Confessions of a Hater

by Caprice Crane

  So Dahlia had designed, appropriately enough, the dingo of all What Kind of Dog Are You? sites. Looks like a nice, fun way to pass a few hours, until you wake up a few hours later to find it gnawing the flesh off your femur.

  It was inspired. And it worked like a regular application for the majority of users, providing nice, innocent examples of dogs that met the criteria based on how the users answered the questions. Dahlia’s application required users to sign in with their actual Facebook accounts, so we knew exactly who signed in and when.

  When anyone from the Bitch Squad signed in, the user experience was completely different. It didn’t matter how they answered the questions; they always got the same predetermined result, and when it popped up, the application changed in appearance, color, font and everything else, with the name “BitchBook” suddenly appearing at the top.

  Now, that would be fun even if only Skyler and her minions could see it, but it’s way more fun when everyone can. Which is why when each user signed in, the permissions let the application share the results with everyone else. Thus everyone who participated got a BitchBook sidebar with their results that showed the top BitchBook results. You could click on any of them and get the results for Skyler, Jericha, et al. And of course, most people did, because everyone was a lot more interested in clicking something called BitchBook, featuring everyone’s favorite bitches, than the rest of the application.

  Skyler was a Yorkshire terrier, tiny but mighty. Yippy and bitchy. Long silky hair and obsessed with what to wear. History taught us the Yorkshire terrier was developed in England during the mid-nineteenth century, and the dog’s main purpose was to control the rat population in the coal pits and cotton mills. This was fitting if you considered that Skyler had deemed anyone who was not completely vapid and met her beauty standards to be a rat. Her purpose was to destroy the spirit and self-confidence of those she targeted. Yorkshire terriers are known to have a “big dog” attitude (yup), and a self-assured, important manner (double yup). (Actually, make that yip.)

  As you might have figured, we had indeed Photoshopped Skyler’s head on to one of the ugliest, nastiest-looking Yorkshire terriers we could find. It helped that a fairly unflattering picture of Skyler had made its way into last year’s school yearbook—I guess that point I made to her forever ago about controlling your image by controlling the yearbook wasn’t complete bullshit after all. So we had a bad picture of her on one extremely nasty Yorkshire terrier, which was—well, what’s the most polite way to say this—taking a dump. Yep, that’s the most polite way I can think of. Plus Skyler has this sort of constipated look on her face in the picture, so it worked perfectly.

  The Skyler entry was the most inspired, but we didn’t let her loathsome ladies off the hook at all.

  Cassidy was a Pekingese. These lion dogs live a pampered existence and hail from China. They’re known to be aloof with strangers but loyal and protective of their home. Substitute “Skyler” for “home” and there you had it. Pekes are known to be stubborn, but if you remain in charge, training will eventually be successful. And Skyler had trained her well.

  We had snagged a great cheerleading pic of Cassidy throwing her head back during a cheer, with a look on her face of great, let’s say, pleasure. So when we also tracked down a picture of a Pekingese being mounted by another dog, well—we knew we’d struck gold.

  Jericha was a basset hound: short legged, with long sweeping ears. (Her ears weren’t long, but her hair sure was.) The breed is known for working best in packs—and so was she. Not having an opinion of her own unless it was Skyler-approved, she was a perfect third or fourth to have around to reaffirm whatever nonsense Skyler was shilling on any given day. The perfect follower, a total mindless “yes man”—but a girl. A “yes girl.” Which, rumor had it, was an accurate term for Jericha on more than one front.

  To fulfill the metaphor, we’d considered putting Jericha’s head on a dog at the back of a sled dog team—unfortunately, it turns out there aren’t any basset hounds in the Iditarod or any other sled dog races.

