by Jo Ramsey
“Thanks.” I was confused to the point where I didn’t know which confused me more: her thinking I’d died or her being glad I hadn’t. “Why would you think it was me?”
“Because.” She looked uncomfortable. “I mean, people say stuff. Sometimes it has to be hard to deal with, and you’ve been kind of… I don’t know, depressed about it. You don’t even talk to us anymore. It’s like you’ve already checked out.”
“So?” I narrowed my eyes. Before, I’d been the queen of this little clique. Just because half the school had turned against me didn’t mean I couldn’t still intimidate the hell out of people. “People always say stuff. They’ve been saying stuff about me since seventh grade. You think anything’s new?”
“It’s different stuff,” Gina said.
“Still the same idiots saying it.” I turned my glare on her, and she looked away. “I don’t care what people say. I’m not going to do something stupid to myself because other people are jackasses. So don’t ever assume I would.” I looked at El-Al again. “And by the way, I don’t talk to you two anymore because you bailed on me. That doesn’t mean I checked out. It means I choose not to deal with people who pretend to be something they aren’t. Like friends.”
“Attention, please.” Ms. Rondeau, the principal, stood on the stage with a microphone in her hand.
El-Al and Gina both looked pretty guilty, but they didn’t respond to what I’d said. Everyone stopped talking almost immediately, which was as rare as unplanned assemblies. Usually it took a few tries by whoever had the microphone to get five hundred teenagers to quiet down, but this time, everyone wanted to hear what was going on.
“This is unexpected, and I’m sorry to have to be the one to deliver the news,” Ms. Rondeau said. “It’s important that you are aware of what’s happened, so thank you all for cooperating. Earlier this morning, I was informed that a freshman student, Maryellen Rourke, attempted to take her own life during the night.”
Audible gasps and murmuring filled the room.
My heart stopped. This was partly my fault. I should have tried harder to be Maryellen’s friend. We’d gone through the exact same thing with the exact same guy.
If I’d checked on her last night after my parents broke the news about Jim to me, maybe she wouldn’t have done it.
I didn’t understand why she’d waited until last night, though. All the time we’d waited to find out what would happen, she’d chosen to live. But when we found out Jim would have consequences, she tried to die. It didn’t make any sense.
I swallowed hard a few times and bit my lower lip hard so I wouldn’t scream.
“I want to make it clear that Maryellen survived,” Ms. Rondeau said. “However, she is in intensive care and there are still concerns. She will not be returning to school for the foreseeable future.”
She paused. The auditorium was almost completely silent.
“If any of you need to speak with someone, counselors will be available in the guidance and nurse’s offices,” Ms. Rondeau said finally. “There’s more, and this is the truly important part. A note Maryellen left, which her parents e-mailed to me, indicates that she has been on the receiving end of severe bullying and threats for the past two months, both online and here at our school. We take reports like this very seriously. We will be investigating with assistance from the police. If any of you have any knowledge about this, please come to the office. Reports will remain anonymous.”
My eyes watered so badly I could barely see Ms. Rondeau. Maryellen should have reported the bullying. I should have reported it. And now it was too late.
Maryellen was still alive. I had to focus on that. She hadn’t died, and she wouldn’t. She couldn’t.
Gina leaned past me to look at El-Al. “That’s the girl—”
“Shut up,” El-Al snapped. “Chastaine, are you okay?”
A teacher sitting in front of us turned around and shushed them. I wouldn’t have been able to answer El-Al anyway. If I opened my mouth, I would either puke or start crying too hard to talk.
“Thank you,” Ms. Rondeau said. “I’ll dismiss by grade. Please go to your first block classes. Even if you want to speak to a counselor or to me or Mr. Lawrence, please go to class first and check in with your teachers. Seniors, you may go.”
The seniors got up and walked out of the auditorium. A bunch of them glared at me as they went past my row. At least, it looked to me like they were glaring. Maybe I was only imagining it.
