The S-Word

by Chelsea Pitcher

  I can no longer afford to wonder about these things.

  I’m seventeen. This is my senior year, and I’m going to enjoy my time here no matter what people think.

  (That’s the spirit when walking into a lion’s den, right?)

  So here I am, world, not the prettiest picture, but a hundred percent unique. My heart is open, and I’m ready to be invited into the light. And into someone’s arms . . .

  Whose?

  Well, that too will be revealed when the time is right. After this year, I might lose the chance to tell you how I feel. So I’ll do it. I have to do it. Regardless of the consequences, I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t.

  There are just a few things I need to get in order before I do:

  First, I must present myself to the world in an appealing fashion. (How I’m going to do this remains to be seen.)

  Second, I must find a person, at least one person, who accepts me for who I am.

  And third, I must make amends with the one girl in the entire school who has every right to hate me.

  The girl I betrayed.

  three

  THE BELL RINGS.

  I look up from Lizzie’s entry. People are flooding the hallway, passing around me in little streams, barely glancing my way.

  They have no idea what I’m holding.

  The page slips from my hands. Back pressed against my locker, I slump down to the floor, landing in a heap. Lizzie’s entry follows, fluttering to my lap. The movement takes so much time, a part of me wonders if those words will rearrange into a different story when they land.

  They don’t.

  There they are, as clear as day: The girl I betrayed.

  “Who did Lizzie betray?” I murmur as people crowd around me. To their credit, they’re not laughing and pointing yet. But they are whispering and staring, some of them crouching down to get a better look at the page.

  To them I ask: “Was it me?”

  Lizzie’s words make no sense. No matter how many times I read them, they make no sense. This entry is from September. She didn’t go after Drake until April.

  Didn’t she?

  I look up, above the heads of my audience. I need to give my eyes a break. My vision is getting blurry.

  Still blurry.

  No, that’s just the mural on the wall. After Gordy Wilson died, a group of art students created the Unity Murals: four massive paintings depicting “student unity” on each of the main halls. Each hallway got a different color scheme: red for freshmen, gold for sophomores, violet for juniors, and blue for seniors. But they didn’t realize that painting humans in a range of blues makes them look like they’re drowning. The kids in the sophomore painting look like they’re catching fire. The junior hallway is nice—that soft violet hue gives the impression of floating.

  I won’t set foot in the freshman hallway. On the wall, as in life, those kids are bleeding.

  My eyes trail from the senior mural, where bodies flail in an azure sea, to the line of still-beige lockers underneath. There, Drake is moving as if through water, reaching up slowly and pulling a page from his locker grate.

  My heart seizes.

  I could stop him, I think. I could run screaming through the hallway. I could tear that page out of his hand and shred it to pieces.

  But I don’t. I’m rooted to the spot, stomach churning, both horrified at the thought of him reading Lizzie’s secrets and mesmerized by the idea of how he will feel.

  If he knows how she felt about him, will it make a difference?

  Will he regret using her and then throwing her away?

  These questions are rhetorical. I’ll never know the answer to them. I never want to speak to him again. Besides, I have more pressing concerns, as two pretty little Cheer Bears yank me to my feet.

  Elliot Carver and Cara Belle. The girls we toss into the air. The ones so light and airy they disprove the theory that real women aren’t as skinny as models. For this reason, people find them easy to hate, but I used to like them.

  Now I wonder if their sweetness is an act.

  “We’re getting you out of here,” Elliot whispers, red hair tickling me. She’s pressed so close she might as well climb into my lap. On the other side, her dark-haired partner in crime plucks Lizzie’s entry from my hand, linking her arm through mine. They’re wearing the same damn dress—one in black, and one in red—to complement each other’s hair.

  Sisters from another mister, I guess.

  I almost laugh as they guide me down the hall. These idiotic musings are the only things keeping me sane. Elliot’s full Irish, and Cara’s Italian and Japanese, but they do that twin thing whenever they can. Today they look like witches, with long fingernails and kohl-rimmed eyes.

  Rumor has it they mix love spells into their lip balm.