  Thankfully, we did come across a picture of a basset hound sniffing another dog’s butt, which was good enough. Thanks to Dahlia’s mastery of all things both technical and artistic—seriously, she should be working for James Cameron—we ended up with an amazingly realistic image of Jericha with her face up a dog’s ass. It was perfect. It was seamless. If Jericha’s mom had seen it, she would have asked her daughter, “Honey, why on earth did you have your nose up some dog’s ass? Oh, and when did the rest of you turn into a basset hound?”

  And then there was Daniella. With her parental pedigree hailing directly from the fashion world, it only made sense that she was a “designer dog.” Status is everything to owners of these dogs, and the Maltese-Poodle mix was perfect, because it’s completely contrived. Small in stature, the Maltipoo—also known as the Maltepoo, the Malt-A-Poo, and other insanely stupid shit—is occasionally mischievous. You know, like buying a dress that Skyler saw and wanted first. Despite its mischievous streak, this contrived hybrid dog is also kind of a dopey, runty little dog, sure to get its ass kicked at any dog park or simply when visiting a playful kitten.

  The only downside to this call is that Maltipoos really are cute. Like crazy adorable cute. And it’s hard to find a viciously funny photo that involves a Maltipoo. Well, unless you have a team of girls working day and night to find just the right photo and an amazingly talented computer genius/Photoshop queen running the show. In which case … it’s not all that hard to rig a believable image of a Maltipoo with Daniella’s head lapping up some highly questionable pile of something on the side of the road. What is that pile of something? A tossed-away half of a hamburger? Roadkill? Dog poop? All of the above? Hard to tell, but the Daniella-poo is lapping it up like caviar out of a silver spoon, which presumably has been her morning breakfast since birth.

  Overall, it was brilliant, a smash success. It not only humiliated the skanks, but it ruined their own opportunity to pull the prank on us and/or anyone else Skyler had targeted—basically anyone who objected to bulimia as a necessary evil or dared to have an independent thought on occasion. The application was being tweeted and Facebooked around the school at a furious pace, and once the BitchBook sidebar popped up and everyone saw the Bitch Squad results, it went “viral” in no time flat. The whole thing spread around school faster than food poisoning at an all-you-can-eat salad bar. Everyone was eating it up … well, everyone but the Bitch Squad, presumably. As of fourth period, I had yet to cross paths with anyone from the Skyler Squadron, but I could imagine how it was going down.

  What I hadn’t imagined was the reaction I’d get from someone who was (currently, at least) outside Skyler’s circle, someone who meant the world to me, someone I never expected this would bother.

  * * *

  “What were you thinking?”

  Chris glared at me, arms crossed over his chest. We sat at a corner table in the library, a free period for us both. I was trying to read his face, but I’d never seen it like this before, what looked like equal parts anger and disgust.

  I sighed. “I was thinking we were going to beat them at their own game.”

  “Jesus, Hailey,” he said. “That dog show prank—I told you about that in confidence.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think you’d be mad.”

  “You didn’t think—that’s sure right.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. Obviously, I hadn’t told Chris about the plan ahead of time, and all this time I told myself I didn’t want to bother him with the details, that he wouldn’t be interested in our silly little girl-drama. That this was between me and Skyler, and it’s not like I expect to be consulted every time he gets into a fight with some dude at PE.

  Well, that’s what I’d been telling myself, anyway. I guess there was another reason I hadn’t told Chris what we were planning: I didn’t want him to object, to try to talk me out of doing it. And also, if I’m really honest, I didn’t want
him to see the meanness that I was capable of. But Skyler deserved what she got, and so did the rest of them, if only for enabling her.

  Still, I didn’t expect Chris to be this upset.

  “Chris, I’m sorry. You’re right. That was private and between us, and I shouldn’t have used that information to…”

  “To do what she was going to do, only ten times worse,” he finished for me. “That was a total Skyler move.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “You remember how that conversation happened, right? It was me telling you why I broke up with her. Because I didn’t want to be with someone who would go that far out of her way to hurt people.”

  “Chris—it’s not like that. Jeez, this was her idea. She’s done awful shit to a lot of people, and this was going to be the cherry on top!”