But everyone at school knew who Maryellen was, which meant everyone knew why she’d tried to kill herself. Some of them probably believed the same thing I did. It was my fault, because I’d reported Jim first. Maryellen hadn’t come forward until she heard I had.
If she hadn’t told anyone, they wouldn’t have harassed her the way they’d done to me. They wouldn’t have said all the shit to her that had probably made her feel like if she didn’t kill herself, things would only get worse.
No matter how hard I tried to snap myself out of it, those thoughts played on repeat in my brain. If. What if. If only.
“It’s my fault,” I said without registering that I’d spoken out loud. I gagged on the last word and bent forward, covering my mouth with both hands so I wouldn’t vomit all over the floor in front of me.
“No, it isn’t.” El-Al touched my arm. “It isn’t your fault, Chastaine.”
“Juniors may go,” Ms. Rondeau said.
I took a deep breath and tried to pull myself together enough to move. We stood up, but my legs shook so badly I wasn’t sure I’d be able to walk. El-Al grabbed my arm and steadied me. From somewhere else—I didn’t see where—Holly showed up and took my other arm. She must have been sitting nearby with her group.
“We need to take her to the office,” El-Al said. “She’s going to pass out or something.”
“Ms. Rondeau said to go to class.” Gina kept her distance from me.
“Screw Ms. Rondeau,” Holly snapped. “Chastaine damn sure isn’t going to class until someone makes sure she’s okay. Come on, Chastaine. We’ll help you.”
All around us, people stared. I didn’t deserve help, but the nasty taste at the back of my throat warned me that if I tried to say so, I would end up losing my coffee. All I could do was let Holly and El-Al pull me up the aisle and down the hall to the nurse’s office.
The nurse, Mrs. Alves, took one look at me and ushered us into one of the two cot rooms. She followed with a stethoscope I hadn’t even known she owned. “Lie down, Chastaine.”
I obeyed, with my head at the end of the cot closest to the window so I could see the open door. Holly and El-Al stayed in the doorway while Mrs. Alves sat in a plastic chair beside me. She glanced over her shoulder. “You girls need to go to class.”
“We want to make sure she’s okay,” Holly said.
Mrs. Alves sighed. “What class are you in?”
“History.” El-Al was in the same class as Holly, Evan, and me. “Mr. Ruiz.”
Mrs. Alves nodded. “I’ll buzz down and let you know. Now go before you get in trouble.”
Holly opened her mouth again. Mrs. Alves turned back to me. “If you girls don’t leave, I’m not giving you a pass.”
Holly whirled around and stomped out. El-Al followed her. I wished they’d stayed, but I didn’t blame them for leaving. Mrs. Alves wasn’t anyone to mess with. Neither was Ms. Rondeau, when people disobeyed her orders.
“What happened, Chastaine?” The nurse knew me way too well.
“I don’t know.” I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to look at her face. “They said Maryellen….” I stopped, unable to finish the sentence.
“I know. Ms. Rondeau met with the staff earlier.” She sounded sympathetic.
“It’s my fault.” I blurted it out again before I realized I was going to say it. “She and I should have been a team, but she didn’t want to talk to me. I should have made her talk, or made sure she was talking to someone else, at least. I should have been more supportive.”
> “How was it your responsibility?” she asked. “I understand how you feel, Chastaine, but even the people who were around her every day and listened to her didn’t know she was going to do this.”
“How do you know?” I demanded. I opened my eyes and glared at her. “How do you know they didn’t have a clue?”
“If they’d known, they would have tried to keep her from doing it,” Mrs. Alves said calmly. “On the other hand, if she was really determined, she might have found a way to do it anyway. It’s a horrible thing to have happen, but it isn’t anyone’s fault. You couldn’t have changed it. She survived. Hold on to that.”
I didn’t believe most of what she said. The people who saw or talked to Maryellen on a daily basis hadn’t been through the same thing as her, but I had. If I’d tried harder to be there for her, even if she kept not talking to me, maybe she wouldn’t have felt alone enough to hurt herself. I could handle what people said to and about me, but Maryellen was only fourteen. I didn’t even know why Jim had gone after a girl who was two years younger than him. Maybe he was just that much of a creep.
