”

  He nodded. “That must have been nice,” he said. “While it lasted.”

  We both turned back to the mirror. We looked good. We looked like a match.

  James’s parents had rented out the Rainbow Room, a former society haven of a restaurant turned high-ticket party venue. I could tell right away that the caterers were a private hire, because everywhere black-tie-wearing servers were carrying drinks to kids in my grade.

  Mason and I were already a little late. Simone was leaning against a window frame chatting with the cutest waiter. We caught each other’s eyes, and she gave me a surprised smile and wave. But when Mason came up behind me, her face went dark, and she turned away.

  “So who am I delivering to?” I asked, turning toward my date, my stomach cramping with anxiety, suddenly aware that I couldn’t keep this up forever. Simone would find out about the video or she would decide she hated me for not turning Mason in. I was going to lose her.

  Mason grabbed my hand with his far hand and pulled it across his chest and me into his side. “Like I said. We’re working tonight,” he said with a smile.

  I shuddered but muscle memory took over, and I shook the girl in the picture into my face. Involuntarily, I felt myself relax. I moved my hand upward from his chest, curling my fingers around his jawline. His smile got wider.

  Mason led me over to a group of girls dressed uniformly in tight black. Addressing the girl with the longest hair and the shortest dress, Mason said cheerfully, “Madeline. How’s tricks?”

  The other girls melted away. Madeline cocked her head to the side, making her blond hair, paler than mine, bounce. “Mason,” she drawled, swaying a little. She side-eyed me but kept her smile, and attention, aimed at Mason. “Who’s your charming companion?”

  Mason only snorted in response.

  “I’m Kendall,” I said, extricating my hand from Mason’s and holding it out to Madeline. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  She very lightly took my hand but didn’t shake it. “Maddie,” she said. “I’ve heard so many interesting things about you, Kendall.”

  “How is Jo?” Mason broke in
before I had a chance to thank her.

  Maddie let go of my hand and turned back to Mason, crossing her arms over her chest. “She’s pissed, Mason,” she said sweetly. “What do you expect?”

  “Not much at this point,” he said, chuckling.

  She nodded. “That’s good to hear. I’d rather you didn’t expect any additional favors from my friend.”

  Mason’s smile remained intact. “Madeline, darling, would you be so good as to show Kendall to the ladies’ room? She’s never been here before, and I know you always know your way around.”

  “With pleasure,” she cooed, her voice dripping with acid. Mason kissed me on the cheek and took off. I looked after him murderously and turned back to Maddie. She was staring after him with the exact same look.

  Once in the bathroom, Maddie hopped up onto the counter. “Show me what you’ve got, kid,” she said. I did what I was told and retrieved the pills from my clutch.

  Maddie held it up to the light and quickly counted, judging by the way she pursed her lips six times in quick succession. “Thanks, darling,” she said brightly, unzipping her designer combat boots—too cool for me to identify the label but obviously expensive—and sliding the bottle down to the heel.

  She hopped off the counter and arched sideways, zipping the boot back up. She straightened and handed me a wad of bills from her cleavage.

  “Well, see ya,” she said and headed to the door. When her hand was on the handle, she stopped and turned back, looking at me with a resigned expression on her face. “It was nice to meet you, Kendall,” she said softly. “Good luck.”

  As soon as the door swung shut, I heard a flush from one of the closed stalls. I spun around. There hadn’t been any feet visible under the doors when we walked in. A quick look told me there still weren’t. And then a single, black suede, lace-up platform lowered itself to the floor. Its twin followed a second later. I stashed the money in my boot and moved toward the door but wasn’t quick enough. The stall opened, and Ellie Kurtz stepped out.