  “Yeah. But she didn’t do it.”

  “Only because we did it first!”

  “No,” Chris said, staring at the library carpet like he was counting every hideous blue fiber. “She wasn’t going to do it.”

  “What?”

  “She’d changed her mind,” he said. “That’s the word I got. Decided it wasn’t worth it, that all this pranking shit had gotten out of hand. So I thought we’d have a nice, chill Spirit Week, we’d all just have fun and screw around and have fun, and now … this.”

  I just sat there feeling crushed. We’d put all that work into the BitchBook prank, sweating over every last detail, trying to strike a blow for everyone Skyler had mocked, teased and ridiculed, and now Chris was making me feel like an Al Qaeda operative.

  And what really hurt was that I was realizing he might be right.

  “Chris,” I said softly, feeling around for some common ground. “I know you’re upset, and I’m sorry. I didn’t know she’d changed her mind. For all I knew, she was planning something that would have crushed a lot of girls, most likely including me and a lot of my friends. You know what she’s capable of. We felt we had to—”

  “Don’t tell me about what ‘we’ felt, Hailey,” Chris said. “They do what you tell them to do. You wanted to do this. A little payback on Skyler, one more shot at my ex, whatever. You could have talked to me about it, but you didn’t. You took something I told you, betrayed my trust and put together this little operation behind my back.”

  I felt sick. I literally thought I was going to throw up. Everything he was saying was true. I wished I had a time machine to go back and do it all over again—or rather, not do it in the first place. Everything was suddenly different. The way he looked at me, the way he felt about me, and I deserved it. I’d ruined everything.

  “You know what’s even worse?” he asked.

  “There’s something worse?” I couldn’t imagine what that could be.

  “It was shitty, the way Skyler acted and the things she did. But at least I understood why she did it. I could recognize where some of her insecurities came from.” He looked down at his sneakers and shook his head. Then he looked me dead in the eyes.

  “You have no excuse.”

  He walked away, and I opened my mouth, but nothing would come out. There was nothing to say. He was right. And he obviously knew more about Skyler’s family issues than he’d let on. Probably because he knew how to keep private things private, unlike me: Asshole Extraordinaire. Maybe that should be my next comic. Captain Asshole: able to break trust and ruin relationships in a single bound!

  It felt like all my internal organs had been removed and replaced with rocks. I staggered from the table, feeling like I’d been hit by a car, and you’d think I would have been able to escape the library without any more incident, but you’d be wrong.

  I’d only made it eight steps. Skyler Brandt stood right in front of me.

  That’s it, I’m totally going to learn krav maga.

  Looking at Skyler though, I didn’t think any martial arts would be necessary. While it wasn’t too hard to figure out Chris’s face—furious would be a good catch-all term for that—I’d never seen Skyler look like this before. I had no idea what to make of it. She looked … I don’t know, I guess older somehow. That’s the only way I can phrase it.

  “Hailey,” she said.

  “Skyler,” I replied, having no freaking idea what else to say.

  She moved in close, until she was less than a foot from me, and looked me right in the eye.

  “I knew I saw something in you, way back last fall,” she said. “That was a really good prank. A little … um, derivative is the word, I think—and yeah, I do know words of more than three syllables—but really well done.”

  Get my defenses down and then stab me in the gut with your switchblade, I thought. Might as well. Nothing but rocks in there right now anyway.

  I’d gotten all of my apologizing out of the way with Chris. Betraying Chris’s trust was wrong, no question, but I had no interest in doing the same for Skyler. For all I knew, she was still planning something horrible before the week was out.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Learned from the best.”

  “Oh, Hailey.” Skyler grinned. “You didn’t learn that from me.” She leaned in close, a couple of inches from my ear, and I briefly worried she would bite it off. Instead, she simply whispered:

  “Being vicious comes naturally to you.”

  And then she was gone, leaving behind only a faint trail of Lolita Lempicka perfume.

