Tease

by Amanda Maciel

  Alex is telling some story with lots of goofy faces and hand gestures. But then he lets his side of the bag drop and I hear Tommy squawking, and the moment is over.

  “Sara, could you get another bag out of the garage?” my mom calls as I’m finally climbing out and slamming my car door shut.

  I hear Tommy ask, “Hey, can I go watch TV now? You said I could when Sara got home!”

  “No, I said you could go inside and start your homework,” she corrects him. As I carry the new bag over, flapping it open on my way, I see Tommy frown, obviously trying to decide which option is less awful.

  “Can I scoop muck for a while?” he asks. I can tell he’s already asked her this at least a million times.

  “Tom-Tom, you know that ladder is too high,” I say so my mom doesn’t have to. “But I bet next winter you’ll be big enough to crawl all over the roof, fixing tiles and cleaning the gutters and sweeping the chimney—”

  “We don’t have a chimney!” Alex protests, but he’s already in a fit of giggles at the very idea. He turns to Tommy and squeals, “You’d get all covered in sook!”

  “In what?” Tommy asks, with his best I’m-twenty-months-older-and-therefore-so-much-smarter-than-you expression.

  “Sook,” Alex says with a sigh, like he’s just so tired of explaining everything. “You know, like Santa. And Mary Poppins?”

  Our mom smiles nicely as she sends a gross glob of leaves into the bag I’m holding and says, “Sweetie, do you mean soot?”

  “You dumbass!” Tommy yells.

  “Hey, don’t call your brother that!” I say, and at the same time my mom yells, “Language!”

  Tommy mutters “Sorry” in Alex’s general direction, and looks sheepish for about three seconds before he asks, “Now can I go inside?”

  “Sara and Brielle?” Ms. Enman looks up from the note she’s holding, the one Jeremy Miner just handed her. He’s already disappeared back into the hallway, off to messenger some other note to some other teacher, win Hall Monitor of the Year, be the AV club captain, die a virgin, etc.

  “Yep,” Brielle says lazily. She rolls her eyes, like she’s been expecting her name to be called, but I’m actually dumb enough to feel surprised. When we get to the principal’s office Brielle smirks at me. “What a lame effing job this lady has,” she says. “You know they’ve pulled half the girls in our class in here already. God, it’s like, just hire a stupid IT person, figure it out already.”

  And that’s when I finally get it: the Facebook page.

  My heart drops to my shoes, but two seconds in Principal Schoen’s office and I realize Brielle was right. The woman has no idea who set up the Fat Beyotch account. She’s just rounding up the possible suspects, two by two. Including the two who yelled at Emma Putnam on Friday night.

  So I can’t really focus on what’s going on, can’t figure out if I’m in trouble or annoyed or what. I’m in this, like, free-floating panic about what this might mean, and I don’t really hear what the principal says at first. Mostly I’m staring at her shapeless gray hair and wondering whether this would go on my permanent record. Could we even try to explain how much Emma asks for it? She acts so pathetic all the time, and then she goes off and starts texting your boyfriend or calls you a tease or crashes your party, and no one calls her to Schoen’s office.

  “Girls, I know Emma has had a hard time making friends,” the principal’s saying. In my shock I’ve just been watching her face, but so far it’s been totally calm, almost ridiculously nonthreatening. Finally some of her words sink in, and I start to feel like this is all going to blow over. “And I’m not accusing you of anything,” she says. “If you could just make more of an effort, you know the school has a strict policy against bullying—”

  I jump a little at that word, but Brielle is already interrupting. “Principal Schoen,” she says carefully, her voice dripping with sincerity, “we’ve really been trying to reach out to Emma. And I’m sure whoever did this Facebook thing was just trying to joke around, you know? I mean, Sara and I tease each other all the time, right?”

  She looks at me and it’s eighth-grade speech class all over again—I nod vigorously, but I can’t think of anything to say, can’t force any words out of my mouth.

  “So I just know that whoever did this,” Brielle goes on, “probably thought it was a way to make Emma part of the group, right? We all do that stuff to each other. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s just funny—I’m sure it was only meant to be funny.”