  They all but shove me into the bathroom. That’s when I break free from their grip. Stumbling across the room, I lock myself in a stall. Still, I’ve got too many questions to sit quietly.

  “What did Lizzie mean?” I study the graffiti scribbled across the stall door. Phone numbers. Words of hate. Same as always. “How did she betray me?”

  Silence. On the other side of the stall, a faucet is dripping. But the girls aren’t talking, and I need them to, right this minute.

  “Did you guys know about this?” I plead, my voice dangerously close to desperation. “I need to know.”

  Still nothing.

  Finally, as if through the vast recesses of time and space, Elliot speaks. Her voice is pinched. “Maybe prom night wasn’t the first time . . .”

  My eyes flutter closed. Her words shouldn’t bother me after everything that’s happened. But the idea that prom night was just the tip of the iceberg is almost too much for me to handle.

  “Did you . . . hear something?” I manage, voice cracking.

  “Nothing!” Elliot squeaks. I wonder if she’s going to cry. God, what a pair we make. “I’m just guessing.”

  “Don’t guess.” That’s Cara, and her voice is cold. I peer through the crack in the stall so I can watch them.

  And it’s a good thing I do. They’re putting on quite the silent little movie out there. First, Cara glares at Elliot, pushing Lizzie’s entry into her hand. Then, Elliot nudges Cara in the ribs.

  No, Cara mouths.

  I step out of the stall. For a minute I just stand there, holding on to the frame for support. “What do you know?”

  “We don’t know anything,” Cara insists.

  I step forward. “I saw you,” I tell Elliot, who’s rolling up the entry like a wand. “I saw you arguing through the stall. Why did you nudge her? What do you know about this?” I rip the entry from her hand.

  “We don’t know anything!” Cara exclaims, stepping in front of her friend. Protecting her from me. Isn’t that sweet? “I promise, Angie. I just hate talking about this. It kills me.”

  “That’s a funny choice of words.”

  She goes white as a sheet. White as a ghost? It’s like all the blood has drained from her face. “Please,” she begs in that mesmerizing voice. “You have to give us a break. We haven’t slept. We aren’t eating.”

  When are you ever eating? I want to snap. But that’s counterproductive, now, isn’t it? And I’ve got more important things to get at.

  “Why are you so upset?” I place my hand on Cara’s arm, like maybe I’m comforting her, or maybe I’m dangerous. And I could be either. I haven’t decided yet.

  Now she’s crying. “You know why,” she whispers, blinking up at me. It’s hard to look away. “We weren’t nice to her. We wouldn’t let her be our friend.”

  “She even tried harder this year,” I agree, thinking of the times Lizzie sidled up to Kennedy when she thought I wasn’t looking. At the time, I thought she was trying some weird social project—bridging the gap between the outcasts and the elite.

  Now I think she just wanted my friends to be her friends.

  “You rejected her,” I say. “You rejected her earlier thi
s year, and I rejected her after prom. None of us would give her a chance.” I hold Cara’s gaze. “So if you know something, now would be the time to get it off your chest.”

  Cara’s shaking, and Elliot won’t look me in the eye. But they say nothing.

  I’M ON MY way to being very late to second period when I pass the office. I start to get this tingly feeling on my neck, like maybe I should go in. The office staff knows me pretty well; being Mrs. Linn’s TA has its perks. How hard could it be to get ahold of the student locker list?

  Try it.

  Just try.

  Come on, Angie. Everyone’s doing it.

  I pinch my cheeks and slip into the office. Compared to the multicolored hallways, this room is stark. They’ve slapped these cutesy motivational posters onto the bright white walls:

  Hang in there!

  Math is cool!

  Eat an apple!

  Nothing useful. Nothing real.

  Ms. Carlisle beams when I approach the desk. “Back so soon?”

  “Unfortunately.” I cover my self-induced blush with my hand. “I totally screwed up those copies I made for Mrs. Linn last period. I’m such an idiot.”

  “Don’t you dare.” She touches my arm. She’s got this long, gray hair that defies old-lady convention and she always offers up little doses of feminist mysticism when I need it. I kind of love her. Which means I’m kind of an asshole for tricking her.