I blinked and realized my eyes were wet. Tears ran down the sides of my face into my hair, and my nose was stuffing up. I didn’t even remember starting to cry.
“It’s going to be okay.” Mrs. Alves laid a cool hand on my forehead.
That made me cry harder. My mother had put her hand on my head exactly that way when I was little and got sick or scared. And her hand had felt as cool as Mrs. Alves’s.
My mom hadn’t touched me that way since I was about ten. I’d told her to stop because I wasn’t a little kid anymore.
“I’m going to call your parents.” She stood. “And I’ll see if Mrs. Turnbull is free to come talk to you until someone can pick you up. She’s your guidance counselor, right? The grief counselor’s already kind of booked up.”
“Yeah.” The word came out thick and garbled. “I don’t want to talk to some stranger.”
“That’s why I’m getting Mrs. Turnbull. Will you be all right here for a minute?”
I was already not all right. I didn’t see how her leaving the room would change anything. “Yeah,” I said again.
“I’ll be right back. Shout if you need anything. I mean it.”
I didn’t bother answering this time. She left, and I closed my eyes again.
In the darkness behind my eyelids, everything was magnified. I saw Maryellen crying in the girls’ bathroom the day she told me about her and Jim. The way she turned her back to me every time she saw me in the hall after the harassment started.
I saw her in a generic bedroom with a bottle of pills in her hand.
My stomach rolled, and I turned onto my side fast in case I threw up. My heart was thudding, and I started to shake. I didn’t know how Maryellen had done it. Ms. Rondeau hadn’t said, of course, but I figured pills were the most likely way. Take a bottle or two, fall asleep, and just not wake up.
A sob burst out of me, then another, and then I was crying so hard I couldn’t catch my breath. And part of me was glad about it.
Chapter 3
MRS. TURNBULL and Mrs. Alves hurried into the room. They’d probably heard me crying. I was vaguely aware they were asking me questions, but I could barely hear them and didn’t want to think hard enough to answer. I just let their voices roll over me and tried to calm down.
Mrs. Turnbull only stayed a few minutes, then said something about other students waiting for her and left the room. Since I couldn’t stop crying enough to speak, she probably figured she’d be better off dealing with kids who were actually saying something.
Mrs. Alves stayed in the room with me. She didn’t say a word, but having her there made me feel a little better. By the time Mom showed up, I was sniffling and still had tears trickling down my face, but I wasn’t full-out crying anymore.
“Chastaine, it’s okay.” Mom gathered me up into a hug without giving me a chance to sit up on my own. “It’s okay. I called Kendra. She’s going to see you right away.”
Kendra was my counselor. The one who was supposed to help me “get over” what Jim had done to me, though to give her credit, Kendra never actually put it that way. She said she wanted to help me heal. Mostly we talked about my life, the partying and sex and shopping and stuff I’d done before November. Once in a while, she brought up Jim, but I tried to avoid the topic.
Next to Holly, Kendra was the easiest person I knew to talk to. But of course, she got paid for it.
“Can’t I go to class?” I didn’t know why I’d asked that. I’d meant to ask if I could go home. But now that I mentioned class, it sounded like a better idea. I would be around other people, which meant I would have distractions.
“I think it’s better if you take the rest of the day off,” Mrs. Alves said. “Or go to your counselor, at least. You had a big shock. You can certainly go to class and try to finish the day if you want and if your mother’s okay with it, but I wouldn’t advise it.”
Most days lately, leaving school would have been my dream situation. I wouldn’t have to listen to people in the halls, or figure out where to sit in the cafeteria if it was a day when I didn’t have lunch block class with Holly, Evan, and Guillermo. Fortunately, those days only happened about once a week thanks to the completely weird way our school configured the schedule, but once a week was once more than I wanted. And I couldn’t remember whether today was one of those days or not.