  Principal Schoen looks like she really wants to believe what Brielle is saying. Hell, I want to believe it, and I know better than anyone what a truckload of bullshit it is. I almost wonder if Brielle believes it herself—though I guess the fact that she definitely believes, or maybe somehow knows that Schoen and the rest of them can’t actually catch us, is more than enough to give her voice that confident tone.

  But when we leave the office—after the principal asks us again to befriend Emma and report any bullying we see at school—Brielle is pissed.

  “I bet that little tramp stamp gave Schoen a list of names,” she says, storming down the hall toward her locker. The bell hasn’t rung yet so the hallways are still empty, and when Brielle spins her lock and yanks the door open so hard it bangs into the one next to it, the sound echoes. “This stupid school is so scared of my parents they wouldn’t dare pull me in for questioning unless she told them to. I am so gonna get her for this.”

  “Yeah, well, unfortunately I don’t think we’re playing dodgeball today,” I say, in a weak attempt at a joke. We’ll see Emma next period, in gym, but this week has been the badminton unit. Like any of us—or anyone at all, for that matter—needs to know how to play freaking badminton.

  “Holy schnitzel, you’re right!” Brielle turns to me with her mouth open in a surprised grin. “Why didn’t I think of that? Jeez, girl, you are a genius.”

  “What? I said we’re not playing dodgeball.”

  Brielle leans in and says in her movie-announcer voice, “Baby, where we’re going, we don’t need balls.”

  The tension of the trip to Schoen’s office finally breaks, and I start giggling like an idiot. Brielle grabs my arm and practically carries me to the locker rooms, like I wasn’t going there anyway. She flings her purse onto one of the benches and paces up and down—the bell rang on our way here, but we’re still the first ones to arrive. It gives Brielle time to rant some more. Her brief moment of humor is already long gone, so when another fit of laughter rises up in my throat I swallow it back down.

  “First she comes to this school and acts like a total spaz skank, steals everyone’s boyfriends, cries like a baby when people tell her to back off, flirts with your boyfriend, shows up at my party totally and completely uninvited, and then tattles to the principal about a stupid joke that she totally deserved?”

  Brielle doesn’t stop moving while she talks, and her face is all pink from anger. It’s all the stuff about Emma that I hate too, but I just let her talk. I lean against a locker with my arms crossed, remembering how I hung out with Dylan a little bit last night and I feel like we’re even closer now—added to being close-close at Brielle’s party—but the whole Emma text thing still bothers me. It bothers me more, actually. Every time I think of being with Dylan, I get this feeling in my chest, cold and hot at the same time. Like I’m going to explode, literally. And when I think of someone else being with Dylan . . . just the idea makes me want to throw up. The cold and the hot and the exploding all mix together, and it’s like I can’t breathe. It’s really intense. It kind of scares me, actually.

  Girls start coming into the locker room and there’s suddenly lots of noise. When Brielle sees Emma walking in, alone, she stops pacing and comes to stand next to me. We wait quietly while Emma walks over to her locker, and just as she passes by us, Brielle goes, “Nice shirt.”

  Emma’s just wearing a pink tank top, nothing special, though it is a little tight, I guess. Whatever, everyone knows what Brielle means. Ju
st the way she says the word shirt somehow says everything.

  But just in case it wasn’t already clear, Brielle adds, “Was the slut store having a sale? Oh, wait, I guess everything there is already cheap.”

  Emma has made it to her locker, but she’s gone all stiff, and she won’t look at Brielle. Everyone else is looking, though.

  “Hey, Emma, I’m talking to you,” Brielle says. She puts her arm around me and goes on. “Done anything fun on Facebook lately? Or, wait, you’re too busy banging other people’s boyfriends, aren’t you?”

  Emma’s head jerks around, finally, and she looks genuinely confused. Or maybe it’s just a scared look.