  But I can’t stop now.

  “Can I use the copier again? You can send me a bill for the extra copies, I swear.”

  “Oh, stop.” She chuckles. At least I can entertain her while I lie through my teeth. “Use it all you like.”

  “It’ll only take a minute,” I promise. “Oh, I almost forgot. Another one of Mrs. Linn’s freshmen forgot her locker combo. Annabel Leary, I think.” I narrow my eyes like I’m thinking super hard.

  Ms. Carlisle nods and sifts around for the student locker list. I head into the copy nook, pulling Mrs. Linn’s study sheet from my bag. In all the diary commotion, I failed to bring her copies back to English class. The copier’s so old it practically jams itself. I hardly have to wrinkle the paper to get it to make that annoying beep.

  “Paper’s jammed,” I call to Ms. Carlisle with a laugh. She doesn’t get up. I know she thinks solving my own problems is “empowering.” But she’ll come to my aid if I start to have a meltdown.

  All that’s left is to set the alarm on my phone, and then I pretend to fuss with the copier for another minute. Meanwhile, Ms. Carlisle’s getting more and more frustrated in the next room. I don’t have to see her. I can hear her huffing. Pretty soon it gets to be too much and she calls out, “Honey, are you sure you’ve got that name right?”

  “Yes,” I call back. Then, more quietly, “No. Maybe. You don’t see it?”

  She looks for another minute. “Are you sure Annabel didn’t transfer? Or maybe I’m thinking of Abigail Lark.”

  Actually, they both transferred: Anna because her dad got offered a job out of town, and Abby because she got pregnant. No one would own up to being the father, so my brilliant classmates declared anyone could be the father. After the hundredth “Who’s your baby daddy?” joke, fifteen-year-old Abby bailed.

  “You’re thinking of Abigail. I can double-check with Mrs. Linn,” I say, smacking the copier loud enough for her to hear. “Damn it.”

  “Hey, now.”

  “Sorry. This thing is so ancient. Can you help?” A bit of a whine enters my voice. “Please?” I hit copy again, and of course the copier just beeps; I haven’t cleared the jam, after all.

  I shake the machine.

  “Hey, hey!” Ms. Carlisle sweeps in, her long skirt trailing the floor. “Out of the way.” She starts pushing buttons, lifting levers and all that. I watch her in faux-fascination until my phone starts to ring.

  “Shit. I mean—sorry.” I open the phone and stop the alarm. Then I hold it to my ear. “Hello?” Ms. Carlisle just shakes her head. “Hey, slow down,” I say to the dead air. “What do you mean someone wrote something?” Here’s where I start to shake, and Ms. Carlisle can’t help but take notice. She touches my arm but I jerk away. “Kennedy, please tell me what it says. Please. I need to know. I—”

  I look up, eyes widened in surprise. “She hung up!”

  Ms. Carlisle tilts her head. “Angie?”

  “Oh God.” I’m shaking badly now, trying to do that lip-tremble thing that actresses do so well. “Oh God, oh God.”

  “Calm down, sweetie.”

  I look at her with unblinking eyes. Soon they start to sting and moisture appears. I’ve never been the cry-on-command type, but this is good too. “Someone wrote something on my locker.”

  Her eyes darken. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, someone wrote something! Kennedy saw it on my locker and she won’t tell me what it is!”

  “Calm down, now, it’s okay.” Her voice is strained but I can tell she’s trying to be soothing. “I’ll just give Jack a call—”

  “No!”

  “He’s maintenance, Angie. It’s his job.”

  “I don’t want anyone else to see it!” I stretch my eyes to their limit. “Please, will you just look and tell me what it says? Please?” A tear forms and drops.

  “All right.” She nods, watching me. I’m clearly stricken. Better safe than sorry. “I’ll go take a look.” She yanks my study sheet from the copier and resets it on the tray. Then she presses the big green button. “You just watch over this and I’ll be right back.”

  “You’re the best,” I say as copies shoot out the other end.