It didn’t matter. I didn’t want to leave. Someone had almost died because of the bullying people had dished out to her. Maybe that would get through some people’s thick heads, and they wouldn’t hassle me as much.
The second the thought crossed my mind, I hated myself. I had no right using Maryellen’s choice as a reason to hope idiots would leave me alone.
Maybe Mrs. Alves was right. Maybe I did need to talk to someone.
I squirmed, and Mom let go of me. When I was little, Mom’s hugs had made everything better, but since middle school, I’d stopped wanting hugs most of the time. Her holding me today kind of helped, but not much. And I was uncomfortable having her touch me in an office where anyone might see.
“Kendra made room in her schedule to see you,” Mom said.
“Yeah, I get it,” I muttered. She was only trying to help, but she sounded close to tears, which pissed me off. She didn’t have anything to cry about. I was the one who was partly responsible for someone almost dying, and I was pulling myself together pretty well. “I’ll go see Kendra, but if she says I can come back to school afterward, I want to. If I miss too much school it’ll screw with my grades, right?”
“This would be an excused absence,” Mrs. Alves said. “It wouldn’t affect your grades. Take care of yourself, Chastaine. You’re more important than your classes.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t completely buy that, but there wasn’t any point in arguing with the adults. They knew everything.
“I’ll tell Holly and Eleanor you’re leaving,” Mrs. Alves said.
“Thanks.” I’d almost forgotten that she’d promised to fill them in on whether I was okay.
Since we’d had to go straight to the auditorium, I had all my stuff with me. I didn’t even remember bringing it to the nurse’s office. Then again, I barely remembered walking to the office with Holly and El-Al. Maybe one of them had brought my jacket and backpack. However it had happened, it meant I didn’t have to go to my locker or a classroom, which was a good thing. Mom and I would be able to get outside without anyone other than the secretaries in the main office seeing us.
Mom stayed a little too close beside me as we walked out of the building to her car, which was parked in the fire lane right in front of the steps. She stayed beside me while I got into the passenger seat and closed the door for me before going to the driver’s side. I thought about reminding her that she had to sign me out in the main office, but didn’t bother. Probably either she’d already done it or the nurse would take care of it. It wasn’t my problem as long as I didn’t ge
t in trouble.
“Mrs. Alves told me about that poor girl,” Mom said after she got into the car. She shifted into drive and took off a little faster than she should have.
“Yeah. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Who was she?”
I yelled. No words, just noise.
Mom jumped and started to say something. I cut her off. “I said I don’t want to talk about her. That means I’m not telling you who she was or why she did it or anything. Don’t ask me anything else. Just leave me alone!”
I started crying again and was furious with myself for it. Without a word, Mom took a pile of napkins out of the holder on her door and held them out to me. We always had takeout napkins in the car for such an occasion.
We drove into Boston, to my counselor’s office near the airport. I let Mom check me in at the reception desk because I hadn’t managed to stop crying yet and didn’t want to try to talk to anyone.
Kendra’s office was on the second floor, and she was waiting at the top of the stairs. “Good morning, Chastaine. I hear you’re having a rough day. Come on in and let’s see if we can make anything easier for you.”
My throat had closed so much I couldn’t speak, so I simply nodded.
She led us down the hall to her office. Mom tried to follow me inside, which I completely did not want. She didn’t know all the details about me or about what had happened, and I preferred it that way. If she was in the office, I wouldn’t be able to talk to Kendra.
Fortunately, Kendra had a clue. “Mrs. Rollo, please have a seat in the waiting area. I’d like to give Chastaine a chance to speak freely.”
“She can talk in front of me.” Mom looked at me. “Chastaine?”
I shook my head, and Mom’s face fell. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll be out here if you need me.”
She walked away slowly, as if she was waiting for us to stop her. Of course, neither of us did.
Kendra closed the door and motioned toward the plastic chair beside her desk. The place was too low-budget to have comfortable chairs for clients. She sat in her rolling chair and took a folder out of the stack on the shelf next to her. My file, which was a lot thicker than it had been two months ago when I’d started seeing her.