  I feel a weird rush of power. The opposite of eighth-grade speech, the opposite of sitting in Principal Schoen’s office. More like that night in the Taco Bell parking lot. I tilt my chin up at Emma and say, “Yeah, what is it with you? You know Dylan just laughs at you, right?”

  “I mean,” Brielle adds, “who wants to be getting stupid texts from a bitch like you when they already have a girlfriend like Sara?”

  Emma’s eyebrows are kind of furrowed, and for a second it looks like she’s going to cry. But then she looks away from Brielle and looks right at me. “Wow, you keep track of who your boyfriend texts?” she says. “Sounds like a nice relationship.”

  In a flash I find myself in front of Emma, too close, the hot-cold-vomit feeling rising up in my throat. I don’t even know what I’m about to do until it’s already done and I’ve pushed her. It’s just a few inches, but the lockers make a loud banging noise, and I hear every girl behind me gasp.

  “Listen, slut,” I hiss, right in her face, “just stay the hell out of my life, got it?” It’s like my voice is coming from someone else.

  But I’m the one who sees Emma’s eyes up close. At first she shrinks, doing that poor-little-girl thing she practically has down to a science. Then I see her narrow her eyes at me, just for a second. She gives me this look that clearly says, Yeah, we’ll see.

  And then out loud, softly but loud enough for everyone to hear, she whines, “Okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay?”

  Her eyes are big again, and tears are coming down her face, and she raises her hands up a little, like she’s giving up, like I won. I wonder if I really saw that look she gave me a second ago. I can still feel it, like a punch to the gut, but she looks so sad now, anyone looking at her would swear I was crazy. . . .

  Brielle grabs my arm again, pulling me away.

  “Whatever, Sara, like she’s even a problem,” she says. “Dylan doesn’t want any of that.”

  And then Coach Jenks walks in and blows her whistle, and everyone scrambles to finish getting dressed for badminton. Except Emma, of course. She sneaks out with her bag and no one sees her for the rest of the day.

  And I finally get some peace. If you don’t count the part where everyone else goes into the gym and I go into the last locker room bathroom stall and burst out crying for five solid minutes. My whole body shakes and snot runs down my face and even in the middle of it I know I’m going to have a hell of a time redoing my makeup, but when it’s over I do—I put myself back together and go to the gym.

  Except for that part, the rest of the day is fine.

  August

  “AND THIS OTHER guy? Henry? Not Henry Cable but Henry Lehman?”

  “Um . . . yeah?”

  “He got a home run! Off of Owen!”

  “Wait, which one is Owen?”

  “Owen Beehner! My best friend!”

  I hold up my hands defensively. I’ve been trying to follow Alex’s baseball camp stories, but sheesh, the kid must’ve met fifty new friends, and his stories are both endless and endlessly complicated. His eleventh birthday is in two weeks and when he’s not describing some ridiculously intricate game they played, he’s trying to convince my mom that all fifty boys should be invited to the party she’s throwing him at the batting cages.

  In fact, just as I’m apologizing for forgetting best-friend Owen, Alex whips his head around and starts to ask about the party again. “Owen lives in Lincoln, Mom! That’s only an hour away!”

  “I know, I know,” she says. I don’t think she’s heard a word he’s said all morning—it’s dangerously close to eight, so I know she’s just desperate to get to work. I’ve poured the cereal for Alex and Tommy, who isn’t nearly as chatty. In fact, I’ve had a hard time even meeting his eye. I guess regular camp wasn’t as awesome as baseball camp. Canoeing and archery clearly don’t match the magic that is Owen Beehner’s curveball.

  “So can we invite him? Can we? Can we?”

  Mom doesn’t even answer him this time. She looks at me and asks wearily, “You have them until Maggie gets here, right?”

  I nod. Maggie’s the babysitter, the one who watches the boys when they’re not in camp. It should be me; I’ve been on duty for most of the other summers since the divorce. But this time I have school. And Natalie. And Teresa. Every time Mom says Maggie’s name she looks kind of angry, and I know she’s thinking that it’s just another thing we can’t afford.