  I left the library, closing in on my locker, just hoping at this point to get through the day. The rocks in my stomach now felt replaced by a huge swirl of emotions, and I could feel myself on the edge of tears. Someone grabbed my arm and spun me around, and for a second I thought my nonviolent interaction with Skyler had just been a prelude to her getting five guys from the wrestling team to beat me up.

  Instead, thankfully, it was Anya.

  “Nine-one-one,” she said.

  “No shit!” I replied, barely holding back the tears.

  “Wait, what?” she asked.

  “Emergency!” I said. “Everything’s awful. Everything’s ruined—”

  “Whoa,” she said. “Me. Emergency. My emergency.”

  Insane as it sounds, I almost felt better for a second that someone else had an emergency. Misery loves company, right? And I was miserable enough that I could use a whole shitload of company.

  “Okay, Anya. What’s your emergency?”

  “Bathroom.”

  Girl of few words.

  I followed Anya into the bathroom, where she did the usual ritual, checking under all the stalls to make sure nobody was there. Jennifer Hess was in stall number three. We could tell by the tattoo on her ankle—a band of flowers going all the way around.

  Neither of us said anything.

  “This isn’t awkward or anything,” Jennifer said from behind the door.

  “Are you almost done?” Anya asked.

  “I didn’t know there was a time limit,” she replied.

  We’d obviously interrupted the poor girl so I felt kinda bad.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Take your time.”

  “Or don’t,” Anya said, giving me a what-the-fuck? look.

  Finally the flush came and Jennifer walked out of the stall, adjusting her jeans, glaring at us both.

  “We said we were sorry,” I snapped at her.

  She glared for another second, but she seemed to reconsider and the corners of her mouth curled into a slight smile. “Whatever,” she said. “Enjoy your conversation. I don’t need to see my head glued to a shih tzu.”

  She washed her hands and left as I turned to Anya.

  “So what’s going on?” I asked.

  “You first,” she said.

  “But you said you had a nine-one-one.”

  “It can wait, you look upset.”

  “I fucked up,” I said. “Really bad.”

  I lost it then. I didn’t even mean to. The tears started streaming down my face before I’d even started to cry. I don’t even know if that makes sense, but they were just
involuntary. I started to bawl, right there in the bathroom next to where it said “Nicole Herzog does anal” in blue Sharpie. The janitors hadn’t cleaned it up yet and for some reason I couldn’t stop staring at it on the wall. Even Anya noticed.

  She turned around and read the message on the wall, and then looked at me crying, and got this weird, concerned look on her face. “Ooh. So—”

  “What?” I sniffed.

  “I mean…” She pointed at the wall. “Is it … um … what are you…”

  Jeez, Anya.

  “No! God, no!”

  “Okay!” she said. “Hey, I had to ask! You kept looking at it.…”

  “Ugh,” I replied, putting a hand over my face.

  “And it occurred to me that I haven’t seen you sit down today, and…”

  “Anya!”

  “You were walking a little weird just now, and…”

  “Oh my God!”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. We both laughed a little, a welcome mood shift … but it didn’t hold. I didn’t even know what Anya’s issue was—and as bad as this sounds, I wasn’t dying to find out—because mine was cataclysmic.

  “Chris hates me,” I said.

  “What? Why?”

  “When he told me about the dog show prank, it was an example of why he couldn’t date Skyler anymore. He was telling me exactly what he didn’t want in a girlfriend. So what do I take from that? Hey, let’s steal her idea and do it to them. Fucking brilliant, huh?”

  “Wow,” Anya said. “I didn’t know it went down that way. So that’s why you didn’t tell him about it before.”

  “Yeah. He feels like I abused his trust and, I don’t know, like what we did is just as disgusting as what Skyler planned to do.”

  Anya was quiet for a bit.

  “Say something!”

  “Hailes, I want to make you feel better, but…” She looked at me empathetically. “I can see why he’d be upset.”