  And she is. She’s gone just long enough for me to copy the locker list and put it back on her desk. When she returns, I’ve got my original copies for Mrs. Linn stacked on top of the copier.

  I tuck them under my arm and approach tentatively. “Well? What did it say?”

  “Don’t you worry about that.” Her eyes won’t settle on me. Her skin looks blanched. “I’ve gone and taken care of it.”

  “Really?” I sniff. There’s a dark blotch on her hand, just below her thumb.

  “Sure thing.” She forces a smile and pats my back. “Hurry on to class.”

  “I’ll ask Mrs. Linn about the name,” I say, putting on my brave face. “I won’t let you down.” But of course I will. I’m clearly a ditz, too frazzled for my own good. I can’t be expected to remember my own name, let alone someone else’s.

  I ought to buy her some major secret-admirer candy to make up for this.

  I SPEND THE next few periods familiarizing myself with the locker list, but nothing interesting happens until fifth-period Math. There, Marvin Higgins—Latin classification Mathus geekus—is hunched over in the front of the class, studying some pages that look all too familiar.

  Fantastic.

  Marvin’s pretty far down on my list, below the Beauty Queen, the Drama Queen, and the boy who broke my heart. Still, he’s on there, so it looks like I’ll have to talk to him next.

  Halfway through the period, Mr. Farmington asks us to break up into little groups. I plunk down next to Marvin in the front row—a first in Math class. My place is in the back, where Farmington’s voice is faded and the distance allows for easy texting under my desk. Then again, I’m not all that into gossiping with my friends these days, so it’s not really a major loss.

  Marvin looks at me like I’m going to smack him. “Yeah?” he asks. He’s slid the diary pages under his math book, barely hidden.

  I snatch them up. “Interesting reading?”

  “They were just sticking out of a locker.” He’s blushing up to his ears.

  Oh, Marvin. That awful mama’s-boy haircut. That dirty peach-fuzz mustache. Why do you do these things to yourself?

  I put the pages in my bag. “Your locker?”

  He blinks at me behind the same glasses he’s worn since sixth grade. “Could have been.”

  “Oh, I forgot. We have communal lockers at this school.” I think of the day the se
nior guys stuck Polaroids of their junk into Lizzie’s locker. They really did treat her like she belonged to them after prom.

  His scowl softens. “She was my friend.”

  “She was everyone’s friend, apparently. Now.”

  Yet, not too long ago, my classmates tripped over themselves to make her life miserable.

  Marvin’s eyes stare back at me, pleading. “You know I cared about her.”

  Like you care about your blow-up doll, I want to say. If you cared about her at all, you wouldn’t be reading her private thoughts.

  But I hold my fire. Truth is, if I got my hands on Lizzie’s entire diary, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from reading it.

  “Did you even know her that well?” I ask.

  Marvin smiles dreamily. “We’ve lived next door to each other since we were kids.”

  No shit. Why do you think you’re on my list? But I don’t tell him that. “I never saw you. Were you hiding behind the curtains?”

  He frowns but doesn’t deny my accusation. “I knew her as well as I know myself.”

  Eye roll. “So you knew she was going to swap fluids with my boyfriend on prom night? Gee, Marvin, and you didn’t tell me?”

  He locks his jaw. I picture him lying in bed at night, grinding his crooked teeth into dust. His answer surprises me. It’s got a little bite. “He’s not your boyfriend anymore.”

  I snort, and Mr. Farmington looks up from his desk. Better open my math book for good measure. All around us, people are hunched over their worksheets, but I can tell they’re listening in. They’re just more subtle than I am.

  “Not that I blame you for dumping him,” Marvin says. “That asshole deserves what he got.”

  “So you’re mad at Drake?”

  “I’m mad at everyone.” His fingers curl over the edge of his desk. For a second, I glimpse that possessiveness he always showed around Lizzie. “Everyone who hurt her,” he adds, loosening his grip. “She was perfect, and they made her like everyone else.”

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  He shrugs.

  I soften my voice. “Tell me what you know. Things you heard, things you saw.”

  “And?” He nods to my bag.