  I think Mom believes that I didn’t do anything wrong in this whole Emma thing. Or not wrong enough for criminal prosecution, anyway. But costing us money we don’t have, messing up my college admissions, not being around for the boys? Wrong enough.

  Yet another reason I just can’t feel that bad about Emma. If she’d just sucked it up—or, whatever, gotten help, taken her meds, done anything else besides what she did—everything would be normal now. And anyway, if what we all did was so horrible, why didn’t we get sued when Emma was still alive?

  Tommy picks up his bowl and drops it into the kitchen sink with a clatter, then runs back upstairs to his room without a word. Alex and I raise our eyebrows at each other, but Mom’s already gone, so she misses the whole thing. I hear the garage door rolling up and, with a sigh, I grab my own bowl, washing it along with my brother’s. Alex starts talking about another baseball game, a professional one, I think. I try to pretend I’m listening while I gather up my summer school books and stuff them into my bag.

  The day turns out to be one of those pointless-at-every-turn ones. Carmichael hasn’t shown up for classes, which isn’t a surprise (though I’m a little surprised that I seem to care whether or not he’s here). I get to Natalie’s office for our appointment at three but she’s not there, some emergency or something, her assistant won’t tell me anything more than that the appointment’s canceled and they’re sorry they didn’t call me. So I have forty-five minutes to kill before my appointment with Therapist Teresa. I could go to Starbucks and spend my last five dollars on some coffee. Or I could do something really stupid.

  I pick stupid.

  The aisles at the Albertsons supermarket are so cold that goose pimples spring up on my arms the second I walk through the door. At the entrance there are mountains of flower displays. There aren’t any holidays coming up, so all the balloons are variations on either HAPPY BIRTHDAY or CONGRATULATIONS. Past that is the produce, regular and organic. Or if you turn left, like I’m doing now, you get to the cash registers.

  I just make eye contact with him for a second—he looks up as I’m walking by the express register at the end, where he’s checking out an old woman with what looks like lemons. I don’t glance over long enough to see more than a flash of yellow and that he’s seen me, he’s looking back at me. There’s a nod.

  I keep walking, all the way down to register fifteen, the ATMs, and the start of the bakery section. I turn again, right this time, down the coldest aisle of all, the one with the ice cream and frozen pizza. At the fish I turn left. There’s a little hallway that leads to a door. The EMERGENCY ONLY sign is just a sign—there’s no alarm. I push through and find myself at the back corner of the building, near some Dumpsters but not so close that you can smell them. A few milk crates sit around, cigarette butts fanned out on the ground beneath them. I’m alone. I find a spot along the concrete-brick wall and lean back and wait.

  May
be three minutes later, not even long enough for the chill of the store to fade from my arms, Dylan is there, pushing the door open and striding over to me. We don’t say anything. I know he’s taken his ten-minute break, I know we aren’t going to talk. He presses me closer to the wall, so close I can feel the clip on his name tag digging into my chest a little, like a pinch, and we kiss, and the frozen-food-aisle chill melts from my limbs.

  It hangs on in my heart, though. I kiss and kiss him, and he holds me, and it feels good. But it doesn’t sink in.

  “Okay. We have a solid argument that the antidepressants Miss Putnam was taking have been linked to other suicides. We have the doctor who can testify to that. But what’s still killing us is the stalking charge. We just don’t have a good plan for that.”

  “Yeah, I’m not sure about the online stuff, I still have more research to do there. But for the rest—Miss Putnam lived down the street from Mr. Chang, right? So an argument could be made—”

  “I thought of that. But Miss Wharton here and Mr. Chang weren’t really that close. Isn’t that right?”

  Natalie and the hot law student intern turn to me, eyebrows raised. I shrug in answer to Natalie’s question. No, “Mr. Chang” and I weren’t that close. I always thought Tyler Chang was kind of a tool, even before Emma’s parents filed charges against him, even before we found out what happened that last weekend. He was always partying with Emma like it was no big deal, because he could; she was convenient, too—they lived three houses away from each other. He’d hang out with her and post it all online like it was something to be proud of, even while he made fun of her behind her back with the rest of us.